“In those early years I tried all sort of bands, jazz, folk. I performed in a duo, a trio, doing smaller gigs. Once I was part of a Zimbabwean band,” Zulya recalls.

“All this experience made me very aware of how world music was flourishing in Australia.”

After dropping out of Hobart Conservatorium’s vocal department, Zulya tried her hand at music from the Tatar region of Russia. She learned to play the mbira, a traditional instrument, and began exploring her new homeland, moving across to Melbourne and visiting the NT’s Top End where she was inspired by Aboriginal musicians mixing the traditional with contemporary.

Her first release in 1997 was Journey of Voice, a unique collection of vocal styles and traditions, and in the ensuing years, Australian audiences witnessed the continuing rise of this unique musical treasure.

Subsequent albums, elusive and Aloukie, featured traditional and original songs in her distinctive Tatar style but with unusual instrumentation – and a star was born. Zulya became an inspiration to young musicians back in Tatarstan, with her being hailed as the leading proponent of Tatar music in Australia.

For a while Zulya let the label stick, but as an artist constantly on the lookout for a fresh angle she wanted to add those ideas and stories which had arisen from her life in Australia to her repertoire, and push the core sounds of Tatar music, Russian jazz and folk into a new shape.

“My heritage has such a powerful influence, I heard many traditional songs as a child that it’s impossible to separate it from who I am but as an artist it is not enough to do only what has been done.”

In 2003 Zulya was able to further develop in surprising and intriguing directions after joining up with Melbourne-based band Children of the Underground whose impressive facility with their instruments helped her, as one reviewer penned, “strike a deft balance between melancholic sadness and the unbridled joy that’s never too far away”.

Her Underground friends - Andrew Tanner (bass), Eamon McNelis (keyboard), Justin Marshall (drums) and Lucas Michailidis (guitar) - brought a new level of sophistication in arrangement and musicianship to her work, apparent in the highly acclaimed The Waltz of Emptiness (2004) and 3 Nights which was awarded the 2007 ARIA World Music Album of the year.

“Joining the band enabled me to explore new ground and I recorded vocals for the first time in English as well as Tatar and Russian,” Zulya says.

3 Nights was recorded live with the whole band in the studio for two weeks, though it took about two years of work before that to write it.

“The writing process can be frustrating and very often not easy but it’s more rewarding to work through it, to tell the truth,” she says.

“I must write about subjects close to my heart. The music is always very personal. It’s not about birch trees and nightingales.”

By way of example Zulya highlights Painted Smile on the ARIA-nominated album elusive (2002) which refers to the truth behind the smiles of people she met in her early days of being in Australia.

“I’ve always been interested in making sense of what life all means. I guess my goal in life is to sort myself out psychologically - look at things that bother me and how people relate to that.”

These days Zulya is pushing the boundaries even further, which may upset fans clamouring for her old work, by looking at fairytales, particularly in the framework of Jungian psychology.

In her latest album Tales of Subliming, to be launched after the tour, there’s a song called He Fell So Deep.

”It’s a little snippet from the Snow Queen,” Zulya explains. “It’s a love story, between a girl and a boy. The boy is taken away by the Snow Queen. He goes there willingly, though. So the song is about the relationship between the girl, who goes looking for her love, and the boy who’s possessed by a powerful force, narcotics maybe,” she said.

“Through my songs and music I like to bypass the mind down to the subconscious and maybe get the wisdom,” she says in the wistful voice of someone who, no doubt, has learned some lessons in love the hard way.”

These days, however, Zulya is happy and content with partner Andrew and their four-year-old daughter who is coming on tour.

“She’s a good little traveller and we’re looking forward to revisiting the NT. It’s a voyage of discovery for all of us - another journey to remember,” she says.

Zulya and The Children of the Underground will be in Tennant Creek on Tuesday, 30 March, at the Drovers’ Hall (Winanjjikari Music Centre), starting at 7am.

Call Ktima at Barkly Arts on 8962 2799 for tickets.

Would you like free tickets to see world music sensation Zulya and the Children of the Underground?

Well, four lucky readers will have the chance to catch Zulya and her talented band when they come to Tennant Creek on Tuesday, 30 March.

To win, you just have to answer the following simple question.