Irina Gribulina

Irina Gribulina was a Russian folk singer-songwriter noted for her songs of various styles and influences, including new wave, glam rock, rhythm and blues, and reggae. She was born on September 29, 1953, in Sochi, to a Jewish family. Her mother was an operetta actress and singer in Sochi, and her father was a journalist and writer. She started writing poetry and music at the age of four and performed on stage in her native city. She studied at the Central Music School at the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Dmitri Kabalevsky, and then earned a degree in the classical vocal program at the Gnesins Musical College. She worked as a composer and a poet with many famous domestic singers and actors, such as Valery Leontiev, Lyudmila Gurchenko, Iosif Kobzon, Roza Rymbaeva, Boris Moiseev, Anne Veski, Valery Obodzinsky, Valentina Tolkunova, Sergey Shakurov, Ekaterina Guseva, Alexander Marshal, Yevgeny Kemerovsky, Nikolai Karachentsov, Alexander Abdulov, Yuliana, Sergey Rogozhin, Natasha Bogatskaya, Angelica Agurbash, Nikolai Eremenko, Emmanuil Vitorgan and others. She also wrote music for theater and movies, such as "Mary Poppins", "Skates", "Sea Gates", "A Big Doctor's Tale", "Ali-Baba and 40 Songs of the Persian Bazaar", and songs for the children's show "Alarm Clock". She sang in a hoarse voice styled after the Russian bard Vladimir Vysotsky, self-accompanied on guitar, or occasionally a synthesizer. She had a repertoire of nearly 200 songs, of which some became hits and classics of Russian pop music. She died on May 5, 2008 in a car on the road from Volgograd to Rostov-on-Don, from a heart attack. The cause of her death and the location of her resting place are unknown.