Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap (Kneecap) on shaking the foundations of the status quo

In the last year, you’ve played Coachella and Glastonbury, traveled to Cuba as part of a convoy of artists raising awareness about the U.S.’s siege on the nation, and have won legal victories against the Zionist lobby. Through all of that, you’ve also been working on your upcoming album. How did Fenian come about amidst everything else?

Móglaí Bap: It was definitely chaotic during that period… But I think album time is a time for us to kind of sit back and reflect on all that and process everything that’s happened. At the same time, whatever happened to us or whatever the backlash was, was a fraction compared to what’s going on in Palestine, or what’s going on in Iran or other countries. So we don’t dwell too much on the stress of being Kneecap, because it’s a fraction in comparison.

Mo Chara: We’re very, very lucky.

Móglaí: You don’t really realize how much things impact you until you kind of sit with it for a while. So the album was a bit of a time for us to reflect and process it.

The sound of Fenian and the sound of Fine Art are pretty distinct. How has your music making evolved in these last two years?

Mo: Fine Art had its purpose. I think music in general has a time frame. If we’re sitting on a song for too long, no matter how good it is, you miss that moment. You might not know this, living in the States, but with anything that’s made in the Irish language, if it’s not folk music, it’s very quickly labeled as a parody. So for us now, after Fine Art—which was great, and we’re all fucking delighted with it—we wanted the second album to stand on its own against other albums. Just because it’s in the Irish language, predominantly, doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be judged on the same level musically as another LP.

It’s interesting to hear you reflect on this desire to sort of push away from being tokenized and to create something that stands on its own.

Mo: [When we] started Kneecap, we were in the Irish language movement at the time. Like anybody else who spoke Irish, we loved anything being created in the Irish language. Just the fact that it was in our indigenous language that not many people spoke. But when we started Kneecap, we wanted to develop towards a place where the Irish language was almost secondary to the quality of it. We wanted things to be as high quality as anything you would get in English, and that was kind of the driving force.

How did you go about writing and producing the songs on this album? Do you begin conceptually? Do you start with a lyric?

Móglaí: We use certain elements of reality and use that as our muse. “Carnival” is a good example of using the court case. We recorded the album over seven weeks with Dan Carey in Streatham, and during that seven weeks the court case happened, and also the Wembley Arena gig. The court case wasn’t easy. But it was an easy song to write about, because it was something that’s happening. Dan Carey also sampled the crowd outside the court case for the “Free Mo Chara” bit in the song.

The song “An Ra,” which is about the English empire and all the “good stuff” they’ve done—in reality, it wasn’t good stuff. So that was a joke we had for a long time, about how imperialists have this idea that without them colonizing us we wouldn’t be civilized. That was a joke.

That’s so interesting… My mom is from Morocco, and that was something I would always hear growing up: “The French gave you schools.”

Mo: But what did they fucking take away in the meantime?

One of my favorite tracks was “Palestine.” I thought it was really powerful, especially thinking about your evolution as musicians, as writers. I feel like that came through very clearly on that track. How did the collaboration with Palestinian rapper Fawzi come about?

Móglaí: My brother went to the West Bank Aida refugee camp in 2015, I think, and in 2018 we were helping to raise money with other Irish bands, to start a community gym at the Lajee Center at Aida refugee camp. Because of that, [my brother] met his fiancé from Ramallah, and that’s how we got connected with Fawzi. His fiancé knew Fawzi. And we heard one of Fawzi’s songs called “Castro.” It’s really good. We ended up getting connected with Fawzi and it ended up working really well.

We also had an intention for this album to have a Palestinian artist, because with everything going on, and us talking about Palestine so much, we wanted to give a platform to a Palestinian.

It was really cool to hear Arabic and Irish together.

Mo: Yeah, there’s definitely similarities. We got that guttural kha kha sound, too. I love that. When I listen to Arabic rap, it’s almost like a percussion of itself.

That’s why I love Arabic rap. It’s a language of poetry, so I think the language itself lends itself to the medium. I think Irish does, too, in its own way. A part of me likes being able to hear the music and to not necessarily know what each word means.

Mo: Yeah, I think that’s the same with any old language, or indigenous or ancient language—it’s over 1,000 years old. With English, they’ve kind of purposefully weaned it out of the guttural sounds to make it more palatable to them. But you listen to Arabic rap, you listen to Irish rap, and it’s that kha kha that’s the sound that really draws me.

Móglaí: It doesn’t translate too well, either. When you’re translating our lyrics into English, for example, the English is kind of back to front. The way we put verbs and everything—the way we create a sentence is different, you know? It’s good to have a translation, but it’s never the same.

Can you say a little bit more about relationship to translation?

Móglaí: Irish and English, even though we’re neighbors, it’s backwards in terms of the way you structure a sentence. It’s completely different. A translation is an interpretation of the original, but it’s not the same as the original. And that’s the difficulty of translation. It’s nice to have a translation for you to understand, but compared to the original version, it’s never going to compete. Irish and English have no relation in terms of the origins of the language. English is German. Germanic language comes from a whole different stem. Which I find interesting, because we’re so close together.

Mo: Thank god we’re surrounded by water, as the song goes.

Do you think being surrounded by water protected the language?

Mo: There’s only so long the water can hold.

