Dmitry Aleksandrovich Koldun (, Dzmitry Kaldun; ; born 11 June 1985) is a Belarusian pop singer.
Koldun rose to fame through his participation in several Russian television talent shows. In 2006, he won the sixth season of Fabrika Zvyozd. He acquired further fame when he represented Belarus in the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 with "Work Your Magic". Koldun finished sixth overall, which remains the country's most successful result to date.
He starred as Joaquín in the rock opera "Звезда и Смерть Хоакина Мурьеты" (The Star and the Death of Joaquín Murety) staged at the Lenkom Theatre.
After his Fabrika Zvyozd and Eurovision success, Koldun was catapulted into a teen idol status in the Russophone world, but later grew into a more mature image. In total, Koldun has released five studio albums and one extended play. With his general scandal-free image, Koldun has become one of the most respected and popular performers in his native Belarus and has enjoyed longterm commercial success in neighbouring Russia.
Early life
Koldun was born in Minsk, Belarusian SSR, USSR. He has one older brother, Georgy. His parents divorced when he was a child, and he decided to stay with his mother, while his brother went to live with their father. He later said that he found the divorce to be traumatic for him and that it was not something he wanted to repeat for himself.
Career
2004-2006: Narodnyi Artist-2 and Fabrika Zvyozd
In 2004, he tried out in the RTR show Narodnyi Artist-2, but did not qualify to the main stage. This did not deter him from his musical interest and in 2004 and 2005 he worked in the State Concert Orchestra of the Republic of Belarus headed by Mikhail Finberg and in the Grand-Prix studio headed by the composer Oleg Eliseenkov. In July 2005, Koldun took part Slavianski Bazaar in Vitebsk.
In 2006, Koldun won the sixth season of the Russian television show Fabrika Zvyozd on Channel One. Throughout the show, Koldun proved to be a very popular candidate, mainly for his quirky and carefree behaviour in the shared living space of the contestants. In 2020, Koldun said that it was not necessarily singing that was important in Fabrika Zvyozd, but the way you behave on camera and that he understood that from the start.
During Fabrika Zvyozd, Koldun performed with several artists including the renowned Scorpions performing "Still Loving You" after which he was invited by the soloist Klaus Meine to perform this song on a joint tour. Due to his successes Koldun became popular in Russia and other past Soviet states. Koldun signed a contract with the National Music Corporation and became the soloist of the reformed group K.G.B. (Koldun, Gurkov, Barsukov).
2007: Eurovision Song Contest
Before Eurovision
After leaving the group Koldun returned to Belarus to take part in Eurofest. In the preliminary stage, Koldun performed "Angel Mechty" receiving 4412 votes, 32% of the public vote. Initially, Koldun was scheduled to performed with a song called "Get Up", produced by Viktor Drobysh. However, Eurovision web site ESCKAZ discovered that the song had already been released commercially by Finnish band The Ratzz. The song, called "Aave" in Finnish, written by Jörgen Elofsson, Maki Kolehmainen and Tracy Lipp was included into the debut album of the band Hard Ratzz Hallelujah. As ESCKaz was told by a representative of the label Helsinki Music Centre: "We were not aware that Dmitry Koldun had been performing the song. The rights for both "Aave" and "Get Up, Get Down, Get Crazy" are possessed by HMC & BMG Music Publishing Scandinavia, song was already published by us on The Ratzz album". ESCKaz also learned that Koldun was regularly performing the song "Get Up" on a Star Factory 6 tour including the series of commercial concerts in Belarus at the beginning of September. The song was also available since mid-September on the internet. Both are prohibited by "Eurovision Song Contest 2007" regulations that do not allow competing songs to be publicly performed before 1 October 2006. This same rule is repeated in the "Eurofest" rules in following variant, paragraph 2.1: "The songs for contest ("entries") (lyrics and music) must not have been commercially released and/or publicly performed before 1 October 2006. The entry as a copyright object must not have been released through the Internet or any other media".