When Irish hip-hop band Kneecap formed in 2017, they didn’t picture becoming the poster boys for modern-day Irish language revival.
Rapping mostly in Irish, the trio hail from West Belfast in Northern Ireland (or, as they say, the north of Ireland). With songs like Get Your Brits Out and CEARTA — meaning ‘rights’ in Irish — they’ve become synonymous with Irish republicanism and anti-authoritarianism, and their music is seen as a tool of colonial resistance.
Unsurprisingly, this comes with some controversy. But Kneecap doesn’t shy away from it — if anything, the trio is emboldened by it.
“Everyone makes their own ideas up of what they think we are. Be it scum, or scummy revolutionaries, or Irish language activists,” says Naoise Ó Cairealláin, who goes by Móglaí Bap, speaking with SBS News.
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.
Rounding out the trio is JJ Ó Dochartaigh, aka DJ Próvaí: he’s the man donning a green, white, and orange balaclava representing the Irish flag. In the band’s early days, he wore it to hide his identity as he worked in a conservative Catholic grammar school. Later, DJ Próvaí was discovered and sacked for being in the group — and for parading his bare arse on stage adorned with the words: ‘BRITS OUT’.
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
Kneecap is now largely seen as the face of the modern-day Irish language revival by younger generations — including here in Australia.
But the group says that was never their intention.
“I don’t think that we set out on a mission to save the Irish language when we first started,” says Móglaí Bap.
Mo Chara adds: “Irish is the language that we speak and all our friends speak. So when we decided we wanted to start a group, it wasn’t this big conscious decision of ‘let’s do it in Irish’.
“I feel like we get too much praise for some kind of Irish language revival that was started long before we were even born. We have families in the west of Ireland that kept the language alive against all odds for 2,000 years.
“But I mean, we’ll take all the credit,” Mo Chara jokes.
The Irish language — or Gaeilge — is considered “endangered” by UNESCO, with the majority of people in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland unable to speak it.
The British made multiple attempts during the process of colonisation to suppress Ireland’s indigenous language and replace it with English, explains Darach Ó Séaghdha, author of Motherfoclóir: Dispatches from a Not So Dead Language.
But they “generally weren’t successful” until the famine of the mid-1800s.
“Before the famine, there would’ve been more Irish speakers on the planet than Swedish speakers,” he tells SBS News.
“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.
Ó Séaghdha notes the Irish language has also suffered as a result of internal colonisation.
“When Ireland tried to recover from the famine economically and socially, they thought that English was an advantage for individuals; it made them a better prospect as immigrants,” he says.
As Ireland’s economy started improving towards the end of the 20th century, Ó Séaghdha says a “cultural cringe” became attached to certain traditional practices, including Irish dancing and speaking Gaeilge.
“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
Since the partition of Ireland in the 1920s — the process by which Britain divided the north and south of the country into modern-day Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland — the government in the south has enacted policies aimed at ensuring the survival of its native language.
Ó Séaghdha says efforts were made in the early years by what was then known as the Irish Free State to preserve the Gaeltacht — areas, largely in the west of the country, where the majority of people spoke Irish as their primary language — as well as establishing a new region of Gaeilge speakers.
“But there would’ve been historical Gaeltacht areas in the north that weren’t preserved, and they really suffered from that, from not having any state support, from being completely ignored,” he says.
“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.
These efforts, along with the work of Irish language activists and community groups, TV and radio stations, and popular culture, appear to have produced some positive results, with increasing numbers of people across Ireland saying they have at least some Gaeilge ability.
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.
But critics, many of whom called for a standalone Irish Language Act, say it doesn’t go far enough.
“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
Here in Australia, the popularity of the Irish language also appears to be increasing.
Seán Ó Séaghdha from Irish Language Association of Australia (Cumann Gaeilge na hAstráile) runs Irish language classes in Melbourne.
He says there’s been a huge surge of interest in people wanting to learn the language, including from Australians with Irish heritage, looking to connect with their culture — partly driven by Kneecap. In particular, he says the release of the 2024 comedy-drama Kneecap, which tells the fictional origin story of the band and stars Irish actor Michael Fassbender alongside the trio, has contributed to the spike.
“Last year’s beginners’ class started at around 20 people, but we’ve had more than 90 enquiries this year,” he tells SBS News.
“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
The Irish aren’t the only ones to suffer language loss as a result of colonial rule.
Before British colonisation, over 250 languages and 800 dialects were spoken in Australia. Today, just 123 Indigenous languages are spoken, with 109 of these considered endangered, according to the National Indigenous Languages Survey.
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.
He points to the use of the ‘tally stick’ — or “bata scóir” — in the 19th century, which school children were forced to wear around their neck. If they spoke Irish, a notch was cut into the stick as punishment. At the end of the school day, the child was beaten according to how many notches were on the stick.
“It was a form of punishment that was used to suppress the language to make people feel ashamed of the language, to try and stop people from speaking the language,” Móglaí Bap says.
For Mo Chara, this history is why it’s even more important for him to speak Irish.
“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
When it comes to language revitalisation efforts, Darach Ó Séaghdha says, “music has a particular power to connect people”.
“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.
While the trio say they’re fans of hip hop, the genre choice is a deliberate one — and rooted in history.
“Storytelling was such a huge part of Irish culture, and the Black community in America used hip-hop as a way to tell their stories and give a voice,” Mo Chara says.
“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.
“They’ve used hip hop culture, pop music, energy and their humour to create … the appeal of dissidence, the appeal of rebellion and energy within a culture, which has proven very, very attractive,” he says.
While the band have become a phenomenon, attracting a lot of young fans, McDonald says they’ve come up against a few detractors too, uncomfortable with what he describes as the “so-called ‘Provo chic’ around the Troubles”. (Provo is slang for the Provisional Irish Republican Army, which was one of the most active paramilitary groups during the Troubles.)
“In terms of what Kneecap are protesting about, there’s a lot of looking back to that political past, as these are children of the peace process,” he says.
“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”.
For the rabble-rousing trio, the film’s depiction of youth culture and the working class is not gratuitous: rather, they wanted to represent the warts-and-all reality of life as a young person in Belfast.
“We grew up in an urban setting with all our mates partying. We weren’t all just sitting around talking about grammar and talking about the Irish language all day. We had better things to talk about. It’s just the language, it was just the method of how we communicated,” says Mo Chara.
“They [politicians] want the Irish language to be this traditional, pure, innocent thing where we’re all in fields playing fiddles and fucking picking shamrocks.
“That’s not the Irish language that I know.”
