12.09.2024

Hip-hoppers with a cause

Billy Clark reviews Rich Peppiatt (director) Kneecap 2024, general release

The film Kneecap is a biopic on the rise of the Belfast-based Irish-language republican rap group of the same name, consisting of Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin and JJ Ó Dochairtaigh (better known as Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Provaí respectively). The trio each received some acting training and starred as themselves - presumably because this was easier than training actors to rap in Ulster Irish (!) - but their acting ability is never in question. Fionnuala Flaherty, Simone Kirkby, Josie Walker and Michael Fassbender also give excellent performances.

Being someone invested in Gaeilge (the Irish language) and in Irish trad music, I am totally biased in the film’s favour and probably have too particular an interest to speak to the experience of the average cinema-goer who stumbles into it. But my sense is that Kneecap is such a chaotic, exciting, against-the-odds story that viewers need not be intimidated by the apparently niche topic.

In interviews, the Kneecap rappers have brought attention to the genocide in Palestine and frequently speak about the impact of British imperialism around the world, not only in Ireland. They want a united Ireland, but do not have any illusions that taking back the Six Counties will automatically be an advance for the working class, asserting that they have more in common with loyalist workers than with bourgeois Irish nationalists. On the Late late show, Mo Chara stated, “A workers’ revolution is the way forward, rather than one based on a god that might not even exist.” So it is tempting to think of them as being ‘on our side’ and so to be disappointed that the film does not go further politically - though the funding from the British Film Institute and Northern Ireland Screen presumably imposes significant limits.

For Kneecap, as Gaeilgeoirí (Irish speakers), Irish and English are both tools at their disposal. Most of their songs swap between the languages as they please, with a liberal use of loanwords. Even if you do not have your cúpla focal (speaking just a little Irish), you will win no prizes for guessing the meanings of “Foc mí, ní fhaca mé na bastairdí”; “Ag wankáil like foc”; or “Bhí an DUP harrasin’ me”.

In one scene DJ Provaí/JJ, a music teacher in a gaelscoil (Irish language school) and boyfriend to language activist Caitlin, is covering for an Irish lesson. He and the pupils are frustrated by how the supposedly ‘updated’ textbooks are all about cutting turf, rather than reflecting how the language can be used today. It would be equally silly to want all media in or about Irish to be serious and political, even if it is a persecuted minority language. A language may be ‘politicised’, but no language is inherently more revolutionary than any other (and it was once very normal for Ulster Protestants to speak Irish, and to take part in Irish traditional music and dance). If a language is really alive, then you should be able to use it for your shopping, for arguing politics, for complaining about the police, and for writing a song or movie about drugs. So Arlene Foster and Jeffrey Donaldson are mentioned by name, as is the golden rule of Irish spelling, as is just about every illicit substance you can think of.

All that is not to say the film is politically empty. Given the group’s image, the accusations made against them by unionist politicians, the censorship of their music by RTÉ radio (courageously opposed by the west Belfast mammies) and the prejudice many people have about Irish, it is necessary for them to take sectarianism seriously, in their interviews and in this film.

Mo Chara’s love interest, Georgia (Jessica Reynolds), hates him for singing “Tiocfaidh ár lá, get the Brits out, lad!” And as a viewer your sympathy is with Georgia, even as Mo Chara tries to explain he means the British state, not individual Brits like her. At the end we have a glimpse of Georgia in an Irish class for adults - presumably a nod to the success of promoting the language in east Belfast. There was hardly any mention of loyalist paramilitaries, whereas the fecklessness and adventurism of dissident republican groups is, however, important to the story, along with the desperate clinging to his long-dead and best forgotten political cause from Naoise’s father, Arló.

Another political issue not shied away from is police brutality, and the police and gang violence that results from the criminalisation of drugs. It is humorously explained that this is something that unites the different communities: “Nothing brings people in Belfast together like throwing shite at the peelers.”

If you go to an Irish pub session in most cities, you will probably have the occasional rousing song amidst the breakneck jigs and reels. If you are exceptionally lucky, you will have the chance to hear a sean-nós (old-style) singer. Along with the harp, this style of singing is venerated, but has become fairly marginal in the traditional music scene. The composer, Seán Ó Riada, described it as the best example of Ireland’s ‘classical’ music: highly developed and ornamented, having more in common with Indian music, owing to its oral rather than notated transmission. There are examples of sean-nós singing in the Kneecap soundtrack and, very touchingly, from Móglaí Bap’s agoraphobic mother. I understood the inclusion of this art form to mean that there is just as much danger in forgetting your traditions and history as there is in not evolving at all.

Kneecap ends hopefully but without triumphalism. The future of Irish is uncertain gan dabht (‘without a doubt’). It is not the case that things have been on a straightforward upward trend since the Gaelic revival of the 19th century. Schools have been established and rights have been secured in the republic and the north, but there have been many failures and setbacks too: most dialects of Irish have already become extinct and there remain no more monolingual Irish-speakers. There is much more that could still be lost.

Such is the fight for any minoritised language and such is the daily struggle of every working class artist.