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Happy birthday, Lili Ivanova!

Photo: lili.bg

There is no other artist in the history of Bulgarian pop music with such a biography. Lily Ivanova has been on the stage for six whole decades if we assume that her career as a singer began in the early 1960s. Lily Ivanova was born in the small Bulgarian town of Kubrat in an ordinary family. She graduated from the nursing school in Varna and worked as a nurse for a very short time. In 1964, Lili Ivanova scored her first big success in “Universiada” hall in Sofia.

Following a series of international tours, Lili Ivanova was invited to perform at a pop sing festival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The festival took place at “Mara Kazinyo” stadium with capacity of 30,000 people. Genko Genov, founder of the Golden Orpheus International Song Contest, joined Lili in this adventure. “The audience was noisy and intemperate and Lili looked so small and fragile on the stage of the large stadium. But when she began singing, there was dead silence. Then, the audience applauded her performance. It was an incredible experience”, recalled Genko Genov.

Lili Ivanova earned more than 20 music awards. She has released 38 solo albums, more than 45 small records with singles and over 15 compilations. She toured the former USSR, Germany, Cuba, Japan, Turkey, Czechia, former Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland, Greece, Portugal and other countries. At the end of the 20th century, the Bulgarian pop diva gave exciting concerts in the USA and Canada where she sang for Bulgarian emigrants.

In 2020, she postponed some of her concerts because of the coronavirus pandemic. However, she released two albums with concert recordings. Her creative longevity is unique- like a fairytale created with a lot of work a self-reliance. 




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