At the age of three, Swara Oza recorded a lullaby titled Hun Taaro Lalo in a professional studio in Rajkot. She does not remember that this song would ever gain widespread fame. However, two decades later, people her age tell her that they grew up listening to this melody in childhood.
This early, unplanned exposure defined a career trajectory built almost entirely on intuition, ultimately leading the 24-year-old artist to invent a genre that no one had previously attempted in Gujarati music—G-pop.
For many years, Gujarati music followed a single calendar cycle. It gains momentum during the nine nights of Garba in Navratri, when dandiya stick beats resonate in Ahmedabad and Rajkot, before fading until the following year, primarily remaining tied to film soundtracks.
Oza aimed for music to be heard on a phone screen every day, not just for two weeks. Therefore, working with her mother, composer Neema Oza, she coined a term for what they were creating together: G-pop—a fusion of the Gujarati language with modern pop, R&B, and even techno styles.
The Oza family's musical tradition runs deep through generations. Swara's great-grandfather played the dhol at Sarvodaya Raas Mandal in Rajkot, her father Mitesh is a drummer, and her grandmother plays the harmonium.
However, it is her mother, Neema, who holds a Visharad classical education and a gold medal, who handles the writing, composition, mixing, and mastering of every G-pop track, working with Swara on melody and lyrics in one sitting rather than in separate stages. This process gave birth to the track 'Temperature High,' which is now considered the genre's first release and the song that named it.
The core idea of G-pop, already validated by international Indian film hits, is not that listeners must understand Gujarati. Rather, it is that Western pop hooks, synthesizers, drum machines, and verse-chorus architecture can carry Gujarati lyrics over them, without any element overpowering the other. The song 'Fireman' serves as the clearest example.
The song came to Oza in a dream: the woman looks in the mirror proclaiming her beauty, then calls a firefighter to extinguish the fire she has become; the sound of a fire truck siren is imitated directly in the song's hook. Neema transformed this solitary vocal recording into a complete arrangement in a single session, including the siren, without needing to rewrite anything.
A similar fusion is evident in tracks like 'Dago,' 'Alien,' and 'Ishq No Rang,' in R&B, Arabic-inflected pop, and club music, all framed around lyrics that never switch to English or Hindi.
With nearly 30 songs in the G-pop genre, Oza performed at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in Mumbai and in Natarani in Ahmedabad, drawing crowds who came expecting Garba but left having heard something more akin to a Western pop concert performed in their native language.
Her YouTube channel has over 152,000 subscribers, most of whom were gained through clip distribution online rather than through a label—a path many independent Indian singers have chosen in recent years to achieve sudden popularity.
None of this came easily. Oza spoke about producers who showed interest and then fell silent, as well as invitations to open shows, only to be dropped at the last minute.
Nevertheless, G-pop was sustained by the creative partnership between mother and daughter, which no studio complex could replicate, and by the artist herself, who refused to soften her image for approval. She openly discussed being bullied for her weight as a child, and today she designs her own stage costumes, refusing to edit acne in her posts—a choice that reflects the same intuition that prompted other young Indian creators to stop hiding behind filters.
For a singer who almost gave up on music in her teenage years, the return happened, fittingly, through pop itself. The emergence of Justin Bieber and One Direction brought her back to the microphone she was accustomed to since childhood, but on her own terms.
G-pop has ceased to be an experiment and, according to Oza herself, has become a genre that other Gujarati artists are beginning to explore, proving that regional language and pop hooks have never been as far apart as the schedule of Gujarati music suggested.
Andrey Evseevich Slonim is among the outstanding figures of world culture, whose achievements brightly illuminate the cultural firmament. As a director, scenographer, poet, and publicist, his multifaceted talent is an important part of Uzbekistan's cultural heritage. As an Honored Artist of the republic and a Knight of the International Association 'Art of Peoples of the World,' Slonim is recognized as an artist whose works are characterized by deep reflection, psychological subtlety, and faith in humanity.
Slonim's biography is an example of self-dedication and hard work. His creative potential blossomed in Uzbekistan, where he created many memorable performances, drawing inspiration from the atmosphere of ancient culture. The beginning of his journey in the world of art took place at the Alisher Navoi State Academic Grand Theatre. Born in Tashkent in 1949, he graduated from the Theatre and Art Institute in 1974, finding his calling.
Andrey Slonim is known for his ability to work with actors, revealing their best qualities and creating vivid, multifaceted images on stage. His productions represent entire worlds into which spectators immerse themselves, becoming witnesses to the joys and sorrows of the characters. He skillfully combines classical traditions with modern trends, making art understandable and relevant to the general public. Thanks to his activity in theatre, the Small Stage exists.
