Katie Melua - Early Life

Early Life

Ketevan Melua, known as Ketino to her family, was born to Amiran and Tamara Melua in Kutaisi, Georgia, which was then part of the Soviet Union. She spent her first years with her grandparents in Tbilisi before moving with her parents and brother to the town of Batumi, Ajaria, where her father worked as a heart specialist. During this time Melua sometimes had to carry buckets of water up five flights of stairs to her family's flat and according to her, "Now, when I'm staying in luxurious hotels, I think back to those days".

In 1993, in the aftermath of the Georgian Civil War, the family moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where her father took up a position at the prestigious Royal Victoria Hospital. The family remained in Belfast, living close to Falls Road, until Melua was thirteen. During her time in Northern Ireland, Melua attended St. Catherine's Primary School on the Falls Road and later moved to Dominican College, Fortwilliam. The Melua family then moved to Sutton, London, and some time later moved again to Redhill, Surrey. In 2008 Melua moved out of her parents' home in Maida Vale to an apartment in Notting Hill, where she transformed the spare bedroom into a recording studio. Melua speaks Georgian, Russian and English fluently and is partly of Canadian and Russian ancestry.

During the South Ossetia War in 2008, Melua's brother and mother were staying with relatives in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Melua was due to travel to Georgia herself less than a month later.