Irish musician CMAT has criticised RTÉ for cutting Lankum’s acceptance speech at the Choice Music Prize in which lead singer Ian Lynch spoke out about the crisis in Palestine. The band picked up the award for their fourth album ‘False Lankum’ which triumphed over other nominees such as The Murder Capital, Kojaque and CMAT. Lynch used the opportunity to demand action against Israel and to express solidarity with Palestine. RTÉ broadcast the speech but initially cut it from their podcast of the ceremony. RTÉ, which sponsors the award, blamed the automatic cut off time of 11:15pm, but are providing a full audio recording soon.
Lynch began the speech by stating that “To be honest, every day seems more and more hopeless than the one before it and we are trying to appeal to the consciences of people who may or may not have one to begin with. There’s a lot of despair out there. Maybe we can put enough pressure on the government to introduce some actual meaningful sanctions on Israel.” He went on to suggest “occupations, direct action, boycotts”, urging people to “go into the supermarket, find every Israeli product you can find, f*** it in the bin.”
This isn’t the first time RTÉ has been criticised for the handling of political messaging. Last September, they aired an interview with British comedy actor John Cleese, who criticised Irish language speakers, then asked for the clip to be removed from their podcast. The broadcaster was accused of allowing censorship and pandering to the actor.
Despite the criticism, Lankum’s call to action has been echoed by other artists across the music industry with support continuing to gain momentum on social media. Meanwhile, CMAT was recently nominated for International Artist of the Year at the 2024 Brit Awards, and took the opportunity to speak about her love for Kylie Minogue. She described Kylie as the “love of my life and the most important woman. I do think we should have a religion dedicated to her”
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