The nine-year-old Ukrainian drummer playing gigs around Ireland

Nine-year-old drummer Mark Kosinsky is from Berdyansk in south-eastern Ukraine. From the age of two or three, he started drumming with whatever he could get his hands on; bowls, tables, cups, spoons and even cans of baby food became his instruments. “I don’t know why I started drumming,” says Mark, whose father Dmitry is a professional musician and music teacher. “I just started with a bowl and paintbrushes, and drummed on it.”

From the time Mark was five, during the summer months, his dad would load the drums into the car and Mark would busk on the streets of the city of Berdyansk. “I would play with backing tracks and people would put money into the bag,” he says. Through busking and playing shows in Ukraine, he was able to buy himself two drum kits and continue learning his craft.

Mark and his family immediately fled Ukraine in late February as the war erupted. With his mother, father, two sisters, and his brother, he travelled by car from Ukraine to Slovakia, followed by Poland. This was not the family’s first experience of displacement. When Mark was one year old, he became a refugee for the first time when his family lost their home in the Donetsk region during the war in Donbas.

‘When we started to live here, the food was delicious because often it was fries. I feel good here’

His parents made the decision to travel to Ireland from France by ferry after a stay in a church in Germany. They slept in hotels, on mattresses, and with strangers on their long journey, before landing in Ireland in March. “We come to this hotel in Co Cavan and people give to us a room with three single beds and one double bed,” Mark says. “When we started to live here, the food was delicious because often it was fries. I feel good here.”

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Mark and his family lived in the hotel in Virginia for five months. As the family took only clothes and money with them as they fled, Mark had to leave his drum kits behind in Ukraine, but he didn’t stop drumming, using anything to tap out a rhythm, even the edge of the bed in his friend’s bedroom. He was gifted a small electronic drum kit while living in the hotel, and more recently, a fundraiser helped Mark’s parents to buy another small acoustic drum kit, which he is building up with the right equipment. He has also started lessons with a drum teacher.

His favourite song to practise at the moment is the 1980s classic, Never Gonna Give You Up, by Rick Astley. Since arriving in Ireland, Mark has played drum solos at the Liberties Festival in Dublin, the Letterkenny Blues and Roots Festival, and other festivals and events in Sligo and Mullingar. He has his own YouTube channel, is learning to play the bass, and says he would love to be part of a punk or pop band when he is older.

The family have lived in a house in Monaghan since August, and are expecting a new baby in December. They are happy in Ireland, they say, and hope to stay, as they no longer have a home in Ukraine. They see a future here.