Hozier addresses world politics at Boston Calling performance

At Hozier’s performance on day three of Boston Calling, he didn’t shy away from world politics, touching on the importance of topics such as LGBTQIA+ rights, the women’s suffrage movement and apartheid in South Africa. He also made vague mentions to the Israel-Hamas war.

During his over-five-minute monologue, he talked about the importance of people showing up for one another, the legacy of protest and the revolution of love and kindness.

Prior to the monologue, Hozier had several other moments with fans including warming up their vocals and teasing one man in the crowd with a t-shirt cannon, saying “It’s like this man has torn a limb off Jack the Pumpkin King” and comparing it to “the world’s longest rainstick.”

Being in Boston, he connected his speech to the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution, talking about the importance of the movements.

The Boston Tea Party, which happened Dec. 16, 1773, is one of the nation’s most well-known events and propelled the country down the road to revolution.

His speech stressed the importance of kindness to one another.

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“I just think these small acts of kindness, these small acts of love and solidarity, I genuinely think they hold the world together — in no sort of lofty, no sort of highfalutin, no sort of high concept way. I genuinely think it holds the world together. The small ways that we show up every single day and the way that we witness in our mess, in our best mates and in our friends, and we see it in our parents,” Hozier said.

• Read more: Shoved, body slammed: Some Boston Calling attendees called Day 3 unsafe

Hozier also vaguely touched upon the Israel-Hamas war.

“We wouldn’t want our neighbors to live with racism or the fear of hatred around the corner. We wouldn’t want them. We wouldn’t want better for them. We wouldn’t want them to live with Islamophobia. We wouldn’t want them to have to face antisemitism. And I believe the core of people on the whole is good. I genuinely do,” Hozier said.

Hozier continued, adding that people “wouldn’t want to see the enabling of war going on” or the “kind of violence that we’re seeing on our TV screens,” but rather safety and security for everyone and Palestine freed from violence.

On Oct. 7, Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. Israel, vowing to stamp out Hamas, attacked Gaza, leading to tens of thousands of deaths, many of them civilians. Estimates vary on the exact number of Palestinian deaths, and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs puts it at about 36,000 as of May. An additional 81,000 Palestinians have been reported injured, the United Nations reports.

Protests and encampments related to the Israel-Hamas war have played out on campuses across the country, and Massachusetts is no exception. Many of the student actions have resulted in suspensions and in some cases arrests.

At the end of his performance, Hozier brought out a LGBTQIA+ flag and threw his fist up in the air.

While Hozier was preaching about kindness, concert-goers said they felt unsafe due to the amount of people at the festival.

“There was just nowhere to go. So everyone was just kind of being like moved in a wave. And all I could think was, if God forbid there was some kind of panic that we were going to get trampled,” concert-goer Samantha Baron said.