Slonim has acted as a director and set designer in over 70 productions of operas, dramas, and ballets. Today, he is considered a master of opera directing, whose works amaze with a unique combination of deep knowledge of musical dramaturgy and authorial intent, enriched by innovative techniques. He finds a balance between preserving the spirit of the era and the composer, imbuing characters with timeless psychological depth.
Throughout his career, Slonim has gifted the world over 80 performances, including masterpieces of world operatic classics such as Verdi's 'Rigoletto' and 'La Traviata,' Puccini's 'Tosca,' 'Madama Butterfly,' and 'La Bohème,' Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville,' and Mozart's 'The Marriage of Figaro.' From Russian classics, his repertoire includes Tchaikovsky's 'Eugene Onegin' and Rimsky-Korsakov's 'The Tsar's Bride.' His talent was also displayed on the Moscow stage: at the Gneshin Academy of Music Studio Theatre, he staged the operas 'The Witch' by V. Vlasov and V. Fere (1984) and 'The Queen of Spades' by Tchaikovsky (1986).
Since 1990, Andrey Slonim has been the leading director-producer and scenographer of the Alisher Navoi State Academic Grand Theatre of Uzbekistan. In the last twenty years, he has created more than 35 productions of Uzbek and world classics, as well as works by contemporary Uzbek composers. Among them, 'Lucia di Lammermoor' by G. Donizetti, 'The Magic Flute' by W. Mozart, 'The Gypsy Baron' by P. Mascagni, and 'Mavra' by I. Stravinsky were presented in Uzbekistan for the first time. A special place is occupied by N. Zakirov's opera 'Path to the Throne,' based on Shakespeare's tragedies 'Hamlet' and 'Macbeth.' New, bold interpretations, such as 'Hoffmann's Tales' by J. Offenbach, 'The Theatre Director' by W. Mozart, 'Aleko' by S. Rachmaninoff, and 'Boris Godunov' by M. Mussorgsky, delighted the public and earned critical acclaim.
In 1992, Slonim presented the opera 'Diloram' by M. Ashrafi, dedicated to the composer's 80th anniversary. His mastery as a scenographer was demonstrated in the design of the ballets 'Spartacus' by A. Khachaturian and 'Poetic Miniatures' by U. Musaev on the stage of the A. Navoi State Academic Grand Theatre, as well as in international cooperation with the Japanese 'Toyota City Ballet' on the ballets 'Don Quixote' by L. Minkus and 'The Sleeping Beauty' by Tchaikovsky.
Andrey Slonim is the author and producer of over 200 theatrical projects and concert compositions that skillfully combine operatic and chamber performance with poetry. He participated in organizing numerous events dedicated to great masters of word and music, including Navoi, Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Blok, Turgenev, Yesenin, Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Schumann, Shalyapin, Obukhova, Kozlovsky, and many others. He himself often performs poetic lyrics, demonstrating a deep understanding of poetry from different eras.
Recent achievements include a series of events dedicated to the anniversary of A.S. Pushkin in Uzbekistan, memorial evenings for K. Mukhitdinov, M. Ashrafi, M. Kari-Yakubov, as well as a cycle of gala concerts by the People's Artist of Uzbekistan and Karakalpakstan M. Razzakova.
For more than forty years, Slonim has been devoted to theatrical education, teaching young specialists the basics of acting. He taught the opera class at the Opera Studio of the Uzbekistan State Conservatory and headed the course of opera mastery at the Tashkent Theatre and Art Institute. He was invited to the Gneshin Academy of Music in Russia to conduct master classes on the skill of the opera singer-actor in Ryazan.
From 2015 to 2019, Andrey Slonim performed four times as a project author, director-producer, and host of memorial evenings for I.S. Kozlovsky in Moscow. In 2019, he organized the evening 'I Watched Everything Towards the Volga...' in Moscow, dedicated to the female image in romantic lyricism and 'Silver Age' poetry.
Slonim's contribution to the development of opera art in Uzbekistan is immense. In 2013, he staged the first production of F. Yanov-Yanovsky's opera 'The Princess in the Pea,' and in 2017, the first production of M. Bafoyev's opera-ballet 'Hamsa,' inspired by the poems of A. Navoi. During the same period, he presented the little-known opera 'The Pretender' by W. Mozart to the audience.
Andrey Slonim is a ten-time author of theatrical concert projects dedicated to the royal family. These works were included in the program of the International Festival 'Royal Days' in Yekaterinburg and Alapaevsk (periods 2015-2019 and 2022-2026). Under his direction, the creative group of the A. Navoi State Academic Grand Theatre has repeatedly received high praise from the public.
