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Bandmate Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, aka Mo Chara, finishes his sentence: “As long as they’re talking about us, it’s all that matters.”
The Belfast-based group raps in a mixture of Irish and English. Source: Getty / Simone Joyner
Even the group’s name references the Troubles-era paramilitary practice of ‘kneecapping’, which involved shooting someone in the legs as a form of punishment. The Troubles — also known as the Northern Ireland conflict — was an ethno-nationalist conflict spanning the late 60s through to 1998, primarily fought between Irish republican paramilitary groups and British state security forces, which controlled Northern Ireland at the time.
It’s this anti-British sentiment that has landed Kneecap in hot water many times, including most recently for taking on the UK government and winning a discrimination case after their funding was cut “unlawfully”, citing anti-British politics.
Kneecap (pictured arriving at the Sundance Film Festival in a Police Service of Northern Ireland Land Rover, complete with the band’s name spray-painted across the vehicle) are no strangers to controversy. Source: Getty / Michael Buckner/Deadline
“The fact that we live and survive and socialise in a language that the British government tried to eradicate for 800 years … is an act of defiance and is in itself controversial,” Mo Chara says.
A language shouldn’t be controversial … but policies around that language is what makes it controversial.
Accidental language activists
“But I mean, we’ll take all the credit,” Mo Chara jokes.
“You compare that to now, where Sweden still has their own language and everyone speaks English as a second language comfortably, and Irish has been struggling.”
The Irish population significantly declined during the famine as a result of starvation and mass emigration. Source: AAP / Rights Managed / Mary Evans
Mo Chara puts it this way: “We were the first stop on Britain’s colonial ‘Brits On Tour’ before their conquering of the world for their big lads holiday they went on for 800 years.
They used the Irish as guinea pigs for their colonial war tactics and they absolutely nailed it with us.
“The rise of things like U2 and Live Aid and those kind of things that people associate with Ireland as a new, outward-looking country, they were very much pushing themselves away from this whole thing.”
Darach Ó Séaghdha is an Irish language writer and podcast host. Source: Supplied
The new wave of the Irish language revival
“While Irish was a compulsory school subject in the republic, it was not in the north.”
Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh (left), Naoise Ó Cairealláin (centre), and JJ Ó Dochartaigh (right) didn’t intend to become Irish language activists when they started Kneecap. Source: Getty / Justin Bettman
Irish has also been the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland for a similar length of time, and in 2010, the government launched a 20-year strategy aimed at ensuring “as many citizens as possible” were bilingual in both Irish and English.
Ó Séaghdha says these numbers could be further bolstered by giving the Irish language similar status and protections in Northern Ireland that Welsh (Cymraeg) has in Wales and Scots Gaelic (Gàidhlig) has in Scotland.
The number of people with some level of Irish language ability is rising across both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Source: SBS News
In 2022, legislation recognising both Irish and Ulster Scots as official languages of Northern Ireland passed the UK parliament.
“If Northern Ireland is as much part of the United Kingdom as they say it is, why not have similar arrangements for the language that is there? I think that’s something that would definitely help its status in Northern Ireland and beyond,” Ó Séaghdha says.
The rise of Gaeilge in Australia
“I think the Kneecap film has had some influence in making younger Australians interested in learning.”
Kneecap has inspired fans across the world to learn the Irish language. Source: Getty / Liam McBurney/PA Images
DJ Próvaí says that while some view the band as leading the modern-day Gaeilge revival, he sees them as just the latest piece of the puzzle.
“We’ve come out at the right time, but we’re standing on the shoulders of giants,” he says.
The people who came before us, they paved the way for us to be able to do what we’re doing.
“The fact that we have an urban setting now where people are speaking the language and young ones are speaking it as an actual language — a living language outside of a classroom setting — is amazing.”
Solidarity between Indigenous cultures
It’s estimated that across the world, one indigenous language dies every two weeks. This is as the result of colonial practices, such as assimilation and dispossession of land, and discriminatory laws and actions.
Despite rising numbers of people with some knowledge of Irish, the number of people who speak it daily in the Republic of Ireland is declining. Source: SBS News
“It’s the same tactics all around the world,” says Móglaí Bap, adding that in parts of Ireland, speaking Gaeilge has been subject to punishment also.
“Whenever you speak your language, especially Indigenous languages, you know where you’re from. You can connect to your history, and the language teaches you about the land around you.”
While Kneecap have become synonymous with Irish republicanism and anti-authoritarianism, they use their platform to uplift indigenous cultures around the world. Source: Getty / Luke Brennan/Redferns
As the band continues their tour across Australia, which includes six sold-out shows and an appearance at the new Irish musical festival MISNEACH, they say there’s a solidarity between themselves and audiences heralding from other Indigenous cultures they’ve encountered during their travels.
“We’re meeting people from different walks of life and different native cultures, and we’ve seen there’s a solidarity there between us and the shared experience that we can work off and build from it,” Móglaí Bap says.
The appeal of ‘Provo chic’ hip-hop
“Musically, Kneecap are very accessible and are well set on being cheeky enough for people to think, ‘Oh can we even say that?’, so it kind of works on those levels,” he says.
It changes perspective of what language is for, and you cannot say that a language is dead or is useless if people are dancing to it.
“So the fact that there was this avenue for us to tell our story musically while also staying true to our culture of storytelling, it just seemed perfect.”
Some have criticised how heavily drugs feature in the fictionalised biopic about Kneecap, but the group says the film simply represents the reality of life as a young person in Belfast. Source: Supplied / Madman Entertainment
Ronan McDonald, who holds the Gerry Higgins Chair in Irish Studies at the University of Melbourne, says Kneecap has attracted a young audience because of how they’ve tapped into the music scene.
“Distance from the immediacy and the ugliness of violence and political violence, it can have a kind of rebellious glamour a generation on, which I think Kneecap are exploiting and gaining from.”
Kneecap’s anti-British sentiment has landed them in hot water many times. Source: Getty / Michael Cooper
While Kneecap has popularised Irish language for a new generation, notably through their film, McDonald says “it was also very much an expression of praise to ketamine and various drug taking”.
“That’s not the Irish language that I know.”
