Alina Ivanivna Pash is a Ukrainian singer, rapper and songwriter. Alina was born on May 6, 1993 in the village of Bushtyno, Zakarpattia Oblast. Raised in the family of a music teacher and a policeman, Pash started singing in early childhood and performed in front of an audience for the first time when she was six. At the age of 13, every weekend she had to travel alone to Uzhgorod, a western Ukrainian city some 120 kilometres from her home, for vocal classes. As a child, she first dreamed of becoming an archaeologist and later wanted to be a police officer, like her father did. Alina moved to Kyiv in 2011 and entered the Academy of Circus and Variety Arts. At the time, Pash had a number of jobs connected to the music industry: she worked with DJs, Ukrainian bands and was a backing vocalist for the singer Iryna Bilyk and the band Skai.
On April 15, 2018, Alina Pash presented her debut single “Bitanga” and a video clip for it. The song combines hip-hop, pop elements and ethnic motifs. The video was recorded with the participation of French rapper Jaw from the group “dOP”, whose voice sounds at the end. Pash says her phone died 30 minutes after she posted the video, as there were so many calls from people congratulating her. “Bitanga” was praised by Ukraine’s music-focused media. On September 18, Alina Pash released her second single called “Oinagori” with a music video. The music video was shot in Marseille (France) with a local team, directed by Lou Escobar and Nathan Daisy. On May 24, 2019, a new album “Pintea: Gory” was released, recorded in an ethnic style. On June 14, the world saw the second part of the album called “Pintea: Misto”, recorded in electronic and hip-hop style. As the singer herself noted, she dedicated the first part of the album to her native Carpathian village, and the second — to Kyiv.
On September 11, 2020, an ironic and sharply social EP called “Amerikraine Dream” was released. The song “Accent” was recorded with French producer and musician Brodinski. In 2020, Alina took part in the social project “Rizni.Rivni” (what is translated from Ukrainian as “Different. Equal”), in which a manifesto song was recorded in support of tolerance in Ukrainian society. In the spring of 2021, an album “розМова” (translates as “Conversation”) is released that was created during field expeditions to the Hutsul region in the Carpathian Mountains, which Alina Pash and her team went to in 2020. The album includes the song “Ballad” and “Water” recorded live from one take, which was recorded in the church where Sergei Parajanov once shot “Shadows of forgotten ancestors”. Later in 2022, Electronic Arts chose the song “Voin” from this album as one of the soundtracks for the game Need For Speed Unbounded. In December 2021, EP “Norov” was released, where ethnicity is woven into the beats and atmosphere of R&B. EP was recorded with DJ and sound producer Pahatam (Evgeny Yaremenko). “Norov” included 4 songs, among them the previously presented “Motanka”, which was included in the advertising of PUMA sneakers.
Pash entered Vidbir 2022 with the song “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors”. She won the competition, thus gaining the right to represent Ukraine at the Eurovision Song Contest 2022. However, after the competition, the Ukrainian broadcaster UA:PBC began investigating a trip Pash had taken to Crimea in 2015, under the suspicion that Pash had broken the law by not travelling there through Ukraine. To that, Pash says she has never had a concert in Russia but had had to travel there for personal matters before she became a public figure in Ukraine. Following this investigation, it was decided via a mutual agreement between the broadcaster, Vidbir’s organising committee and Pash that her participation in the contest would not go ahead. Kalush Orchestra, who placed second in Vidbir 2022, were later selected to represent Ukraine at Eurovision with the song “Stefania”.
After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Alina Pash actively participates in public activities and gives charity concerts both in Ukraine and in Europe. On July 8, the single “Heaven” was released with a video clip dedicated to children who died during the war. The song was written immediately after the bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol in early March. Displaced persons from Ukraine, in particular a family who escaped from the occupation in the Kherson region, took part in the filming of the video clip. On August 15, Alina Pash gave a political audio-visual performance at one of the largest European festivals Sziget. The entire performance was focused around the war in Ukraine. In the spring of 2023 Alina Pash released a maxi single “Gorgany”, which is dedicated to the secrets and riddles of the Carpathians. The collection consists of three songs: “Karpatska”, “Chukutykha” and “Goira”.
