Kneecap’s first concert in Italy was a rebellious party
Kneecap at Magnolia in Milan, for their first Italian datethey are exactly as you could imagine them: a cross between rave, political demonstration and rap concert old school on acidic electronic bases. Music matters, but it’s not the only element that attracts the public. At the center of everything is the festive atmosphere, the mosh pit, the energy and that sense of community and collective participation that accompanies each of their performances. It is a concert to listen to, but above all to experience physically. And the sold out achieved is certainly also the result of the curiosity that has been created around the project, which came under fire for its corrosive lyrics and radical stances, so much so that it was accused of terrorism. An accusation later dropped (here is our interview). Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap they rap, but they really rap, without voices underneath, while DJ Provaíwith his Irish balaclava, which has become a visual manifesto, is at the console and also does some doubles.
From the first tracks, “Smugglers & Scholars” and “Better Way to Live”the evening presents itself as an underground concert. Direct, at times crude. It doesn’t exist a political moment inside the Belfast trio’s show, because politics is the show. It’s in the scenography, in the visuals, in the conversations between one piece and another, in the songs sung in Gaelic, which in themselves represent an act of reclamation. As the group has said several times, it is a language that was marginalized due to British domination and which they have contributed to bringing back to the center of contemporary discourse. We talk about Palestine, Irish identity, anti-colonialism, we remember Violet GibsonDublin woman, Mussolini’s attacker in 1926. Everything enters the live and helps to define its contours.
With the new album “Fenian”, the trio has also thickened the musical component, which was previously a bit marginal. If in some moments of “Fine Art”, the previous album, the media hype around the formation seemed to outweigh the actual weight of the songstoday the project appears more solid also from an artistic point of view. Of course, it is based almost entirely on wild electronic bases, but over the 1 hour and 20 minutes proposed, the show holds upespecially in the final part when pieces like “Liars Tale”, “Fenian”, “HOOD” and others. It is interesting to observe how most of the people present under the stage, not only in Italy, but everywhere in the world, do not really understand what the group sings. They may have read translations of the texts, but they don’t speak Gaelic. Yet they participate and sing anyway. This is probably the secret of the Northern Irish trio: having managed to transform a deeply local story into a global phenomenontying everything to a discussion of independence and freedom.
Today we go to a Kneecap concert for the music, but above all for what they represent
. The bruised sound counts, the mosh pit counts, the spat bars count. However, the feeling of taking part also counts
a form of collective protest that manifests itself with music. A rebellious party
. This is also why the audience is heterogeneous. This first Italian date arrives while
Belfast
experiences days of strong tension and while the group continues to take a stand against those who fan the flames of divisions. Today the trio no longer seems to belong only to the category of “bands” and that’s it.
It has become something broader: a phenomenon capable of keeping music and dissent together
. It will be interesting to see how the project will evolve once the wave of indignation that arose from some of their songs has subsided, with the resulting outcry.
The live show was fun and heartfelt, but to stand the test of time and have long careers, you need great songs
.
