Agitating People Into Action: Declan Welsh and The Decadent West – ‘Walk A Mile In Gaza’ Review

Words: Josh Parsonage

Seeking to educate and agitate its listener into action on Palestine, ‘Walk A Mile in Gaza’ takes you by the hand and drags you through the blood soaked soil of Israeli apartheid, leaving you a different person on the other side. The track is the first of two from Declan Welsh and The Decadent West which aims at raising money for medical aid in Gaza, and a tune of such a quality will have no trouble doing so.

‘Walk A Mile in Gaza’ opens with its chorus riff, a light but deeply emotional combination which tugs on the heart strings with the pain buried within it obvious yet importantly, it’s groovy and entices movement from the listener, leaving it undercut with a feeling of hope and a call for action. Welsh immediately takes the track onto the ground with the ordinary people of Gaza, the civilians who suffer, citing that ‘Every day, hell rains on Gaza’ and proceeding to name the teachers, the doctors, and the ‘ten thousand child martyrs’, reminding us of the Palestinians who have been brutally murdered in this Israeli onslaught, all with Western complicity, and yet when they fight back we ‘condemn the intifada’.

The song continues to regurgitate the difference in our lives to theirs, emphasising how easy it is to be silent when we will never have to suffer something so gruesome and unimaginably painful: ‘From the comfort of the throne built on the bones of those who struggle you’ll never know, and if you could only feel the pain of Al-Khalil, you’d know that it was real’. The band cleverly echo both “you’ll never know/you’d know that it was real” in a way that feels like the western guilty conscious taunting us for our complicity in genocide. A fill then takes us into the chorus: ‘Walk a mile in Gaza, walk a mile in Ramallah, walk a mile in Nazareth….’, these simple lines carrying that same all important message that we can never understand what it’s like, we will never have to walk a mile in those shoes, and are therefore in no place to make comment, only to take a stand.

The track continues to discuss in its second verse the condemnation of Palestinian
resistance whilst wilfully ignoring the reason for it in the first place: ‘How many times do we have to see this very same thing, before we recognise that its cause before effect’. Welsh goes onto make the declaration that: ‘The only peace will come from Jews and Arabs hand in hand’ before the chorus kicks back into play. Across what is an emotional track, trying its best to broadcast seventy-six years of pain caused by ethnic cleansing its best moment comes in the bridge, all that anger is amassed
and culminates into a brutal outburst in the bridge. The guitar effects become heavier and frontman Declan Welsh shakes off his signature poetic style for a description of an event which cannot be put beautifully or well-worded: “Her name was Hind Rajab, they took everything she had, they burned her house they tried to escape the bombs, they killed her family in a bullet riddled car, she called for an ambulance and they killed the paramedics, she was found dead alongside them, six years fucking old”. Welsh goes on to call into question the classic Israeli defences of these actions ‘Do you feel safe/Have you exercised your right to self-defence.’

A final rendition of the chorus brings the track to a close. ‘Walk a Mile in Gaza’ is beyond being a phenomenal piece of music manages to convey its point with a plethora of methods, with its brutal storytelling and cleverly put together instrumentals, and as previously mentioned all profit made from the track is going to be donated to medical aid in Gaza. Aew weeks prior to the release of this song the band, alongside Unite Hospitality and other acts like Tina Sandwich and Frankie Boyle, organised a gig at St. Luke’s in Glasgow for the same cause, successfully managing to send two surgeons to Gaza.

Declan and the band have been long time advocates for Palestinian liberation, with Welsh having visited the West Bank around a decade ago. The band’s debut album features a song about Declan’s experiences by the title of ‘Different Strokes’, and another track is on its way soon so keep your eyes peeled.