The festival is a week, including club gigs. One of these club gigs on the opening Monday night included Nadah El Shazly, who spoke about the aid boat which set off for Gaza the day before.
Inside the entrance of the main Parc del Forum site, the festival commissioned a 15 metre tunnel installation, ‘Unsilence Gaza’. Darkness and war, bombing sounds. Early on the first full festival day, Thursday CMAT played to a packed amphitheatre of about 10,000 people and to finish, fist pumped her chest, declaring “Free Palestine” to huge cheers from the crowd. Other acts represented included Sabres of Paradise with a Palestine flag T-shirt and Wolf Alice with the flag on their guitar, playing the main stage to tens of thousands.
Black Country, New Road featured watermelon stickers on their guitar; the only act I saw on the amazon stage who made reference to Palestine. Them being the only ones I saw using the watermelon censorship symbol made me wonder if the two things were related. LCD Soundsystem playing to maybe 50,000 people featured Palestine flag facepaint and the same colours for different synthesizer kit parts, artfully filmed from above, projected on the jumbo screens.
On the Friday, an Israeli attendee used my keffiyeh as a pretext to harass me… “They (Palestinians) are killing us… I don’t like them… We are friends aren’t we?… Let me explain”
“No, we are not friends… I’ve heard it all before… I’ve already told you I’m trying to enjoy the music”.
The next act, on a different stage was TV On The Radio and among thousands of people, the Israeli chose to stand directly in front of us. There was a keffiyeh worn on stage, Palestine flag stuck on guitar, “Free Palestine” lyrics incorporated into the song ‘Could You’ and an impromptu crowd chant of Free Palestine. The next act were Palestinian, Shabjdeed & Al Nather, which was some atmosphere, with flags waved in the crowd and afterwards, on leaving the warehouse venue, “Falasteen Arabiya” chanting with the handclaps. I didn’t watch the Israeli musical acts this week.
From the main stage, Fontaines DC (Dublin City) appeared to draw as big a crowd as any act all weekend. Their video backing included the message ‘ISRAEL IS COMMITTING GENOCIDE USE YOUR VOICE’ and ‘FREE PALESTINE’, the crowd chants as vociferous as a rally. On this final day at the main site, we stayed until kicking out time at daybreak, looking out from the top of the amphitheatre to the Mediterranean, knowing the opposite shore of the sea included Gaza. The DJ’s final song was by Sister Sledge, one of whom I heard say from a stage last year “Think of the hostages”, but not any murdered Palestinians, let alone Palestinian captives in Israel.
The final evening of city gigs included Kneecap at the Apolo. One of them showed up on the balcony beforehand, balaclava’d next to a ‘protestar no és terrorisme’ banner. And protesting against Israel and advocating for Palestine they still are. They mentioned how they and all the Irish groups pulled out of SXSW festival last year, protesting an Israel linked sponsor, who subsequently ended their sponsorship. Kneecap didn’t mention how also last year they crossed a picket line of over 100 hundred acts who pulled out of The Great Escape Festival in Brighton over Barclay’s sponsorship. A success, given Barclays recent withdrawal from UK music festival sponsorship. Hopefully Kneecap trumpeting their BDS credentials indicates they’ve turned over a new leaf and are now genuinely about it, especially with the attention they get. For sure their attitude toward the legal issues they face was inspirational- jokes! Certainly not letting the bastards get them down in an environment of increased state repression. It was the highest crowd takeup of Free Free Palestine chanting, pretty much everyone.
To finish the week, Los Campesinos! hung two banners, one in support of trans people, including healthcare and one calling for the end to the occupation of Palestine. To go with that, the lyrics to ‘Long Throes’ were adapted to ‘Will they vote for the bastards who would sooner annex Palestine?
NB Featured image: Image of the three members of theband Kneecap including one weating an Irish triclour as a balaclava