Born in Baku Russian singer JONY (Jahid Huseynli) will not take part in the large-scale musical Dream Fest 2025, which will be held in Azerbaijan on the coast of the Caspian Sea from July 23 to 26. This was announced by the organizers of the event on the social network.
It is specified that JONY's performance was "canceled due to health problems."
JONY was born in Baku, but built a successful musical career in Russia and is considered a Russian artist. He is the winner of the 2nd season of the show "Mask" (2021) on NTV, the winner of the Golden Gramophone, Heat Music Awards, Muz-TV, New Radio Awards, as well as the winner of the Forbes rating "30 to 30" in 2023 in the category "Music".
In 2024, he became a mentor for the 11th season of the Russian TV project "The Voice. Children."
As reported by EADaily, it became known earlier that the festival replaced not only all Russian artists who were invited to take part in it, but also the presenters. After that, the Russians began to hand over tickets to the festival en masse, which was not provided for by the rules of the event, and the organizers removed all Russian artists from the announcements. A warning about the replacement of the program was posted on the official website of the event, not directly indicating the exclusion of Russian artists, but referring to the "message of the Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan dated June 29."
It was planned that Timati, "Hands Up" and Sergey Zhukov, MOT, Klava Coca, Egor Creed, Alsou, Stas Pieha, Basta and others would perform at it. The hosts were supposed to be Regina Todorenko and Milos Bikovic.
Earlier, Azerbaijan announced the cancellation of all cultural events through the Russian line.
At the same time, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Culture, composer and singer Denis Maidanov expressed confidence that the Russian side would not stoop to persecuting artists. In particular, he ruled out canceling Emin Agalarov's concerts.
On July 3, it became known that Emin's concert in Svetlogorsk, scheduled for July 6, 2025, is postponed for a year.
The artist himself explained the postponement of the concert by "the inability to agree on the next dates." At the same time, Emin promised that he would definitely perform in the Kaliningrad region in July 2026.
The organizer of the first and second Dream Fest festivals is Emin Agalarov.