Hurling insults

His best known song - entitled Dirty C**ts - is an expletive-strewn tirade against the occupants of Dáil Éireann. Kilkenny hip-hop artist and hurling fan Captain Moonlight tells Tony Clayton-Leawhy he loves politics, but not politicians.

FROM Kilkenny, and aged 35, Captain Moonlight (aka Kevin Spratt) might not be in the full flower of his youth, but his two albums to date - Agroculture Pts 1 and 2 - easily beat the young hip-hop guns at their own game by virtue of his sense of word play and musical knowledge.

Spratt is a big fan of hurling (well he is from Kilkenny) and his latest album features hurleys in the shape of an anarchy sign. In his music, Spratt is a self-confessed "hurler on the ditch", reading situations from the sidelines.

He is one of a small number of spoken-word or hip-hop practitioners now performing around the country - including Collie and Jinx Lennon - who specialise in anti-authoritarian or "anti-suit" lyrics. Though in a quintessentially Irish idiom, their work is in the best tradition of hip-hop, in that they seldom get played on radio because they swear too much, and in some cases because their subject matter is too inflammatory.

Hip-hop with a broad Kilkenny accent might sound like a dodgy proposition, but Moonlight's style is astute, insightful and funny. He is currently writing and recording Agroculture Pt 3.

WHERE DID YOUR POLITICAL AWARENESS COME FROM?

"When you grow up in a country like Ireland there is always a certain amount of political awareness. As a child you don't necessarily have what you'd call a political awareness - you are fed opinions as you grow up. That's the same in any country. What started me to write lyrics in a political vein was Public Enemy; it was a shock to the system to hear a group in another part of the world talking about issues from the black experience in America and what was going on there, and approaching it from a very in-your-face perspective, pulling no punches.

"That really suckered me; we spend a lot of time skirting around issues, ducking and diving about how we say things, almost afraid to be quoted on things or pigeonholed into a viewpoint. And then suddenly a group comes out and says things the way they see them; not necessarily that every point they have is true or actually even right, but it's a valid, coherent perspective.

"Now you couldn't equate my growing up with people growing up in certain parts of America, but you can see other perspectives in your own society that have certain similarities. I wasn't raised in what you would call a dingy working-class environment, but as I got older I started questioning things. When I was younger, about 19, I decided I didn't want a regular job.

"After dropping out of a sound-engineering course I found myself on the dole for a number of years. Eventually, I went back to school; I got into reading a lot more and out of the whole teenage heavy drinking buzz, and became much more interested in certain things - people such as Noam Chomsky, Irish history, philosophy, and going to anti-war and reclaim the streets protests."

DO MOST LYRIC WRITERS PUSSY-FOOT AROUND THE BIG ISSUES?

"Most do, I reckon. There are a lot of interesting people in Ireland - back in the day Scary Eire, and now people like Jinx Lennon, Collie, Urban Intelligence. These are people that come out with interesting things and whose perspectives are at least different. Most are underground acts, but making money isn't necessarily the point. It's good if you can make a basic wage or enough money to pay your rent.

"Even at that, music shouldn't be written from that financial perspective, because once you start thinking about what you say to people, then you're doing it for the sake of impressing them, and something gets lost, gets muddled.

"It can kill what could have been really worthwhile. When I did the song Dirty C**ts in demo form, some people got hold of it and some radio stations got in touch. And they asked me if I had written the song with the thought of attaining some kind of notoriety, yet I didn't, because when I was writing the song I didn't even know if I'd get the demo finished. I wasn't thinking beyond that. If I'd written it to make waves it probably wouldn't have sounded as good or effective. Whether it's a good song is up to other people to decide, but it wouldn't have been as effective to me."

WHAT DO YOU ASPIRE TO IN YOUR LYRICS?

"It's a very raw, basic and simple approach - the basic premise is to actually talk to someone, in the way you might in a pub, or with a group of people. Another thing is to aspire to something that actually means something.

"I think that most art is not really worth talking about or getting into if it isn't saying anything in the first place. It doesn't have to be radical or extremist in every sense, but broadly speaking if it is saying something then it will provoke something, so generally it will be a bit more edgy than your normal everyday TV-diet discourse bullshit. Anything worthwhile has something a little bit more to it than that. It'll probably be a bit more honest, less censored when it's coming from yourself."

ARE ALL POLITICIANS CORRUPT?

"I would never be so cynical to say that all politicians don't aspire to something better in that way. But it's like any party-political system - it just can't be trusted. It's inherent in any group of people who want to think freely or outside the box - you have to be suspicious of anyone who is trying to acquire a position of power for whatever reason. At the same time there are people, locally and nationally, who seem to have the best interests of their community or country at heart.

"But it's hard to find those people in a position of power at the moment. Most of them tend to be elected in opposition or are independents. They very rarely occupy positions of power, and if they do they tend to get compromised by it. I find it hard to believe anything they say.

"The heart of the political system is self-serving. People who go for election are people who need money because they need to canvass for election. When you need money behind your electoral campaigns you need people to give you money. When you need people to give you money they have to be people with money. And when they're people with money you have to return favours.

"Innocent campaign donations are never innocent, I think. No one is going to give you money for nothing."

Captain Moonlight plays McHugh's, Drogheda, Co Louth, tonight, supporting Jinx Lennon; Cyprus Avenue, Cork on February 1st, supporting Super Extra Bonus Party; Sugar Club, Dublin, on February 7th (supporting Jinx); and Whelan's Dublin on February 9th (supporting SEBP).

Agroculture Pt. 2 - Return of the Barnstormers is available from selected record shops around Ireland, includingTower Records, Road Records and All-City in Dublin. It is also for sale at gigs and at www.myspace.com/captainmoonlightkilkenny