The French music festival Rock En Seine has lost €40,000 in state funding because it has Kneecap on its bill, with the mayor of the local council in Saint-Cloud stating that the Northern Irish rap trio’s presence makes the event political and therefore not something he wants to support.
Festival director Mathieu Ducos notes that, when his team booked Kneecap last autumn, they “weren’t the talk of the town, except for good reasons”. But he is standing by the booking, despite the recent controversies surrounding the band and their on-stage support for Palestine, and the resulting loss in subsidy from his event’s local authority.
And while that decision will have a financial impact on the festival this year, Ducos says he hopes “the history we’ve managed to build and weave together” with the local community in Saint-Cloud “doesn’t end with this dispute and the vision we have of this group”.
Rock En Seine takes place at Parc de Saint-Cloud, to the South West of Paris, within the commune of Saint-Cloud. Its local council was providing €40,000 in funding for the event, a relatively small part of the festival's reported €17 million budget, but still a decent sized grant.
Confirming the council was withdrawing that support because of Kneecap's involvement in Rock En Seine this year, major Éric Berdoati said “we subsidise cultural initiatives, not political ones. When it’s no longer in line with our objectives, we don’t fund it”.
Kneecap have courted controversy for years, but came to more mainstream and global attention after their set at Coachella earlier this year, during which they displayed very pro-Palestine and anti-Israel statements.
Footage then emerged of the group seeming to endorse proscribed terrorist organisations Hamas and Hezbollah at previous UK shows, with band member Mo Chara being subsequently charged for allegedly displaying a Hezbollah flag at a London gig.
While some have commended the band for using their platform to promote the Palestinian cause, others have criticised their on-stage conduct and called for them to be removed from festival line-ups. Politicians have joined in with that debate, including in France.
According to Euronews, Valérie Pécresse, the right-leaning President of the Regional Council for Île-de-France, the region in which Saint-Cloud sits, wrote on X in May that Kneecap “should be withdrawn from French music festivals” while the criminal proceedings involving Mo Chara are underway.
Meanwhile left wing politician Xavier Brunschvicg has defended the band, stating that the criticism is simply the result of Kneecap “taking a stand against what is happening in Gaza”. Berdoati’s decision on the funding for Rock En Seine, he added, was the mayor “giving in to demands from his most conservative voters”.