Móglaí: Yeah we got protected, but we were so…

Mo: Stubborn.

Móglaí: We’re very, very hard to civilize, us Irish. I think the English understood that, because we had a rebellion or a revolution in Ireland every generation. I think that’s what annoyed the English the most, is our lack of willingness to become English. That’s why they orchestrated a famine in Ireland, because they couldn’t actually civilize us properly. So they had a forced famine where they weaponized food to try and cull a population and control the population.

That’s why we resonate with Palestinians. Something that really stayed with me was when they were not letting food into Gaza. I’m not sure if it was an image or just an article about a Palestinian person eating grass in Gaza—and that’s the thing that happened in Ireland. The locals had no food left, and they started eating grass. Once a human starts eating grass, it’s poisonous so it kills you from the inside. I just see how that same blueprint of colonization is happening.

There’s a circle to the name of the album, Fenian. The politics of language, and how language is used in colonization to make certain populations seem less of value than the colonizer. So the word Fenian, in recent times, was used as a means to make us look backwards. They would call us Fenians as if to say we aren’t of the modern day. That is the power of these words and how they are used to justify oppression. You see this in Palestine. They come up with this terminology [to try to say] that Palestinians aren’t of the same value as other people. So that’s how they justify killing them. You can only justify killing people if you actually feel like they’re below you. That’s why 1.5 million people died in Ireland, and 1.5 million went abroad. That’s the reason we chose Fenian, because it ties into the power of language. All language is political, because it is used to undermine people.

How did you find the time to make the album? What did that look like?

Móglaí: We didn’t go to America on tour. I think that was it. So we just had time to work on the album.

Mo: The media, obviously, kind of did run with it as if we had been denied visas for certain countries, which is just not true. Now that the court case is over, ideally all that should be swept under the rug, and we can apply for things and gradually move on. Because I don’t think it’s fair. There’s a lot of good people in America. Unfortunately, the government doesn’t represent them.

So you guys are interested in touring in the US, after all of that?

Móglaí: If we go to America, we are giving money to the American government and to the regime that funds Israel. But we have played there, and we have an audience there—a space to meet like-minded people, people who are conscious of Palestine. It is a hard line to tread… If we didn’t go to America, then Coachella would never have happened.

I think that you’re not only speaking about Palestine, but you have a developed analysis and are able to connect the dots to colonialism in a way that most artists in the US either aren’t allowed to, or just don’t take the risk to.

Mo: I’m not here to call artists out. I fear that this is a way that the Israeli lobby or the US government tries to separate artists: to have us fighting amongst ourselves. I am disappointed that there are certain artists that aren’t coming out, but at the same time, I’m not here to call them out. I think what’s worth noting is that what we said at Coachella, we’d been saying for maybe five years at that point: talking about US involvement, and that the US could end the siege of Gaza in the morning.

Móglaí: That analysis you’re talking about comes from our history, and Ireland being the first blueprint of English colonization. We see new forms of modern colonization happening in Palestine. If you go through something, I feel like you have an obligation to speak up against it happening.

What do you believe your role is as artists in this particular moment?

Mo: I think if you’re doing art authentically, it should be provocative in some way. It should be used as a provocation. It should be used to shake the foundations of the status quo. In Irish culture, you had the kings of the provinces, and alongside the king was the poet. The poet is who held the king, and other kings, accountable. The poet is not necessarily like the jester that you would have in English history. The poet was a satirist. I think that role in Ireland has never died. We’re just following in that long line of Irish artists who have used their platform and used what comes naturally to us in our heritage, which is to hold the powers above us accountable in some way.

Móglaí: Yeah, I agree. Politics is part of the fabric where we’re from. We don’t go out of our way to talk about politics. We’ve been talking about politics way before Kneecap. We were involved in language activism or protests for Palestine. This concept of what’s controversial, that’s subjective. What’s controversial in America is not controversial in Ireland. Being pro-Palestine is a bit controversial in LA, for example, but it’s not controversial in Ireland. So that’s the whole difference… The Choctaw people sent money to Ireland in 1846 during our forced famine. And in 2020, during Covid, the Choctaw tribe had a very hard time. So the Irish people sent over money to return the favor. We see the importance of international solidarity. It’s just a part of our DNA.

Mo: International solidarity lasts forever. Once there’s a free Palestine, and if Ireland ever falls on hard times, I don’t doubt for a second the Palestinians will be the first to act.

Knowing that you can’t really extricate US imperialism from the global music industry, what does success mean for you?

Mo: I think we’re already there, personally. We have enough money to feed ourselves, we have enough money to keep ourselves in a house, and we also are in a position where we don’t have to answer to anybody. We can do what we like, as we always have done. What we believe is the right thing. We don’t really care about the repercussions if we believe we’re doing the right thing. We’re very lucky to have a management and a label and stuff that are very supportive and don’t disagree with what we’re saying. So we’re in a very privileged position in the music industry—and that’s what you don’t get with major labels, unfortunately.

Móglaí: I think another factor in the way we view success is contributing to this idea of going back towards indigenous culture. We’ve seen it with the movie—we ended up connecting with indigenous people all over the world. Being a part of that awakening of going towards indigenous culture—especially with global warming and the way we mistreat the environment, and our disconnection from the land—is a big part of our success.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Sarah O’Neal.