[3] Susana Dzhamaladinova was born in Osh, Kirghiz SSR, to a Muslim Crimean Tatar father and an Armenian mother.

[4][5][6][7][8][9] Her Crimean Tatar ancestors were forcibly resettled from Crimea to the central Asian republic under Joseph Stalin during World War II, although her own relatives fought on the Soviet side.

[11] They were well-to-do peasants until her great-grandfather's land was confiscated and he was exiled to Osh where he changed his Armenian name to make it sound more Russian.

[citation needed] She grew up in a family of musicians — her mother worked as a teacher at a music school, and her father was a conductor by education.

On 8 November 2012, she released "Ya Lyublyu Tebya" (Russian: «Я Люблю́ Тебя́», English: "I Love You") as the lead single from her second studio album All or Nothing.

[21][22] After her Eurovision Song Contest victory, she was awarded the title People's Artist of Ukraine by then-Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

[23] She has then continued to release new music, including "I Believe in U", which she performed at the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 as an interval act, along with "Zamanyly".

On 17 May 2016, Poroshenko announced that the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry would be nominating Jamala as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

She had previously performed the track as the interval act for the 2018 Ukrainian national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest, Vidbir.

[25] Jamala performed "1944" during the flag parade in the final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2023, alongside fellow past Ukrainian entrants Go_A, Tina Karol, and Verka Serduchka.

[27] Suleimanov had recently graduated from the Physics and Mathematics Department of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and is an activist of the Muslim[29] Crimean Tatar community.