How Laylo Rihsieva Turns Pop Music into an Exploration of Memory, Identity, and Generational Trauma

This release takes her work to a new level: it’s a multidisciplinary music-visual series exploring psychological continuity and family roots.

What is Roots about

The concept of the album reflects on how the past shapes our present — from habits and values to fears and inherited pain.

Laylo compares this process to traveling through one’s DNA and through time. Each track is accompanied by a video episode, where the artist reveals a story step by step: first the problem in the present, then its origins in the past, and finally the path toward transformation.

The main series

Series 1:  «Half-blood» — a story about the self-perception of an artist with a “mixed” identity.

Series 2:  «Specially» — about childhood dreams and their hidden shadows.

Series 3:  «Free» — a look at the modern woman.

Series 4:  «Family Trauma» — a couple starts building a family and faces the unconscious inheritance of behavioral patterns and generational pain.

Series 5:  «Healing» — the finale: a return to Laylo’s ancestors, their stories of migration and survival. The conclusion is clear — trauma lives within us, but it can be transformed.

Final slogan: "Pain will travel through many generations until somebody’s ready to feel it."

Why it matters

For the Uzbek pop scene, Roots stands out as a rare phenomenon.

It goes beyond the usual themes of local pop music — love and dance — to address identity, history, gender, and heritage.

Laylo presents a bold authorial vision — from concept to the hybrid format of album + video series.

Given her background (she is a descendant of the Yunus Rajabiy musical dynasty), Roots becomes both a deeply personal and universally resonant work.