Umar Dimayev - Biography

Biography

Dimayev was born into a family of peasant farmers on October 1, 1908 in Urus-Martan. Despite their relative lack of wealth, the Dimayev family had traditionally been educated in music, as all of Umar's brothers and sisters played the accordion, and Umar would later recall that his younger sister Aruzha would be the one who supported and cultivated his musical abilities: although their father discouraged Dimayev from playing the accordion, saying it discouraged the development of his son's masculinity, Aruzha gave away her own instrument to Dimayev and taught him how to play the accordion. By the age of fifteen, neighbors routinely invited Umar to play at their family celebrations, including weddings, and at bedsides, since they felt that his music helped cure people.

A small radio station opened in Urus-Martan in 1924, and young Umar started playing in local radio broadcasts. Five years later, in 1929, Umar gave a solo performance with the orchestra of the National Theater, to underline his growing popularity in Chechnya. He would then work alongside the renowned Russian composer Alexander Alexandrov, who would teach Umar music composition. Several of Umar's compositions during this early period of his career are still played in Chechnya, such as "The Chechen Waltz" of the stage production "The Red Citadel," and a song based on "Bela", a frame story of Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time.

By the 1930s Umar had gained wide recognition throughout the Chechen-Ingush ASSR. He then served as soloist of the folk band of the Chechen-Ingush radio company, and he won second prize at the first All-Union Folk Musicians contest.

However, the lives of the entire Chechen and Ingush people would be dramatically affected by the forced deportation to Central Asia on February 23, 1944, and Umar was deported to Kazakhstan with his entire family. His son Ali Dimayev would be born in exile in 1953. Nevertheless, Umar managed to perform his music on radio stations in Kazakhstan: Although the radio transmissions would last barely fifteen minutes, the exiled Chechens would gather at the homes of radio owners to listen to Umar's broadcasts. His folk songs reminded the Chechen people of their lost homeland, which the bereaved Chechens longed to return to. At the end of the transmission, the men would hide their wet eyes, and the mothers cried quietly.

After returning from exile, Dimayev would reach the prime of his musical career in the 1950s, where he composed some of his best work, including "A Dance For Makhmoud Esambayev", after the renowned Chechen dancer, "A Song of Chechen-Ukrainian Friendship" (Similar to the Chechen deportations, millions of Ukrainians had died due to the Soviet-directed Holodomor in the 1930s, but thousands of Ukrainians had then been saved from starvation by Chechens ), and a dancing tune called "Two Friends". He would also be one of the founders of the "Vainakh" dance company.

Umar died in 1972.