Article by Marzia Picciano | Photo by Andrea Ripamonti
It's been a little over a week since my first viewing of Kneecap live at 3am at Primavera Sound – I wasn't at Spring 2024 and above all, I missed them at Mad Cool of 2024 – yet here we are in a Magnolia summer (therefore, in the outfit of Another festival) overflowing for the first date of the Italian leg of the tour of the most talked about hip hop trio of the last months and years, either for hype, or because objectively Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap And DJ Provaí they are not exactly the types who don't let it be said and by dint of being frank and direct about everything and everyone in no uncertain terms they have received access bans in countries, or rather Mo he got it (even from Canada, Canada!), concerts cancelled, live broadcasts skipped, with also prizes and recognition, in short. But they also have flaws.
Could it be the lethal (exactly lethal) mix of these attributes and the subtle perception that a band may have perfectly integrated the most brutal of ironies into their music-making that determined last night's sold out? Having seen and tested how the trio kept the audience active Spring with lots of moshpit in the middle of the night, I had no doubt he would be equally skilled at catalyzing the desire to scream even in the first meeting with a very charged audience in Milan and the surrounding area – heterogeneous, angry, even crunchy, in a word: perfect.
After all, there must be something that these three manage to do if tricolor balaclavas on their heads and lashes in Gaelic, not exactly immediately understandable, generate as much energy as a Hello beautiful shot in the middle of a demonstration. In reality, yesterday was the worthy closing of the concert. It works great on me, I haven't stopped repeating myself on loop for a week Get Your Brits Out.
And so it was yesterday too. The fans were enough to warm up the audience I will graze in the pastures (I could hardly imagine a more appropriate band to open the Kneecap in Milan, moreover), still launched since You love me of a few weeks ago, which set the level of the hypothetical discussion between audience and stage on the line of seriously doing-something-crazy. The 'facetious' humor vanishes however when the denunciation of Israel's campaign in Palestine and Lebanon or rather on the Palestinian and Lebanese people appears on the white on black background and the three take the stage with the same aplomb as wrestlers ready to rock the stage, and from now until the end of the hour and a half of the concert we will never see any of the three Palestinian flags proudly hoisted in the crowd drop again.
Now let's be serious. From departure with Éire go Deoand at the appearance of the face of Grian Chatten on video (present with Favorite as a pre-concert intro track) for Better Way to Liveuntil An Ra which marked the entry into the nastiest and therefore necessary electro-hardcore section Liars Tale, HOOD and the now hit FENIANthe entire concert was a passage from one group to another of crescendo intensity, gaining every access to the next round in a path of public acceptance that was absolutely not predictable.
Because what they do Kneecap it's really giving a concert but not serving the ready meal to the listener, but telling it, interpreting it. It's not a band, they're not artists to be taken as a closed package in a format who come there, do their pieces for you, say goodbye and go home. Theirs is an active protest demonstration on stage, a decidedly captivating sit in, despite the linguistic difficulties (and this is the most surprising thing).
It's their first time in Italy, they have to express themselves in the market, in Italian politics (and the link is Violet Gibsonan Irishman who attempted to attack Mussolini), and so they ask: should anyone here in Italy also need to be sent to that country? And the chorus starts: we are all anti-fascists. And everyone jumps. No, at a concert of Kneecap no one is a passive spectator or actor, we are all called to be sentient, regardless of how you speak and what you speak about. All injustices have one great thing in common: the feeling of oppression and helplessness they generate, which is the same for everyone.
Is this how Gaelic becomes a universal language, the expedient that users of the music market have found, therefore, in a language, an identity, a people and a series of artists (it was enough to count all the Fontaines t-shirts present yesterday) which there is no denying, is first of all authentic (for historical reasons), to express their need for protest?
Because Kneecap's vision of the Palestinian issue is certainly a battle but also the clearest example of what the three want to communicate to the public, not to their community or fans, but to anyone who listens to them: we are not here to justify your personal need for expression on something unacceptable, we are here to tell you how, and at what cost, we are dealing with what for us, Irish people from Northern Ireland, is just another example of what is unacceptable in the world. They wrote it white on black, on the screen, at the beginning of the concert: speak up. This is not a banal reminder to post your indignation on IG. It is an invitation to be aware and act accordingly, get your Brits out.
So, let's put aside questions like “It was worth the hype“, they have no sense of existing when irreproachable authenticity is thrown in your face. It's sad not to be able to see them at the Cavea of the Auditorium in Rome: the real question here is whether their approach and the Palestinian flags manage to win over the constraints of the structure, in the middle of Parioli, but as we know, the Capital always offers quite surprising oxymorons. For the moment, the first one was very good.
Click here to see photos of Kneecap in Milan or browse the gallery below
KNEECAP: the setlist of the Milan concert
Favorite (Fontaines DC) (Intro)
Éire go Deo
Smugglers & Scholars
Carnival
Better Way to Live
Sick in the Head
Gaelphonics
Cold at the Top
An Ra
Get Your Brits Out
Guilty Conscience
No comment
Sayonara
Your Sniffer Dogs Are Shite
I bhFiacha Linne
Fine Art
Rhino Ket
Liars Tale
FENIAN
Big Bad Mo
Parful
HOOD
THE RECAP
Hello beautiful (Outro)
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
