There’s a jangly excitement in the Black Tent at midnight, as a packed crowd of thousands awaits a show by Kneecap at Helsinki’s Flow Festival. “Free, free Palestine!” the crowd chants, amid fluttering Palestinian flags.
The Belfast hip-hop trio has racked up controversy with comments about Israel and British politics, some eloquent and well-reasoned, others foolish and immature. The trio, which raps in Irish and English over EDM beats, is known for uproarious live shows laced with jibes and political barbs. One of its members, the keffiyeh-wearing Mo Chara, was due in court about a week later on terrorism charges for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag and calling for the death of Tory MPs, which he denies (his next hearing is in late September).
For the preceding weeks, the Finnish media was consumed with debate over the festival’s alleged links to Israel, via KKR, the world’s second-largest investment firm. Last year, KKR bought Superstruct, which owns more than 80 festivals including Flow. The firm also has investments linked to Israel.
Research by the main Helsinki daily and the business transparency NGO Finnwatch found that the KKR’s involvement with Israel amounts to a fraction of its $800bn portfolio. But that didn’t stop several Finnish stars calling for a boycott. Even so, all the scheduled artists decided to play the festival after all, using their appearances to raise awareness and to encourage donations to Palestinian relief.
But it only drew more attention to the Kneecap set, and to that of another Irish band, Fontaines DC, both outspoken about the Gaza crisis. Kneecap didn’t hold back. They led the crowd in chanting “Fuck KKR”, as they had a day earlier at the Øya Festival in Oslo. They also projected the phrase “Netanyahu is a war criminal” – which they’d also projected on to the façade of the Israeli embassy in Dublin last autumn – as well as “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people” and “it is being enabled by the Finnish government, who arm Israel with advanced weaponry”.
The pop star Pehmoaino also made headlines for an Instagram post saying she was “ashamed” to play at Flow because of the KKR link, but that she couldn’t afford not to. The festival director and others pointed out that she’s on a record label (Sony) and using a platform (Meta) that are both far more active in Israel than KKR. In the end she performed, donating her fee to the Finnish Palestine Network, displaying a Palestinian flag onstage and a QR code with a link to donate to relief NGOs.
Many performers gave impassioned speeches about the situation, including the Palestinian singer Nemat Battah and the Danish jazz band Alawari, who said they’d stayed up until 2am the night before agonising over whether to cancel their gig. Meanwhile, the festival issued a statement explicitly condemning “Israel’s horrifying genocide and war crimes in the Gaza Strip”. The subject of starvation in Gaza haunted much of the festival, even as the hip crowd dined on gourmet vegan food (meat is banned) and drank at the champagne bar.
Obviously, Netanyahu and his henchmen don’t know or care whether a few people boycott a music festival. But he might care if Finland and the other Nordic countries cancelled their arms deals with Israel. Or if the EU suspends its trade agreement or imposes harsh sanctions on Israeli politicians – measures that Finland’s main opposition party, the SDP, have now demanded.
Many of the SDP’s key figures, including former PM Sanna Marin, were spotted in the festival crowds that filled an old gasworks and a decommissioned coal plant in Helsinki’s Suvilahti district. I think I also saw the party’s current chair and likely next PM, Antti Lindtman, among the throng. A few days after the festival, Lindtman blasted the right wing government for its inaction over Gaza, blaming it on the staunchly pro-Israel Christian Democratic Party, for whom “denying Palestinian rights has become a direct religious doctrine”.
Threatening the government with a vote of no confidence, Lindtman demanded that it put pressure on the EU to sanction the Israeli leaders “responsible for the indiscriminate killing of children and civilians”, and recognise Palestine. That might be a virtue-signalling move as abstract as boycotting a music festival. But history shows that pressure – cultural, political and economic – can bring change.
Wif Stenger is a US-born journalist, editor and translator based in Finland
