"It's not about adding celebrity to a cause. "I figured that he was drawing attention to the barrier in the right way, but for me to go there would have looked like a cheap publicity stunt," he says. In 2005, he almost accompanied graffiti artist Banksy on a trip to the West Bank. Give me a couple of drinks and you'll hear about Palestine and Israel and Robert Mugabe and all that stuff."ĭel Naja met the Hoping Foundation's Karma Nabulsi three years ago, when he DJed at a benefit concert headlined by Primal Scream. I've got views, but they're more pub views. Beside him, Marshall is sleepy-eyed and sprawling, his speech as relaxed as his posture. Perched on a sofa in his Bristol studio, Del Naja is small and sharp- featured, talking quickly and intensely about the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which paved the way for the creation of Israel, and the perils of the two-state solution.
Even if it is musicians acting like a bunch of idiots nobody's going to take seriously." "Someone's going to take us seriously," Marshall says with a teasing chuckle. "We're saying we have to solve these problems, and they're manifold and complex, but let's start somewhere, please. "We're not putting a flag up saying we believe in one side or another," says Del Naja. Today, if you Google Massive Attack + Palestine, the first hit is a Guardian news story: "Israelis launch massive attack".) During the first Gulf war, under pressure from their record label, they shortened their name to Massive. And even before they found politics, politics found them. In 1990s songs such as Safe From Harm and Spying Glass, you can hear concerns about security, surveillance and the creeping anxiety of urban living - a prophetic soundtrack for what Del Naja calls the "fear factory" of modern Britain. But this curious development is not an overnight one it began in the autumn of 2002, when Massive's Robert "3D" Del Naja, along with his friend Damon Albarn, began vocally opposing the invasion of Iraq, back when most bands maintained a sheepish silence. To those who still think of Massive Attack as the architects of modern soul classics such as Unfinished Sympathy, reluctant pioneers of trip-hop and the soundtrack to countless late nights, their current status as one of the most politically active bands in Britain is somewhat unexpected. "So we had this conversation and, er," he grins apologetically, "she's not coming." You can sympathise with the woman's surprise.
"And she actually stepped back and said, 'Oh, I don't feel comfortable with that because I'm pro-Israeli,'" says Marshall. He told her it was a charity that funds community projects for Palestinian refugee children.
Marshall told her there would be three shows this month in aid of the Hoping Foundation. She asked when Massive Attack were next playing live. The band are due to play a homecoming gig in Bristol on Saturday, and Craig has predicted Banksy will make a return too.The other day Grant Marshall, the Massive Attack member better known as Daddy G, was collecting his daughter from school when he fell into conversation with another parent, an Israeli woman. In 2008 Banksy produced 14 stencils across New Orleans marking the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.ĭel Naja co-wrote the soundtrack to the New Orleans-themed documentary Trouble the Water during the same time frame.Īlso in April 2003 Banksy's work appears in Melbourne, the same city Massive Attack had played the month before.ĭel Naja also appeared in Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop speaking about the pair's friendship from his early days in the city.Īnd the graffiti artist provides the foreword to book 3D and the Art of Massive Attack, which was released last year. Similar patterns are reported in 2006 when Massive Attack embarked on a US tour, which included a slot at the Hollywood Bowl, LA, a week before Banksy's Barely Legal exhibition in the city. Later on that tour Massive Attack head to Boston's Chinatown a day after a Banksy appeared there. Massive Attack played Toronto a week later before more new Banksy murals were reported there. According to Craig's investigation six Banksy murals were reported in San Francisco on after Massive Attack performed a two-night stint in the city on April 25 and 27.
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