Being an immigrant means sometimes we don’t have a choice. We cannot wait for something to happen, we have to make it happen.
I am so excited to welcome Ella Altshuler also know as Ella Leya among the creative and music circles of London, Moscow, Baku and Los Angeles to the show.
Ella is a singer, song writer, jazz musician, author and poet originally from Azerbaijan who is now living in London. Ella grew up in communist Azerbaijan where she first got exposed to Jazz and American music through a record she heard from singer Liza Minnelli. She had never heard anything quite like it and she got hooked. Being a classical pianist and singer, Ella found it easy to switch to Jazz. She just joined a band and became, quite possibly, the first female Jazz singer in Baku. Her band sometimes played and practiced in clandestine because that kind of music was not openly supported under the communist regime. But Ella did not just stop there. She went on to challenge the status quo yet again by moving to Moscow to join a Jewish theater group but continued her singing and song writing career. Finally, Ella was able to leave all of that behind with the help of some friends, migrate to the States in the 90s and continued to build her music career.
Ella attributes a lot of her success and tenacity to being an immigrant and a creative. She says “Being an immigrant means sometimes we don’t have a choice. We often leave everything that we know and love behind, to start afresh – to start a new life. And that makes us bold. We know we don’t have a choice. We cannot sit around waiting for something to happen, we have to make it happen”.
Ella certainly followed that advise. She had a friend drop her off at the music department of Old Dominion University in Norfolk Virgina, the place she first came to when she migrated to the States, and demanded a job teaching music simply because of her credentials and experiences in Moscow. Ella continued to channel her creativity and her passion for music, and one thing led to other and soon she was recording music, not only English but also Russian, something she hadn’t done even in Russia growing up.
Most recently, Ella has become an author, writing a novel that is now in talks of becoming a film in Azerbaijan. This lead Ella to be invited by the Ministry Of Culture back to Baku – a place she only recently visited after 30 years of being away. Ella says, “It was exactly how I remembered it to be I could smell the oil, the sun and the ocean as soon as I walked out of the plane”.
Ella has had such a fascinating life and I know you will enjoy learning more about her on this episode of CulturallyOurs.
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