Irish artists taking a stand for Gaza: We need to keep the pressure on

Irish musicians and bands were right to boycott the SXSW festival, taking place, as I write, in the the hip musical city of Austin, Texas.

It came as a shock to many that the US army is a major sponsor of what is a hugely prestigious, international alternative music jamboree. But the clincher, surely, was that the event is also supported by companies that are in the business of arms production – and whose weaponry is being used in the brutal campaign of genocide currently being waged by the Israeli war machine in Gaza.

For at least some of the Irish artists, it must have been an agonising dilemma. SXSW is regarded as one of the key international events at which alternative artists can successfully showcase their creative wares. The opportunity to play there is hugely, and widely, coveted. The week of musical revelry is generally well attended by the kind of entertainment biz honchos who can make or break careers. Do a successful showcase, and doors may be opened. For artists, who live a vulnerable life, too often struggling to make a living, that is naturally a fiercely enticing prospect.

Amy Winehouse, Janelle Monae, John Mayer, Haim, Grimes, Ellie Goulding and James Blunt are all cited as SXSW success stories, and there is more than a grain of truth in at least some of those claims. You have to be ready. You need to have all your ducks in a row. And, ideally, you have to really deliver once you’re out there in front of the self-styled taste-makers. But the bottom line is that the movers and shakers are circulating. Get them to your showcase and you stand a real chance.

That is a career-boosting prospect that no one is going to abandon lightly.

Which makes the collective stance taken by Irish artists at SXSW so noteworthy and impressive. Every single Irish act who had been selected to play the festival has supported the boycott. They stood together, in unison and in solidarity. It was a show of courage, of moral strength and of political conviction of which the President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins most certainly approves.

ROCKIN’ IN THE DÁIL

It is, in many ways, a measure of just how positively Ireland, and its artists, have developed in recent times that they would take the lead, on an issue of critical, immediate global importance.

I will never forget attending an official music industry awards event back in the 1970s, when showbands still ruled the musical roost in Ireland. It was a savagely tasteless occasion of suffocating, low-level glad-handling, but I was still stunned when the presentation of an award to Joe Dolan began. “What’s wrong with that?” you might ask. “He could sing.” He could indeed. But Joe wasn’t on the premises to receive the award. Instead, a pre-recorded video was shown, without a hint of embarrassment, with the singer saying his thanks from the sunny surroundings of a hotel in South Africa – while the apartheid regime was still being violently enforced by the colonialist Afrikaner ruling class.

No one in the room can claim to have been unaware of the issues at stake. The anti-apartheid movement was strong in Ireland. They just didn’t give a shit. Joe Dolan happily dialled in from a luxury hotel in a country where discrimination against black citizens was baked into every aspect of the regime – and the assembled honchos guzzled their drinks and applauded enthusiastically. It was sickening.

That was an era when even Irish rock musicians were slow to adopt any kind of political position at all. Or if they had one, they were very wary of advertising it.

But things have changed remarkably since Hot Press was launched in 1977. Bob Geldof, U2 and Sinead O’Connor shifted the dial, with Hot Press consistently agitating across a whole range of political and humanitarian issues.

Sinéad O'Connor on Saturday Night Live – October, 1992

There is no doubt that Michael D. Higgins has been central to the changing dynamic. In his fortnightly Hot Press column, alongside powerful politically charged contributions from Eamonn McCann and Nell McCafferty, from 1983 to 1993, the future President wrote extensively about equality issues, feminism, the referendums on abortion and divorce, on social justice and on global issues – travelling to Chile, Nicaragua, Libya and Palestine, among other zones of conflict, to report for Hot Press and its information-hungry readership. In the process, he highlighted the relentlessly cynical and frequently bloody and anti-democratic impact of US foreign policy during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

That was the backdrop against which U2 wrote ‘Bullet The Blue Sky’:

“Across the field you see the sky ripped open
See the rain through a gaping wound
Pounding on the women and children
Who run
Into the arms
Of America…”

There was a further gear-shift when Michael D became Minister for Arts, Culture, and the Gaeltacht in 1993. It was the first time that the arts, and by extension Irish artists, were treated with genuine respect by the machinery of State. To mark the new sense of optimism among artists and musicians, The Saw Doctors wrote ‘Michael D Rocking In The Dáil’. It is worth revisiting the lyrics of that song now, its humorous reference in the second line to Bishop Eamon Casey of Galway – disgraced when his affair with an American woman Annie Murphy, and the birth of his son Peter, was revealed in 1992 – striking a prescient note.

“It might be raining and it might be cold,
And the bishop's gone and left the fold,
Oh we’re standing proud and we’re walking tall,
We got Michael D rocking in the Dáil for us
Michael D rocking in the Dáil
In the cabinet
The shining star for all who strive
To live and love creative lives
The signers-on with great ambitions
The mighty open blind dead visions...”

Irish songwriters felt a new sense of confidence. They were finding their voices. But, folkies like Christy Moore aside, there was often still a noticeable reticence about taking a strong stand politically.

PRINCIPLED STAND

We kept chipping away – and a further change occurred with the election of Michael D. Higgins as President of Ireland in 2011.

There was a marvellous sense during the campaign – triggered by his time as a columnist with Hot Press, and reinforced by his pioneering work as Minister for Arts, Culture, and the Gaeltacht – that this was our man. He loved the arts. He was a music fan. He had a sense of humour. He was intellectually strong. He had charisma in abundance. And also, most importantly, he showed the common touch.

With seven candidates running, Michael D. picked up 39.57 of the first preferences, putting him well ahead of his nearest rival Sean Gallagher. That pattern was repeated as transfers were being passed around, bringing his total vote to 60% against Gallagher’s 40%. It was a resounding victory, and musicians and artists had played a major role, both by supporting and helping to fund the campaign, and also by making their voices heard.

