This Saint Patrick’s day weekend, a shocking scandal occurred in Ireland, featuring a mix of both religion, politics, and a late king’s head.
Kneecap, a northern Irish rap trio, “welcomed a special guest onto the stage of its show in Melbourne, Australia,” according to The New York Times. The guest? The head of King George V’s statue, which had gone missing in the city several months earlier.
The West Belfast trio Kneecap—made up of Mo Chara, Moglai Bap, and DJ Provai—has surged into the spotlight with a widely discussed biopic. Known for their outspoken Republican views and high-energy performances, the group thrives on chaos, with frontman Bap often performing shirtless while drinking Buckfast, a cheap tonic wine linked to wild nights in Ireland.
Their songs feature a fast, fiery mix of “satire with socially conscious lyrics, and reality with absurdity,” according to their official website. “Theirs is a voice which comes screaming from the too-often deprived areas of the North of Ireland, speaking in a language which is too-often ignored, and it makes for suitably electrifying stuff.”
At the same time, the group represents Irish, indigenous pride, often performing in both Irish and English, and speaking often about the importance of preserving the language in its culture after it was banned for a period of time during British colonial rule. During the same time that King George’s head was stolen, the group also tore through a British national museum, putting “Kneecap branded “Stolen from Ireland” stickers on various artifacts,” as stated by the Times.
The head was actually part of a larger mystery revolving around the decapitated head of King George, symbolic of a wave of anticolonial vandalism that swept through the state of Victoria. King George V’s statue was just one of the many that were decapitated and vandalized with paint last year. The statue was, ironically, decapitated last June, on a holiday celebrating the British king’s birthday. The missing head popped up on Instagram a couple of times afterwards, including a video in which it was on a barbecue grill, but it went missing ever since.
Following the incident, the Melbourne Crime Investigation Unit has ramped up its efforts to investigate the statue’s vandalization, exploring potential connections to a similar statue-related stunt at a concert on March 14. Regardless of where the investigation leads, one thing is certain: Kneecap shows no signs of stepping away from the controversy anytime soon.
