Kneecap’s pre-show routine keeps it simple. “Jägerbomb,” says Mo Chara (right).
“And a bit of ABBA music,” adds DJ Próvaí (left).
“We do like a bit of ABBA before we go onstage,” agrees Móglaí Bap (middle). “A bit of ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!’”
“Who doesn’t?” Mo Chara says. “That gets anybody pumped.”
Salute
“We try not to get too drunk” before the show, Móglaí Bap says.
“We’re still working that one out,” adds Mo Chara (pictured).
Mic Check
“Once you step on the stage, especially when you have a sold-out show in New York, it goes very fast,” says Móglaí Bap, shown here at soundcheck at Bowery Ballroom. “We’re blessed that we can come the whole way to New York and sell out 600 tickets, which is a big thing for a band from Ireland.”
Belfast to the World
Kneecap’s music draws on influences that include U.S. rap groups like Dead Prez as well as Irish rebel music from home. “It’s kind of folk music, but also storytelling of resistance against colonialism, in a very satirical way,” Mo Chara says. “The music is very tongue-in-cheek, making light of a serious situation. That ethos really carried through into Kneecap.”
“Sometimes when you’re left with an authority that has a lot more power or weaponry than you, all you can have is your songs and stories,” Móglaí Bap adds. “That’s something that has lasted in Ireland for a long time.”
Mask Off
DJ Próvaí’s signature green-orange-white balaclava hangs backstage at Bowery Ballroom. He began wearing the disguise when the band was first taking off, and he was still employed as a teacher. “It didn’t stop him from being thrown out of the school,” says Móglaí Bap. Adds Mo Chara: “It was the worst-kept secret in Ireland.”
Mask On
Nowadays, DJ Próvaí’s balaclava rarely comes off — when we talk on Zoom, he’s just come out of the shower and paired it with a fluffy hotel bathrobe. “I always wear it,” he says. “It’s melted into my face these days.”
Showtime
“We come from a place that’s very, very serious,” Mo Chara says. “So we try that Irish humor of, if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.”
Mosh Pit
The crowd at a Kneecap show spans “all walks of life, all different age groups,” Móglaí Bap says. “Old punks and young, curious people who love sub-subcultures of music.”
He adds: “There’s a lot of Irish immigrants who came to America, millions and millions of them. But it’s not only them we want to connect with, we want to connect with everyone.”
Changing Times
The response on this tour has been exciting for the band. “It’s amazing to be traveling around and all the people are singing back in Irish in the middle of America,” DJ Próvaí says.
The group compares it to the global success that other acts with non-English lyrics have seen in recent years. “BTS sold out Wembley in England, and a lot of their songs are in Korean,” Móglaí Bap says. “I think times are changing in that way.”
Cheers
DJ Próvaí holds a bottle of Buckfast, the caffeinated wine that’s popular with Irish youths (think Celtic Four Loko). Móglaí Bap says fans at their shows have been known to hand them a bottle or two as a gift.
Fan Love
“There’s so many people that come up after our gigs and say that they had one of the best nights of their life, and they don’t speak a word of Irish,” Móglaí Bap says. “It just shows the power of music.”
Connect
Kneecap’s music is part of a growing movement to revitalize the Irish language after centuries of British rule (which continues to this day in Northern Ireland). “Obviously we come from a state that is still occupied by the British government, who weren’t very friendly towards the Irish language and its culture,” Móglaí Bap says. “It is a relatively new movement.”
26 + 6 = 1
All three members of Kneecap are fluent in Irish, but only Móglaí Bap grew up speaking the language at home. “Being the only kid in the street who speaks Irish, it wasn’t the coolest thing when you’re seven years old,” he says. “Nobody really wants to stand out when they’re teenagers. It wasn’t until later in life that we discovered it actually is a very cool thing.”
Crowd Surf
Móglaí Bap’s parents helped found one of the first Irish-language primary schools in Belfast. “We are basically the first generation of young people who got the opportunity to go to school in Irish, to do math in Irish, to do science in Irish — do all these things that we have the right to do,” he says. “And then because of that, when we left school, we didn’t want to talk about math or science anymore. We wanted to party and take drugs and speak Irish.”
Lingo
Their lyrics are peppered with Irish slang, some of which the band uses in novel ways. “We try to recycle old words that are in the Irish language and repurpose them — because of course, people in the nineteenth century in Ireland weren’t smoking joints or talking about cocaine,” Móglaí Bap says. So they might use dúid, an old Irish word for a clay tobacco pipe, to mean “joint,” and snaois, or tobacco snuff, for “cocaine.”
“We like to mix it up,” he adds. “There’s never five sentences without either one word in Irish or one word in English, just to confuse everybody.”
Cash on Delivery
They’re currently preparing for the release next spring of Kneecap’s debut album, which they made with English producer Toddla T (Stormzy, Aitch). “It’s like stepping into the world of Kneecap,” Mo Chara says. “We’re in a pub. There’s people singing in the corners, and news on the TV, real-life articles of us being controversial. You’ll get to know us and what we’re about.”
They also recently wrapped a feature film of the Kneecap story, starring the three members as themselves. “It was the biggest budget for an Irish-language movie, ever, in the world,” Mo Chara says. (“In the universe, I would say,” Móglaí Bap adds.)
Peace
DJ Próvaí is the only member of Kneecap who’s old enough to have distinct memories of the Troubles, the violent conflict that consumed Northern Ireland in the late 20th century. “I remember we used to walk out the front street and the British Army would be walking down with big, massive rifles,” he says. “It became very normalized to walk around the city and see soldiers raiding houses.”
Móglaí Bap was about four when the historic Good Friday Agreement brought peace to Northern Ireland after decades. “It was a great relief for a lot of families that they didn’t have to live in constant fear of violence,” he says. “And people could rebuild the Irish-language community. Because of the peace that we have now, we can focus on culture, music, and all them types of things.”
Goodbye for Now
Their parting words to any Americans who want to know more about Kneecap’s homeland: “Leprechauns aren’t real, basically,” Móglaí Bap says. “That would be our main thing to say.”
“And fuckin’ nobody in Ireland has ever said ‘Top of the morning to ya,’” Mo Chara adds. “Nobody.”
