Music has always been an important part of the Irish cultural landscape. For many generations, music has been the medium through which stories of war, religion, mythological creatures and resistance have been shared. In this generation, a trio from the north of Ireland is using music to breathe a breath of fresh air into the Irish language. 

The band’s name is Kneecap, named after “kneecapping” — the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s trademark punishment, where brutal wounds were inflicted on the legs of petty criminals and drug dealers. While the band may not be kneecapping anyone, they are kneecapping the suppression of the Irish language in the north of Ireland. 

With the PIRA no longer operating as an active paramilitary organization, the members of Kneecap found a different way to fight against British oppression of the Irish people and language. 

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While music — especially traditional Irish folk music — has always been an outlet for the Irish fighting against their oppression, Kneecap decided to use a far more popular genre: hip hop, which has been the voice of Black resistance to oppression in the United States and is now providing a voice to the youth of the north of Ireland.

Kneecap broke into the hip hop scene with “C.E.A.R.T.A.” a song inspired by member Móglaí Bap and his friend spray painting the word “cearta,” meaning “rights,” on a bus station during an Irish language rights protest in Belfast. Móglaí Bap was able to escape authorities, but his friend was detained. He refused to speak English, instead insisting on speaking Gaeilge while in custody. 

“It was illegal to speak Irish and going back into the Penal Laws, and it was kind of seen as a peasant language, and to get ahead in life, you had to speak English,” said Kneecap member DJ Próvaí in an interview with the Daily Trojan. “[‘C.E.A.R.T.A.’] was a song about rights, and whenever [Gaeilge] was recognized as an official language …it just gave a lot of legitimacy to the language, and it meant that politicians on one side of the community couldn’t bully people anymore with value using the English as a battering ram.” 

For many, language preservation only happens inside the classroom, but Kneecap believes a language must speak for a people in order to speak to a people. They bring the Irish language into the modern day by singing about topics such as running from the police, doing cocaine and buying ketamine. 

“The Irish language, going back historically, had a filthy, filthy aspect … And that side of the language was lost, unfortunately, and it just gives it a lot of color,” DJ Próvaí said. “The fact that Irish is such an ancient language as well, and to live as a language, it has to modernize.”

In order to modernize, people have begun to recycle old terms that have fallen into disuse to describe new aspects of Irish life. Kneecap has been at the forefront of this, with many of their songs containing these repurposed words. This includes terms such as dúidín (marijuana blunt) and snaois (cocaine), both repurposed from older Gaeilge words that have fallen out of fashion.  

Kneecap’s use and command of Gaeilge have made them the face of the Irish language for younger generations, inspiring people across the globe to learn a language that many thought was impractical for the modern era. Kneecap has shown the Irish language not only can be used to represent the youth of Ireland, but it is also an essential part of Irish expression. 

Their role in inspiring a whole new generation of Irish speakers is a revolutionary act. Whenever someone is inspired to speak a language that an oppressive regime attempted to exterminate from their people, it pushes back against colonialism. But DJ Próvaí says he doesn’t necessarily view himself speaking in Irish as revolutionary. 

“I’m not sure if we view it as a revolutionary act because it’s just the language that we speak every day. And you know, it’s just we never think of it as like what we’re doing this. We have a purpose for this. It’s just something we do.” 

Yet DJ Próvaí acknowledged that this would not be the language that he or the other band members speak daily if it wasn’t for the people who came before them.

“We’re standing on the shoulders of giants,” DJ Próvaí said. “We’re like in a long line of the people who came before us, and they paved the path for us. So we can’t forget that as well.” 

While DJ Próvaí and the other members of the band may not view their language as revolutionary because they aren’t using the language in a conscious act of revolt, it is still revolutionary because the language of a people defines a people. Speaking in one’s native language subconsciously fights back against the centuries of colonization a people have faced. 

Irish revolutionary Pádraig Pearse was famously quoted as saying, “tír gan teanga, tír gan anam” or “a country without a language is a country without a soul.” Kneecap is helping revitalize Ireland’s sleepy soul by bringing a new spirit to Gaeilge.

“Language is culture; it’s a collective memory bank of a people’s experience in history,” DJ Próvaí said. “Like so much of our kind of history encoded in the Irish language for us and in the indigenous languages, a lot of the stuff that could be forgotten is encoded.” 

That is why the fight to keep the Irish language and other indigenous languages alive is so important. Traditions, culture and knowledge that are encoded in these languages will be lost forever if they die out. 

“Know if you can start something, if you can start a drama class, or start a band or anything, and just have fun with a language, have a crack!” 

Peyton Dacy is a junior writing about the importance of language revitalization as an indigenous language dies out every 40 days. Dacy’s column, “Every 40 days,” runs every other Tuesday. Dacy is also the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Director at the Daily Trojan.

Correction: This article was updated Oct. 23 at 5:07 p.m. to correct the photo credits. Originally, the photo was credited to AEG when it should have been credited to IAG. The Daily Trojan regrets this error.