For the unruly gang gathered on the left in Ireland, and their bohemian brothers and sisters, the sweet smell of winning a major political battle was intoxicating. The same coalition, more or less, went to work on the Same Sex Marriage Referendum in 2015 and – later still – on the referendum to remove the 8th Amendment to the constitution, which had been designed to prevent abortions ever being carried out in Ireland.

Given the importance of that issue to the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church – and to the God squad who attempt to enforce their ideological prejudices on the population as a whole – the victory margin for the Repeal the 8th campaign was magnificently emphatic. 66.4% voted to allow abortion in Ireland. Twenty years previously, that would have been unthinkable.

Artists and musicians played their part in those referendum campaigns too. They rallied the troops, urged their followers to get our and vote, posted on social media and generally campaigned with real conviction.

All of this signalled a decisive shift among local musicians in relation to expressing their views, whether socially or politically. The idea of singing dumb was quietly consigned to the dustbin of history. A taboo had been broken. The eagle had landed. By now it was clear that Irish musicians and artists could wield a decisive political influence.

And that breakthrough effectively uncovered fresh ground, on which Irish folk, rock, hip hop, blues and electronica artists could gather as a tribe. And they did, for a start almost universally supporting Ukraine, following the murderous invasion launched by Vladimir Putin in February 2022. But also standing against racism – and for human rights and solidarity with the vulnerable and the oppressed.

That new-found solidarity has been immensely important in shaping Ireland’s response to the horrific assault carried out by the Israeli army on Palestinian people in Gaza, following the outrage committed by Hamas in murdering over a thousand Israeli citizens, on October 7 and taking over 250 hostages. A series of gigs has seen dozens of Irish artists openly supporting the Palestinian cause and clearly denouncing the campaign of genocide for which the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Israeli army, are directly responsible. The gigs also raised significant funds to assist with meeting the humanitarian needs of the people of Gaza.

The instinct to take a principled stand against the grotesque excesses of the Israeli war machine spans across all genres of music in Ireland.

Irish musicians are acknowledging, individually and collectively, that the failure to take a stand would represent a form of collusion. They want none of it. And so they are refusing to be silenced.

Irish artists in Austin, Texas. Copyright Ed Murphy.

Their resolute opposition to the deeply-rooted genocidal intent of the Israeli government, found a powerful platform in SXSW. The only person capable of forcing Benjamin Netanyahu to end the immoral and inhumane massacre of innocent civilians in Gaza (and the West Bank) is the President of the United States of America, Joe Biden. And so, in the week leading up to St. Patrick’s Day, to have Irish musicians making headlines across the world, by boycotting SXSW because of the involvement of arms manufacturers, and the ongoing supply of arms to Israel by the US, represents a powerful new line in the sand of which those around Biden will be aware.

RUNNING AMOK

It is worth remembering that Irish musicians are not alone – and that Jewish revulsion from the Israeli murder machine is increasingly being voiced. One of the most significant political interventions by any artist – or artists – in years occurred at the recent Oscars ceremony. When the feature film The Zone Of Interest was announced as the winner of the Best International Film award, the producer James Wilson and director Jonathan Glazer arrived onstage with something vital to say.

The film – based on the Martin Amis novel – is inspired by the real life of Rudolf Höss, who was the Commandant in charge of the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War. And it deals with how human beings can – as the Nazis did during what became known as the Holocaust – continue to live ordinary, domesticated lives, even as they perpetrated the most unspeakable horrors.

Both James Wilson and Jonathan Glazer are Jewish. In conscience, they decided that they could not remain silent on the parallel horrors being inflicted today on the people of Gaza.

“All our choices are made,” Jonathan Glazer said of his role as a film-maker, “to reflect and confront us in the present. Not to say, ‘Look what they did then’, rather ‘Look what we do now’. Our film shows where dehumanisation leads at its worst.”

That was just the start.

“Right now we stand here,” he added pointedly, speaking for both himself and James Wilson, “as men who refute their Jewishness, and the Holocaust, being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October 7 in Israel, or the ongoing attack in Gaza.”

It was a powerful moment, in which the narrative for so long peddled by the Israeli government was turned on its head. The appalling reality of the Holocaust, and the mass murder of millions of Jewish people – as well as homosexuals and Romanies – can never be used as an excuse for Israel perpetrating murderous, genocidal butchery, but should rather act as a brake.

We know what it was like. Never again means by anyone, including us.

The bravery of Jonathan Glazer – speaking those truths to power, in a moment that would normally have been a celebratory one for him and James Wilson as film-makers – was inspiring. And it may well have been a factor in the decision of Chuck Schumer – the US’s highest ranking Jewish politician – to break ranks with Joe Biden and denounce the extremism of the Netanyahu government a few days later.

All of this, of course, is happening far too slowly: people are dying in Gaza as I write. But there is no denying that the mood has shifted significantly and that we are perhaps closer to both a ceasefire, and – hopefully in its wake – to the crafting of the kind of path forward based on the principles of human rights, equality and justice, that might bring an end to the devastating conflict in the region.

There is no point in naivety. It is impossible to be optimistic while the Israeli army is still running amok, murdering innocent civilians, under the transparently see-through cover of “going after Hamas.” But the truth is that Irish musicians – at home and in Austin, Texas – have played a significant part in changing the direction of travel. They can all stand tall, knowing that they have done the right thing. And we can be proud of them – and more generally of Ireland’s role, and of the role of President Michael D. Higgins, in striving to end the campaign of genocide.

Now, we need to keep the pressure on. It might just work.