Glen Hansard has shared the new video for Lowly Deserter, a strong roots driven number that features on his forthcoming album ‘Didn’t He Ramble’ available September 18th via Anti- Records. The video which was directed by Myles O’Reilly (Arbutus Yarns) has an almost autobiographical feel which opens to children praying the words from Ashes to Ashes at an altar to David Bowie. That feeling continues with the ‘hedge school’ held in a house in which children are taught using the oral tradition. Irish names for the practice include scoil chois claí, scoil ghairid and scoil scairte. There are glimpses throughout of Irish political and cultural history such as the trunk of books which, amongst works by George Orwell, are books by the late great Irish poet Seamus Heaney, Michael Collins and Songs of Freedom, the name of the 1907 songbook edited by Ireland’s Renowned Trade Unionist and Leader of the 1916 Easter Rising, James Connolly.
According to an interview with the Wall Street journal, who premiered the video, Hansard explained “I wanted to show that within a home there’s a universe of thought…I grew up in a family and around families that put a lot of meaning into the Irish story, the working Irish, the stories of land struggles, of uprisings, of oppression and rebellion, the language of Ireland. And in homes all over the country the hedge school continues. Schools weren’t teaching us a true history. It was an ‘approved’ version, watered down.’
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