Fatima Kuinova was born on December 28, 1920, in Samarkand,
Tajikistan, in Soviet Central Asia, one of 10 children. She grew
up speaking Russian, but her cultural life was rooted in
Bukharan Jewish traditions. Though her father, cantor of the
local Bukharan Jewish synagogue, died when she was six years
old, she credits him with her earliest and deepest musical
influence. She began singing as a child and started vocal
studies when she was 14, performing as a teenager in school
choirs and at festivals in Dushanbe, the capital. She sang on
Soviet radio as early as 1941. Because of the widespread
discrimination against Jews under Stalin, she took the name
Kuinova to hide her true identity. Her Jewish name was Cohen,
and throughout her life she has retained the Kuinova. She even
sang for Stalin himself, but he probably didn't know she was
Jewish. During World War II she sang for soldiers throughout
Central Asia and in war zones. In 1948 she was named Honored
Artist of the Soviet Union. In 1949 she began studying s