Picture from Nevex.Tv video-post on YouTube.

For some people ‘Life is a Music,’ and ‘Music is a Life.’ For ethnic Uzbek labor migrant from Tajikistan, who delivers famous Bollywood songs in a very original way, these mottos are higher than anything in his life. neweurasia’s Musafirbek updates on Tajik Jimmy.

The story of Baymurat Allaberiyev is very common for modern gastarbeiters from Central Asia who work in Russia: unemployed guy with scanty salary decided to move to magapolis to earn a lot of money enough for adequate life back to his country.

When I read the article on him at New York Times (NYT) online edition I decided to find some more information on the web about emerging Central-Asian-Russian-Bollywood pop-star. The results surprised me since Russian people love him so much that instead of asking him for documents in the street policemen recognize him and ask to sing something for them. So do ordinary people, they want to shake his hand and express their gratitude for his nice performances.

It started nearly a year ago with an upload of Baymurat’s video on YouTube by his colleague’s brother. After that he became internet star and the number of his page views went beyond 100K by now. Some people call him Russian Susan Boyle, pensioner participant of Britain’s Talent show who gained love of millions of people in Europe.

Jimmy was born at the wrong time, or in the wrong place, says NYT.

By his early teens, he was picking cotton for a pittance in pay. When the Soviet collapse cast Tajikistan into poverty and civil war, he joined the great river of young men who left home in search of work.

Surprisingly, the issue of greed is not an issue in this story — except for Yamaha synthesizer, during his interview for NYT he asked for money to replace three teeth that were knocked out in April, when he was attacked by thugs on his way home from work.

“You have lots of people in America,” he said. “Send me lots of teeth.”
From the interview to New York Times

One of the local reporters wangled Baymurat a guest appearance with the Asian Dub Foundation, a London group that was performing that same night in St. Petersburg. Ilya Bortnyuk, a concert promoter in the audience, felt what he described as “almost rapture.” Later that night Bortnyuk offered to Tajik Jimmy’s career for a period of three years or for five albums with a hope to make him a “world music” star, leaving behind Bollywood imitations for a repertory of Afghan and Central Asian folk songs.

This story reminds me a happy end of traditional Central Asian fairy tales that end with “…and they lived a happy and worthy life…” Hope that Baymurat is going to rock the world with his hits and prove everybody that our region is a land of talented and erudite people they can see everyday in the streets but can’t recognize. At least for these moments that Bill Wasik, whose new book, “And Then There’s This,” explores the phenomenon of Internet celebrity, call ‘a short ride,’ that ‘is a kind of gift.’

Though Baymurat’s friend Elena Mirzoeva, who manages a cleaning service on the second floor of the supermarket Jimmy works in, says that “A person that feels he is a star that person will really go somewhere.”