Lenny Kravitz — singer with roots in the Russian Empire
Lenny Kravitz was born Leonard Albert Kravitz in New York in May 1964, to Sy Kravitz, an NBC television news producer, and Roxie Roker, the actress best known for The Jeffersons. His father's family descended from Russian and Ukrainian Jews; one of his great-grandfathers came from Kyiv, then in the Russian Empire. His paternal grandparents, Joe and Jean Kravitz, lived in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. His mother's family was African American and Bahamian, and Christian.
He grew up between those two households: a television family in Manhattan and his mother's Bahamian relatives. Roker and Sy Kravitz married in 1962 and divorced in 1985. As Helen Willis on The Jeffersons, Roker and Franklin Cover played one half of the first white and African-American married couple in a regular prime-time role on American television.
He recorded his 1989 debut Let Love Rule playing almost every instrument himself, using analogue equipment at a moment when the industry had moved entirely to digital, and has largely kept both practices since. Mama Said and Are You Gonna Go My Way established the sound. Between 1999 and 2002 he won the Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance four years running, a record for both total and consecutive wins in that category. He was nominated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a performer in 2024, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the same year, and was named Music Icon at the People's Choice Awards.
Alongside the music he has worked as an actor, most visibly as Cinna in The Hunger Games films, and runs a design practice, Kravitz Design. He has toured at arena scale for three and a half decades.
The Kyiv line reaches him through his paternal grandfather, Joseph Kravitz.
"His father's family descended from Russian and Ukrainian Jews; one of his great-grandfathers came from Kyiv. Date of emigration not documented."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Kyiv (Ukraine)
His mother, Roxie Roker, played Helen Willis on The Jeffersons; with Franklin Cover she formed the first white and African-American married couple in a regular prime-time role on American television. She married Sy Kravitz in 1962; they divorced in 1985.
One of his great-grandfathers came from Kyiv, then in the Russian Empire; his father's family descended from Russian and Ukrainian Jews. His father was the NBC producer Sy Kravitz. His mother, the actress Roxie Roker, was African American and Bahamian.
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Kyiv (Ukraine). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.