Willzee: 'I'm born a full Traveller, but I grew up in a settled environment'
Traveller rapper Willzee: 'I’m a wordsmith, but I’m also an itinerant rapper.'
Willzee, the musician, artist, screenwriter and activist known by his given name William Casey, is one of those multi-hyphenates for whom defining a single job title proves almost as difficult as creating the work itself.
“I’m a wordsmith,” he says, definitively. “But I’m also an itinerant rapper.” Casey was born in Weston, Limerick and entered the foster care system early.
At four, he arrived at O'Briensbridge to begin a new life, one under the care of “the greatest foster parents that I could have ever asked for”. However, there, the real identity work began.
“I'm born a full Traveller, but I grew up in a settled environment,” he says. “So I often felt I was either too settled for the Travellers or too Traveller for the settled people.”
It is this push-and-pull that acts as a north star for Casey, who cites The 1963 Report of the Commission on Itinerancy as both a dogma and a battle-cry.
“Travellers’ voices were not heard when the government compiled that report,” he says. “As such, they were classed as a problem. And if I am to be a proud, Irish Traveller, then I know enough to call myself an itinerant, because that policy still exists, and so that’s what I am in the eyes of the government.”
He pauses. “You know, I could say that I'm a passionate and poetic young wordsmith from the Travelling community, one who is trying to break down stigmas and open dialogue… but at the end of the day, that’s not how I’m seen. And if we don't bring these focuses to the forefront, who will?”
Willzee’s search for the answers to that question began at Limerick College of Further Education, where he studied music production, music technology and sound production, under the mentorship of a lecturer he claims as the Willzee catalyst.
“John Lillis [Mynameisjohn of rap group Rusangano Family] was my lecturer at the time,” he says. “And he said to me, ‘If you finish the year in college, I will make you a beat.’ I wasn’t even rapping at the time, I was just going in because I had an interest in music.
"So I did, and he did. And then he told me that he thought I should get into this thing called spoken word, and that he thought I’d be really good at it. Long story short, that was the beginning of something that I never knew existed in me.”
All throughout his young life, Casey wrote. In the care system, he was encouraged to engage in reflective diary writing, a mechanic he brought to the Innocent Boy, his semiautobiographical film which won the 2019 Virgin Media Discovers Short Film Competition and premiered at the Dublin International Film Festival in February 2020.
Soon after, with a renewed sense of craft, Casey released his first full length album Kuti’Gris (‘piece of the heart’ in Traveller language Gammon) a piece which led him to win the Music, Arts and Culture Award in the Irish Traveller Pride Awards 2022 and go on to work with a variety of youth and Traveller groups across the country.
“I always felt there was something more in me,” he says. “And so that’s what’s driven me to make use of my creative skills left, right and centre.”
The latest fruit of Willzee’s work is his new album, Deep Tinker, a 10-track record, created and completed with producer Enda Gallery and contributions from Steo Wall, Sharon Ward, Enda Gallery, Strange Boy, and T.O.H.
It acts as both a reflection and a declaration of the resilience of the Irish Traveller community, with its defining single, a proud statement of identity and belonging. “There are some personal songs in there, too,” he says. “Like , where I talk to my brothers and try to share my appreciation for them being a part of my life.”
Mixing both the political and personal, ebbs between fighting the system and tapping into deep, internal work. As for what he wants listeners to get from it? “Please, God, they'll take what they want from it… and leave what they don’t.”
With his work, both in music and with those within the Travelling community, Willzee simply wants to leave the world in better shape than he found it. “If I could just have one dream,” he says, "it would be that I would be able to be some sort of a part that would ignite the flame for young Traveller people to become solicitors, doctors, creatives… whatever they want. With that, I'd feel my life was complete.
“Because we can talk about stardom… but a lot of people that become stars forget about their community. For me, I'd be happy to look at the stars at night knowing that the kids are alright.”
- is out on May 22
