From the Kneecap case to Cecchettin’s appeal: the weight of words
The theme of the responsibility of the artists and the weight of words in music has once again returned to the center of the public debate: Many of the singers who climbed the stage of the concert on May 1st was asked if they shared the appeal launched by Gino Cecchettin, father of Giulia Cecchettin or notkilled by Filippo Turetta in 2023, who with a letter disclosed through the Foundation named after his daughter, has called the world of music: “No to the contents that feed the culture of abuse”.
Between lights and shadows
The Foundation also drafted Two vademecum: one aimed at singers, the other to the record companieswith suggestions to encourage respectful language, gender equality and inclusion in musical productions and professional contexts. Ask those who make songs “greater responsibility” not only is it right, but it is also a dutyespecially if a foundation has been created that deals with certain values and themes. Escape the debate by invoking “freedom of speech” because “music is art”, and therefore should be free from everything, As if all those who write today and produce chilling songs were “artists”, it is too simple, and also incorrect, dear “artists”. So on this appeal you can only agree with Gino Cecchettin Which, however, with all the respect possible, when it goes beyond this aspect, in my opinion, risks looking at the finger and not the moon. When bringing the record companies into play, it touches a quite dangerous button. Why ask, directly or indirectly, to the discography to judge what deserves to be published or not, to evaluate those who use controversial languages by artistic form or who just to attract attention, provides for a sort of commission, evaluation, preventive access analysis or not to certain fields, which stinks censorship. Because there is always a question, very slippery, at the base: who judges and on what criteria?
A player is missing: politics
Having said that, on the level of this atavistic discussion on “explicit texts” and on the “responsibility of art”, We should also start involving an almost always forgotten and left player on the bench, but which is the one with the greatest responsibilities: politics. And I emphasize this because I believe that perhaps we should deal with a little less than the songs, and a little more than reality when dealing with topics like this. Songs are often a mirror of what we have around. Why do these appeals, even hard, why not, are not made to a political class that should improve our social reality, precisely, and instead has this country deserted culturally and economically? A lot of what we listen to today is the son of the rubble that those who administer to the new generations and the unresolved problems of many neighborhoods on the margins, but, to pay attention to us, the political class is almost never included in this debate. Everything could be summarized with a sentence of Don Claudio Burgio: “reality does not suck because there is baby gang, but there is baby gang because reality sucks”. Who takes care of reality? Politics primarily, but also we as citizens, of course, are not exempt from responsibility.
The Kneecap case
This speech on the weight of realitywhich is greater than that of the words of a song, It also affects the solidarity response that Massive Attack has given to what is happening to the Kneecap band. A step back to understand: the British anti-terrorism police made it known that it is examining two videos of the North-Irish hip hop trio known for its extremist and openly anti-Israeli positions, to evaluate whether to start a formal investigation against the group, which inone risks blocking the career and the impossibility of returning to the stage. The first video is a piece of a November 2023 concert in which one of the members of the Kneecap turned to the public saying: “The only good conservative is a dead conservative: you kill your local deputy.” The second dates back to November 2024, and was extrapolated from a concert that the band had held at the O2 Kentish Town Forum in London. On that occasion another member of the group would have shouted “Viva Hamas, Viva Hezbollah ”, exhibiting a flag of the Lebanese political and military group. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are considered terrorist organizations from the United Kingdom, and supporting them publicly is a crime. “After our statements to Coachella, who denounced the current genocide against the Palestinian people, we were the subject of a coordinated defamatory campaign“, The Kneecap wrote on their social channels, who then wanted to apologize to the families of Jo Cox and David Amess, parliamentarians of the United Kingdom murdered, and reiterate that they have never supported Hamas, nor Hezbollah.
The defense of the Massive Attack
In defense of the trio, the Massive Attacks have publicly sided through a post. Some steps: “If high -level politicians are unable to find time and words to condemn, to give an example, the assassination of 15 humanitarian operators in Gaza or hunger illegally imposed on the civilian population and used as a weapon, or even the killing of thousands of children by a state that has the most advanced precision weapons in the world, What weight should we give to their advice on artists to invite a festival?”. And again:”The politicians and right -wing journalists who build a wave of indignation from nothing for the words given on stage by a young punk bandwhile at the same time they hide or even ignore a genocide that is taking place in this exact moment (and which includes the killing of an unprecedented number of journalists) Do they really have the right to intimidate the organizers of the festivals to push them to perform acts of political censorship? The news is not the Kneecap. The news is Gaza. The news is the genocide“.
