For Ukrainian-Jewish singer-songwriter and pianist GOLDY, performing a song titled “Shalom” should be the most natural thing in the world.
But in London, amid rising antisemitism following the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, she sometimes found herself wondering whether it was safe.
“I was afraid to sing ‘Shalom’ in London sometimes,” GOLDY told JNS in an interview in Jerusalem on Oct. 25. “I was like, ‘Am I really ready to sing ‘Shalom’ at this gig?’ Because I need to protect myself.”
Yet concealing her Jewish identity was never an option.
“I don’t want to hide who I am,” she said. “I don’t want to hide my ‘Shalom’ song or my songs which are related to the Jewish nation.”
That determination has been a constant through an extraordinary personal and musical journey that has taken the Odessa-born performer from Ukraine to Israel, London and now Los Angeles, where she plans to begin the next chapter of her international career.
It is a journey she has channeled into her debut album, I Know Now, a collection of 11 songs representing lessons learned from war, displacement and starting over.
“My mission is to open people’s hearts around the world,” she said. “No matter what they believe, no matter what’s going on right now in the world.”
A Jewish voice
Born Tetiana Golda Amirova, GOLDY says she knew almost from the time she could talk that she belonged on a stage.
“My family said that from age three already, I was trying to show them that I need to be on the stage,” she said. “Stage is my comfort zone.”
A classically trained pianist, she studied at a music academy in Kyiv and performed with orchestras. But her real ambition was to sing—and to bring her Jewish heritage into her music.
“My real dream always was to be an artist, always was to be a singer, and of course to bring my Jewish identity into the world,” she told JNS.
At 19, she formed a Yiddish music group in Kyiv, reviving songs she remembered hearing from her grandparents and presenting them to a younger audience in a contemporary style.
“I always wanted to make something very cool and modern and nice for people to be able to see the culture from my perspective,” she said.
Her breakthrough came on the Ukrainian version of The Voice. After previous unsuccessful attempts to get onto the program, she auditioned with a Yiddish song.
The judges were impressed, and the program also featured GOLDY’s Jewish life in Odessa, including her family and Chabad community.
“They gave me the chance to tell my story as a Jewish young girl who just wanted to be a singer and was singing in Yiddish, which is so rare,” she said.
She went on to become a finalist and subsequently created a Yiddish musical theater production in Kyiv, drawing on her own Jewish upbringing and Odessa roots.
‘I started from scratch’
By early 2022, GOLDY’s career in Ukraine appeared to be taking off. She had signed a major production contract just a month before Russia invaded.
Her last performance was on Feb. 22. Two days later, Russian forces invaded Ukraine.
“And then my life changed forever,” she said.
After spending several days in Kyiv, GOLDY got into her car and drove to Odessa, where her brother was living. She eventually decided she had to leave the country.
“I’m a girl with big dreams,” she said. “I knew it was going to be tough. I knew it was going to be very complicated, but I decided to take a chance.”
She drove out through Moldova and continued across Europe, passing through Romania, Hungary, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. Some nights were spent in hotels offering accommodation to Ukrainian refugees; others were spent sleeping in the car.
Her family urged her to go to Israel.
She left her car with relatives in Antwerp, flew to Israel and made aliyah, spending about five months in the country before eventually returning to Europe and settling in Britain as a Ukrainian refugee.
In London, she had to rebuild her career.
“I started from scratch,” she said.
With the help of a British agent and a new creative team, GOLDY transformed the musical production she had staged in Ukraine into an autobiographical show about displacement and rebuilding a life after war.
The first act portrayed her life in Ukraine before the invasion. The second followed a young woman forced to become a refugee and begin again in Britain.
After performances at smaller London venues, the production reached the Theatre Royal Haymarket in the West End.
“It was my dream,” GOLDY said. “I was over the moon.”
Against the backdrop of war and displacement, she said, the achievement carried particular meaning.
“In these very hard circumstances, with all of the resilience and tough times, we really made it happen.”
‘I Know Now’
The experience also pushed GOLDY toward another longtime ambition: becoming a recording artist with an original sound.
Over the next two years, she wrote 11 songs for her debut album, I Know Now.
Each represents a lesson from the upheavals she had experienced.
“All these 11 songs are the lessons that I’ve learned,” she said. “Every single song in the album is the lesson that I’ve learned.”
The record includes “Dance Again,” whose title and message evoke the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova music festival, and “Shalom,” a song conceived after a visit to Israel.
GOLDY recalled walking near the sea in Tel Aviv shortly before entering a London recording studio.
“When I’m in Israel, it gives me so much inspiration,” she said. “Maybe I’m just coming back to my roots. Maybe some special energy gives my heart something different.”
The result was “Shalom,” a song about peace, unity and bringing people together.
“My mission is to bring light and love,” she said. “To be able for all of us to celebrate life.”
The song closes the album.
“The last lesson that I’ve learned is that I need peace. We all need peace,” she said.
GOLDY describes her current sound as “soulful pop R&B,” drawing on jazz, soul and other influences while retaining the Jewish identity that shaped her earlier Yiddish work.
“My identity and my culture are always going to be inside everything that I’m doing,” she said. “This is who I am.”
Her career has now taken another significant step. GOLDY signed with 10K Projects, part of Atlantic Music Group, and told JNS that she had received a U.S. talent visa just three days before the interview.
She is now preparing for a new chapter in Los Angeles, where her record label, fellow musicians and a large Jewish community await.
“I’m so excited because I decided to take a next step and a big chapter in L.A.,” she said.
‘I will come back to Israel’
Asked whether she sees her future in America or eventually in Israel, GOLDY did not hesitate.
“I will come back to Israel again and again,” she said. “It’s my home, and it’s going to be forever. It’s a statement.”
At the same time, she wants to take her music—and her Jewish identity—to audiences far beyond the Jewish world.
That mission has become more complicated as antisemitism has risen in cities where she performs.
GOLDY said she had experienced a palpable change in London and sometimes felt compelled to assess the risks before publicly performing Jewish material such as “Shema Yisrael” or “Shalom.”
“I need to be careful what I’m doing, and I need to be careful to protect myself and my family,” she said. “I have a huge responsibility.”
But caution, she stressed, does not mean concealment.
“I want to be myself,” she said. “I want to be sure that in the world, no matter where I am, I want to be free.”
For a singer whose life has been uprooted by war and rebuilt across countries and continents, that freedom has become inseparable from her music.
“My dream is to travel the world,” she said. “My dream is to be who I am and to bring people together and to be able to show them a way of light and love. This is my purpose and mission.”
And her message to others reflects the lesson of her own journey.
“Don’t be afraid of your big dreams,” GOLDY said. “Be honest and open with your heart, with your loved ones, with your family.
“And don’t give up on your dreams.”
You can watch the interview here.
