The efforts to expunge punk-rap duo Bob Vylan entirely from the public record are remarkable, disturbing, and appalling in equal measure. This week, the controversy surrounding their anti-IDF chanting at the Glastonbury festival has seen the duo widely condemned across the board, dropped from their talent agency, and their US visas for an upcoming tour revoked. A slew of UK gigs and festival appearances have also been scrapped.
This attempted erasure of Vylan’s career seems much more coordinated and precise than even that of the attempt to derail local iconoclasts Kneecap recently. We are seeing the default kill switch of Western society kick in, where institutional racism still deems that a black man raising his head above the parapet will be silenced, with his views and (God forbid) influence segregated and locked away.
Whilst everyone was getting their 5-day-old festival knickers in a twist over the IDF chanting, some may have missed what was the angriest and most impassioned performances of the entire weekend. The duo’s ‘I Heard You Want Your Country Back’, the first song of a now infamously banned and subsequently bootlegged set, blew the tempered glass straight off the phone screens across the country, as new fans and disgruntled conservative types were engrossed in equal measure. The track went viral.
On the mainland, Reform UK’s Rupert Lowe and Darren Grimes were fingering their screens furiously in irate response, while the usual suspects here were chiming in too. Singer Bobby Vylan and Drummer Bobbie Vylan managed to annoy all the right people, and the blow-up of Bob Vylan’s profile has been phenomenal.
The pair released ‘I heard you want your country back’ four years ago, and the YouTube version has gathered a healthy, if modest, 130,000 views. The live version last Saturday, was a different animal entirely. Frontman Bobby could not be contained in his wild and flailing rage, propelling up and down the stage before eventually penetrating the bloody heaving mass of the crowd itself.
‘I heard you want your country back… uh-uh, you can’t have that.’
‘I heard you want your country back… shut the f**k up!’
To balk at the invective would be silly. Frontman Bobby was (and is!) a highly talented poet before the band Bob Vylan took off, and the group themselves have been critically acclaimed too, winning MOBO and Kerrang! Awards in their break through year of 2022. Interestingly, the duo’s MOBO win was also the first-ever award for a Best Alternative Music Act at the ceremony.
‘I Heard You Want Your Country Back’ moves with this progressive and innovative foundation, fusing a beautiful punk bounciness along with its lyrically rooted grime. It is a stunning bastard child of a bass-less Skunk Anansie and the industrial chaos of Alec Empire. Although if you approached Mr and Mr Vylan to suggest such a dissection, they may well turn round and tell you to ‘shut the f**k up.’
And that would be fine by me.
But what about me? What race-related grievances could a white boy from County Tyrone possibly have to share against the very real and lived experiences of a black rapper from Ipswich?
Ireland, north and south, has been having an issue for several years with right-wing ideologues taking over the online space for bored, angry, vulnerable, and impoverished people. Worryingly, over 70% of online traffic in the Irish Republic has been infested by a mix of artificial and anonymous accounts, all designed to drive enthusiasm for the Irish right-wing front. Within this space, the Irish tricolour itself has been seized for a reimagined (and corrupted) sense of Irish nationalism.
Indeed, cementing itself once again as the holder of niche positions on these islands, Northern Ireland has seen its scourge of sectarianism diminish in the online realm, with race hate narratives now strongly featuring across all social media in Our Wee Country.
It was barely three weeks ago when racially motivated protests brought some towns across the province to a standstill. Plenty folks tangled up within this world of ‘legitimate concerns’ are absolutely ordinary decent people at heart. There is no doubt. But the rest of us remember an Ireland from the late 1990s, when it appeared that the use of casual use of terms like ‘darkie’, and ‘N-word’ nursery rhymes – which had been thrown about casually for years – was finally and mercifully peaking.
The Rubberbandits would go on to ruthlessly mock this eternal Irish preoccupation with The Other, in their superb song ‘Black Man’.
A byproduct of the post Good Friday Agreement era seemed, to me, to pave the way for racial tolerance and acceptance. Maybe that’s utterly rose-tinted nonsense on my part. Either way, we now shudder at the realisation that the discourse of racism hasn’t gone away you know.
Bobby Vylan caused a further stir among the Right in his Glasto set when he went on to say that ‘we are not pacifist punks, we are the violent punks… because sometimes you gotta get your message across with violence because that is the only language that some people speak, unfortunately.’ Again, Vylan wasn’t being literal – a distinction some people have not been able or willing to make this past week. Rather, the bloody protest seen in the theatre of ‘I Hear You Want Your Country Back’ captures the pain and anguish of a fractured land better than any smashed window or angry tweet every could. If you look closely, a final, desperate plea for shared ideals is found within his song:
‘I heard you want your country back… well, shit… me too.’ There’s a yearning pathos for us all there, but, just like the cramped and crowded Glastonbury fields, no one’s really listening and no one’s willing to give any more room.
And there is the pity.
Jason is a proud native of Tyrone, living and working in County Down. A teacher by trade, he has been writing for the past 15 years on all things Brexit, Pets, Irish Politics, Family Life, and anything that’ll jump out and burrow deep inside.
More words: www.bamni.co.uk/author/jasonconlon/
Twitter: @conlon_jase
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