Ilyas Malayev

Who was Ilyas Malayev?

Ilyas Malayev was an Uzbekistani musician and poet.

Malayev was born in Mary to Efraim and Yelizaveta Malayev, a Bukharian Jewish family and raised in the Uzbek town of Katta-Kurgan near Bukhara. He learned to play the tar and the tanbur, as well as the violin, and immersed himself in the shashmaqam genre. In 1951, he moved to Tashkent, where he performed with various state-sponsored ensembles, and became popular as a variety entertainer, performing comedy routines, his own songs and poetry and Shashmaqom excerpts. Tens of thousands of fans attended his stadium performances. He was later named "Honored Artist of the Uzbek SSR".

In 1994, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Malayev emigrated to the United States where he settled in Queens, New York City along with thousands of other Bukharian Jews. Although it was a considerable step down from his fame and popularity in Uzbekistan, Malayev emigrated as he was unable to have his poetry published in his homeland, a restriction he suspected was due to either anti-Semitism or the state of the Soviet cultural bureaucracy. He was granted U.S. citizenship on November 15, 2001.