The Zine UK

This is going to be part review, part love letter, part tangent. - An editors warning.

I went to see the KNEECAP preview a couple of weeks ago, and whilst there was a temptation to leave the cinema (or in my case, the Arts Centre) shouting “Erin go Bragh!”.. There’s something much, much deeper in why KNEECAP are important, than the not-not-a-huge-deal in an Irish language film being hailed to critical acclaim UK wide - an Irish language film featuring Gerry Adams no less. Ruby Blue described it as “Trainspotting, for our generation.”

…But this is not going to be a wankfest on how amazing the film, or ‘Fine Art’ the album is. There’s enough of that- rightly so - out there. It’s not going to be a verbose moralisation on the rights or wrongs of KNEECAP playing festivals that have links to Israel… This is going to be something else.

This is a love letter to anti-colonialism.

I considered writing this piece for the Morning Star, or other publications that I do ‘proper journalism’ in. Then it occurred to me. Caffy and I shouldn’t exist. We’re both victims of colonialism, we shouldn’t be here.

The ZineUK’s very existence = resistance.

So what the feck does that have to do with KNEECAP?

The answer is everything.

I first heard them with Brits Out, and stuck them on my #ZeenageDaydreams playlist pronto. I don’t think I resonated with the Gaeilge at first, but in discovering C.E.A.R.T.A and then the release of ‘Fine Art’, they had got under my skin.

Then I had a conversation with one of my Irish friends who, over a bottle of wine, pointed out the shared struggle for the Irish Language, and my own mission to rediscover my Romani roots. We sat with the idea for a while. The idea of generational trauma and how a united Ireland would be a ‘physical, muscle tensed healing release for the Irish people.’ How the Irish, like the Roma, carry with them the violence that their forefathers had faced, while at the same time there's still so much evidence of it in the words we speak, and the words we understand... In how we censor ourselves without being asked, because we have been taught to be ashamed of an illegal otherness.

Connecting to the language that was stolen away from the Irish people, is the first step to freedom. In the same way, learning Romanes or speaking to distant travelling cousins have been a micro release for me.

Kneecap have found a way to produce revolutionary alchemy. .. After all, what better way to connect people to a hidden language than with the most universal language - Music.

“Spitting out a language, I don’t wanna talk.” - Manic Street Preachers, Democracy Coma.

.. And there it is. The point. One of the evilist things the Empire has done, is steal our very own words from us. To take away the ability to speak the language of our ancestors, to understand their poetry, to hear their feelings in their own voice and worse than this, replace our own tongues with the tongue of the oppressor. This is the British government who, in making talking the native words punishable in Irish and Welsh schools, and forcing gypsies like my ancestors into assimilation in order to grant them protection from persecution, has left us with internalised shame and a spiritual homelessness.

“No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression.” - James Connolly (Irish communist revolutionary), Songs of Freedom

To hear KNEECAP not only reclaiming their identity with pride, but to do so in a way that reaches the normal person, the proletariat, meeting them where they are - In the bars and clubs, searching for themselves in drink and drugs.

It’s this that makes them important.

Whilst Fine Art, and KNEECAP in general, may not have been intended for a lapsed Romani like myself, my friend was right - most of my friends circle have had their culture sanitised by the British Government - and it’s no coincidence that these same friends have also fallen in love with KNEECAP; if not always their music, always their message.

“Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Irish freedom.” - Arló Ó Cairealláin, Kneecap (2024)

Stick ‘em up motherfucker… We’ve come banging our drums (or spinning our decks) for what's ours.

The fact KNEECAP can also get the British broadcaster to show their live set at Reading Festival is just a beautiful bonus touch.

Which all feels so much more pogniant as we watch another people’s culture be eliminated in Gaza. Perhaps with more violence than ever before. Or maybe it’s just we’ve never had the footage to evidence it like we do now. I read a book once, which explained how the British state used Ireland as a testing ground for colonialism worldwide and the 32 counties just like Palestine are covered in British bloody fingerprints. There’s more than this obvious link between Ireland and Palestine - but that probably is best saved for a Morning Star article.

If your are still here, do check out Fine Art and definately go to see the KNEECAP film - it has something to reach everyone no matter where they’re approaching it from, that's it's genius.

... And perhaps I have read too much into this little rap group from the North of Ireland, but isn't that the beauty of art? It spreads out and pours itself into the cracks of the psyche, filling wounds where it is most needed.

Go raibh maith agat, Kneecap.