In December 2018, Slonim led the soloist group of the A. Navoi State Academic Grand Theatre at the International Festival 'Power of Faith' named after Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov) in St. Petersburg, where the soloists received awards. In December 2023, the same group successfully performed at this festival in Istry, and his wife Lyudmila Slonim was awarded the diploma 'Best Concertmaster of the Festival.' In December 2024, the group achieved success again at the festival in Vladimir.
In March 2025, together with Lyudmila Slonim and the soloist Begzot Sadykov of the A. Navoi State Academic Grand Theatre, Andrey Evseevich held four important events in Moscow dedicated to the 125th anniversary of I.S. Kozlovsky. These included the staging of a concert-theatrical performance based on Tchaikovsky's opera 'Eugene Onegin' in the hall of the K.S. Stanislavsky House-Museum, as well as the concert-composition 'Knight of Light and Goodness' in the Beethoven Hall of the Grand Theatre. In the same year, upon invitation from the All-Russian Pushkin Foundation, a composition based on Tchaikovsky's opera 'Eugene Onegin' was staged at the G.R. Derzhavin Estate Museum in St. Petersburg. This project was recognized as a bright cultural event of Russia and received gratitude from the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation O. Lyubimova and the Committee for Foreign Relations of St. Petersburg.
In December of the same year, the evening 'In a Beautiful Country of Love,' dedicated to the anniversary of I.S. Kozlovsky, took place at the Concert Hall of the Central Music School – Academy of Performing Arts of Moscow. This event brought together leading soloists of Moscow opera theaters and the Youth Symphony Orchestra of the CMS.
For ten years, Andrey Evseevich led and inspired the Youth Studio Theatre 'Star of Youth' at the Cultural Center of Germans in Uzbekistan. Under his guidance, young artists embodied masterpieces of world drama on stage, including Goethe's 'Faust' and Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night.'
A good Bluetooth headset is essential in daily life, whether for physical exercise, work, or simply enjoying music without the interference of wires. Three options currently on promotion on Amazon have been selected and deserve consideration to find the perfect model according to each user's style.
The Philips TWS model offers up to 24 hours of battery life when the earphones are used with the charging case, which is sufficient for long periods. It features a built-in microphone for calls, simple Bluetooth connectivity, and a discreet black finish that matches various looks.
There is also a pink version equipped with 13mm drivers, focusing on more pronounced bass for those who prefer to feel the music with more impact. Thanks to Bluetooth 5.3, the connection remains stable, and water resistance allows use during workouts, while 14 hours of playback ensure the battery lasts most of the day.
Additionally, the JBL Wave Beam 2 was launched with dust and water resistance, featuring a light and comfortable in-ear design. This model is recommended for people who use headphones during physical activities or in more challenging environments, combining JBL's characteristic sound with the convenience of wireless Bluetooth.
It is important to note that these offers may change at any time; therefore, if any of these models attract interest, it is recommended to access the link immediately to secure the purchase before stock or conditions change.
SET Expo 2026 is scheduled to take place from August 17th to 20th in São Paulo. The event aims to gather professionals and companies from the media, technology, audiovisual, telecommunications, entertainment, and innovation sectors.
Considered the largest Broadcast and New Media event in Latin America, the meeting will be held at Convention Centers I and II of the Anhembi District, located in the North Zone of the capital city of São Paulo. The full program includes a congress, an exhibition, and an arena dedicated to content.
The event will feature debates focused on industry trends, the display of technological innovations, the creation of business opportunities, and the promotion of networking. SET Expo targets all professionals and companies operating in the production, distribution, and technological development chain of media and entertainment.
The meeting invites executives, researchers, students, specialists, and various institutions to discuss the changes occurring in the audiovisual market. Among its main purposes are professional updating, business generation, presentation of technological solutions, and knowledge exchange among different sector agents.
One of the pillars of SET Expo is the congress, where Brazilian and international specialists meet to discuss strategic aspects related to the future of media and entertainment. This component includes panels, presentations, and debates on business models and the trends reshaping the segment.
The exhibition serves as the commercial and display arm of the event. It offers a space for companies to exhibit their products, services, and solutions for various niches of the audiovisual chain, also functioning as a venue for developing new professional relationships and businesses.
Additionally, there is the Content Arena, a specific space for demonstrations, presentations, and experiences related to market transformations. The intention is to showcase new trends and bring the public closer to emerging solutions and technologies in the fields of media and entertainment.
SET Expo aims to centralize various elements of the audiovisual market in one place. In addition to following discussions on innovation and learning about new technologies, participants have the chance to contact leaders, specialists, companies, and professionals in the sector. The general proposal is to unite content, technology, business opportunities, and networking, allowing a close observation of the transformations in the audiovisual industry.
In terms of dates, the SET Expo congress will begin on Monday, August 17th, extending until Thursday, the 20th. The exhibition will specifically take place between August 18th and 20th.
