Kneecap the latest act to play Fed Square, but they won’t be the last

When Kneecap burst onto the scene in 2017, they had no idea that rapping in Irish about drugs, drink and giving the middle finger to the authorities would take them to the other side of the world – including to a free pop-up gig at Melbourne’s Federation Square at 5pm today.

“We just put the first song out for us and our friends,” says Mochara (real name Liam Og O hAnnaidh), one third of the band and one of its two singers. “It was something we enjoyed, something we thought was good, but we never really thought beyond that.”

Kneecap: Mochara, DJ Provai and Moglai Bap, in Melbourne.Credit: Penny Stephens

But their songs about life in post-Troubles Belfast, sung from the Catholic perspective, quickly gained a following, including among loyalists. And when the film Kneecap, a somewhat fanciful retelling of their story, was released last year, their fame spread exponentially.

Now they’re on their first tour of Australia, with eight shows in little more than a week, including at Golden Plains this past weekend and three sold-out shows in Melbourne (plus today’s freebie) this week.

“It’s class that the film’s done so well,” says Mochara, describing it as “a story as old as time, where a language is driven almost to extinction by colonialism”.

Kneecap are political but playful, toying with the hard-and-fast positions that spelt so much trouble during the worst of Northern Ireland’s sectarian battles (their name comes from the slang term for the infliction of a deliberate wound in the knee, often by gunshot, favoured by gangsters and the IRA).

But about one thing they’re deadly serious: the preservation and proliferation of Irish language and culture.

“I think we come at a time when people are more interested in indigenous cultures and languages,” says the band’s other singer, Moglai Bap (aka Naoise Ó Caireallain). “People are looking for a bit more substance, especially with where things are these days – pop music and everything’s a bit more homogenised.”

Moglai’s father, who passed away recently, was an Irish language activist. He would no doubt be proud to see how much his son and his bandmates – producer DJ Provai (JJ O Dochartaigh), a former schoolteacher, is the third – have done to advance that cause.

There’s a perception, Mochara says, that Irish (aka Gaelic), is a static and sanitised language dedicated to “sitting around playing fiddles and all this kind of crap”.

“But if you go to Connemarra and speak to the fisherman, they’re filthy – they speak Irish the way any kind of fisherman speaks,” he says.

It is true, concedes Moglai, that until now “there’s not really been a generation that spoke Irish in the cities” (at least not since everyone spoke Irish, which by and large they did until three or four generations ago).

“That’s why we have to kind of adapt it in the language we use in our songs,” says Moglai. “We incorporate more modern words to capture the urban lifestyle.”

A free open-air gig in the sandstone-paved Federation Square is about as far from a traditional Irish setting as you could imagine. But while it serves Kneecap’s mission of spreading the word (including to those who don’t understand it, but sing along phonetically anyway), it’s also part of a renewed focus on live music that has brought thousands of people to the venue this summer.

Last weekend 7000 people turned up for a free concert featuring Sun Ra Arkestra and local stars Mildlife. A couple of weeks before that, Glass Beams pulled a capacity crowd of 9000. Canadian DJ Dan Snaith, aka Caribou, had 8000 people dancing to a three-hour set, with less than a day’s notice, in January. And Robbie Williams spun what was meant to be a three-song set into a 40-minute mini-concert for 12,000 people to say thank you to the city where his biopic Better Man was made.

Dan Snaith, aka Caribou, drew 8000 people to his DJ set with just a day’s notice.Credit: Maira Troncoso

For Katrina Sedgwick, chief executive of the Melbourne Arts Precinct Corporation, it’s all about making the most of the site’s position, both physically and socially.

“Fed Square is this amazing fulcrum at the busiest transport intersection in the city,” she says. “It’s vibrant and connected, both as a meeting place and as a place to go outward from. It’s kind of a Tetris puzzle.”

There has been music there before, and big public events – festivals and food and major sporting moments – but a heightened focus on live music this summer (with help of former Meredith programmer Woody McDonald) has dialled it up a notch. And there’s more to come.

“People coming together and listening to music and dancing and singing together is just so bonding,” she says. “It’s a way to foster community and a sense of a cohesive society, which is something I think we all need to really prioritise at the moment.”

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