The life and work of Victor Tartanov is an example of the stamina and courage of a person deprived of the opportunity to see the world around him. Having lost his eyesight in his youth, Victor was able to overcome despair and a sense of doom and began to make his way long and hard to his dream - to become a musician. Today he is a very famous singer of chanson songs in Russia, a public figure, as well as the first and only blind TV presenter in the country.
Biography and music career
Viktor Nikolaevich Tartanov was born in 1974 in the city of Shakhty, which is located 70 kilometers from Rostov-on-Don. By a tragic coincidence, his birthday - November 13 - is the International Day of the Blind. The boy was born with a congenital disease, due to which he saw almost nothing. Parents did everything possible to cure their son: they consulted with leading specialists, agreed to perform numerous eye operations, including in Moscow clinics, but the child was not able to restore his eyesight: by the age of 16, the boy was completely blind. Despite his ailment, Victor studied at a regular Shakhty school No. 37, among healthy children who belonged to a blind classmate with understanding and compassion, supported him and helped him in everything. Victor is especially grateful to his parents - Lyudmila and Nikolai Tartanov, who made great efforts so that the son does not feel like an inferior person and takes place as a person. They are also a standard for him of strong marital relations, preserving love and respect for each other for almost half a century.
After graduating from high school in 1991, Tartanov decided to get an education at the music school. Rachmaninov. Learning difficulties arose here, and Victor decided to take private lessons: under the guidance of the teacher Valentin Manuilov, the young man mastered the game on two musical instruments at once - a guitar and an accordion. He performed a lot at various concerts, singing songs and accompanying himself on the guitar. Soon he began to be invited to local radio and television, where he not only sang and played, but also told that you can live a full life even if you are an invalid. Victor encouraged healthy people to be kinder and more tolerant of people with disabilities. He traveled to concerts in orphanages and nursing homes, nursing homes and disabled people, where, by his own example, he urged people not to give up and act, to look for themselves and not give in to despondency. Tartanov also performed at several bardos song festivals, where he received diplomas and laureate titles, sang at the Philanthropist International Creative Competition.
Music became for Viktor Tartanov not only a hobby and an outlet, but also a profession. In a small mining town with a dilapidated economy and high unemployment, where even many healthy people could hardly find a job, the blind musician was able to realize his creative potential and financially support himself and his family.
TV presenter career
In an effort to expand the boundaries of his activities, Victor Tartanov began working on television: at first he simply appeared in various programs, where he talked about the problems of people with disabilities, and soon he came up with the idea of an author's program. And on the channel "South Region Don" in April 2014, the project "Against All Things" appeared, where the presenter Viktor Tartanov presented to the viewers the stories of special people - people with disabilities who achieved some significant results in life in business, sports, science or art. The director of the program was Oleg Zhuravlev. The program was a great success, and its author became famous throughout the Don region. In the first issue of “Contrary to Everything”, the authors presented a wheelchair user from the Rostov Region who carves two-meter figures from wood. In the next program, Tartanov talked with a stunning woman - the director of the theater of the deaf, and this was in the full sense of the word a conversation between a blind person and a deaf person, not taking place with the help of words or gestures, but with the help of claps of palms.
The author’s program “Contrary to Everything” brought Viktor Tartanov not only love and popularity in his native land and beyond. In 2014, he became the holder of a certificate from the Interrecord International Agency as the first and only blind Russian TV presenter, and this achievement is recorded in the Russian Book of Records.
