Roza Rymbaeva

She was born on October 28, 1957, at the 9th railway station of Djangiztobe in the Semipalatinsk region, where she also graduated from a boarding school. She was one of 8 children in the family. Her father, a railroad worker, passed away in 2014, and her mother, Aytu, a homemaker, died in 2013.

Her older brother also became a musician and had a significant influence on her in childhood. After school, Rymbaeva studied at the Semipalatinsk Music College for three years.

In 1975, she first participated in a song contest dedicated to the 30th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. There, she was noticed by the chief conductor of the republican youth pop ensemble Gulder, Taskyn Okapov, who invited her to join as a soloist.

From 1976 to 1979, she was a soloist of the Gulder youth pop ensemble. Since 1979, she became a soloist of the pop ensemble Aray, where her husband, Taskyn Okapov, was the director and artistic leader.

Rymbaeva gained widespread fame in June 1977 at the Golden Orpheus Festival in Bulgaria, where she won the Grand Prix for performing the song Aliya, dedicated to the memory of the sniper of the Great Patriotic War, Aliya Moldagulova.