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After the escape: a young Ukrainian dreams of a music career - and thinks of her friends every day

2022-06-19T06:16:29.144Z


After the escape: a young Ukrainian dreams of a music career - and thinks of her friends every day Created: 06/19/2022, 08:02 By: Wolfgang Schörner Dreams of a career in music: 18-year-old Iryna Forostovets. Her stage name is "Iruchenka". She now lives with her family in Penzberg. © wos Around 150 people who fled the war in Ukraine are currently living in Penzberg. One of them is Iryna Forosto


After the escape: a young Ukrainian dreams of a music career - and thinks of her friends every day

Created: 06/19/2022, 08:02

By: Wolfgang Schörner

Dreams of a career in music: 18-year-old Iryna Forostovets.

Her stage name is "Iruchenka".

She now lives with her family in Penzberg.

© wos

Around 150 people who fled the war in Ukraine are currently living in Penzberg.

One of them is Iryna Forostovets.

The 18-year-old dreams of a career as a musician and singer.

A day before the first bombs fell, she was in the recording studio in Kyiv to record a song - about bad people.

Penzberg – Iryna was asleep when the Russian attack on Ukraine began.

It was February 24th at dawn when she woke up.

She heard a kind of loud whistling, probably a rocket flying over the house.

"It was scary, at first I thought it was a dream." A week earlier, the news had repeatedly said that there would be war on such and such a day.

Days passed, the Russian attack did not come.

She no longer believed in it.

"But then I was shocked." When she heard the first bombings, she just wanted to leave Kyiv.

With her mother, her stepfather and her 16-year-old brother, she first went to her grandmother in Berdychiv, almost 200 kilometers west of Kyiv.

The family wanted to stay there.

"I was shocked" - Escape via Warsaw and Berlin

However, Iryna got on a bus and drove alone to Warsaw, and from there to Berlin.

The family is now reunited.

"I told them they had to come." First the mother and her brother followed, then the stepfather.

The last time Iryna had contact with her biological father, who is a soldier, was when he congratulated her on her 18th birthday on the phone.

She was already in Germany by then.

She hasn't heard from him since then.

As "Iruchenka" already performances on stages and songs on the Internet

The family is now accommodated in Penzberg.

When the "Coordination Office for Ukraine Aid" was recently opened in the family center Arche Noah, the family was there too.

Iryna performed some songs that she composed herself.

While she was still in Ukraine, shortly before the Russian attack, she was working on realizing a dream – a career in music.

Under the name "Iruchenka" she already had her first performances.

The 18-year-old is serious about the dream.

"Yes, I want to be known," she says.

"I feel very comfortable on stage, I like it when people listen to me."

Songs about boys - but also about "bad people"

She had only learned the bandura, a traditional Ukrainian lute instrument, which she played in a music school group seven years ago.

When she was 15, she grabbed her brother's guitar and taught herself how to play it with YouTube videos.

After three months she composed her first piece.

She estimates that there must be more than 60 songs by now.

When everyone was asleep, she would sit in the kitchen and write.

But there are only one or two that are good enough for her to include them, Iryna adds.

Most of the songs are about boys, she says.

But there are also some about life in Russia and Ukraine, about broken people, about poverty and unemployment.

On March 1, while still in Berdychiv, she wrote a song about the war and her feelings.

She sings of a "merry-go-round of terrible thoughts," of the sounds of grenades, and of an "old tyrant, sick and ruthless."

It's easier for her to deal with the situation, she says.

On February 19, "Iruchenka" gave another concert in Kyiv

Iryna wrote most of the songs in Russian.

She and her family speak Russian.

"It's not pretty, but it's the truth," she says.

Iryna also founded a pop band with two friends in Kyiv.

They gave their first concert last summer.

She still has a video of it on her smartphone.

But the band broke up because she went to the University of Culture and Arts and her friends started studying law.

She went on alone.

As "Iruchenka" she has now published several songs on the Internet, they can be found on Spotify, Amazon and Apple.

Translated into English, “We stay together” is the name of the song that has been played the most so far.

On February 19, the young woman gave another concert in Kyiv.

On February 23, the day before the war, she went to the studio,

to record a song.

It's about how dangerous it is on the streets of Kyiv at night.

A song about "bad people," she says.

"And a day later the war began."

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homesick?

She thinks about her friends in Ukraine every day

She has now started translating Russian songs into Ukrainian.

She doesn't want Russian music anymore.

She also wants to try to translate her lyrics into English.

What are your plans for the future?

As one possibility, she mentions first learning German well, taking the German Abitur and then going to university.

"I want to work as an artist," she says.

She has already made initial contacts.

Is she homesick?

"Yes," Iryna replies.

Every day she thinks about her friends in Ukraine, about her old school, about the university.

She misses so many simple things, she says.

She didn't want to leave her country, she misses it, but it's not possible to return now.

"I don't want to see any destroyed buildings, no soldiers, that would be too hard."

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-06-19

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