#butchered tongue

[redwolf17]

🙃 Regular reminder that while Hozier has amazing love songs, he is ALSO very outspoken about his leftist politics, specifically anti-fascism, anti-racism, reproductive rights, Palestinian rights and more.

Take Me To Church and Foreigner’s God are scathing critiques of organized religion, specifically the Catholic Church and the colonization of Ireland.

Moment’s Silence is about oral sex but it’s ALSO about how that specific sexual act is often distorted to a show of power rather than that of love.

Nina Cried Power is an homage to various (mostly Black) civil rights activists from the US and Ireland and a call to follow their path.

Be criticizes anti-migrant policies and Trump and his ilk.

Jackboot Jump is about the global wave of fascism and about protest and resistance.

Swan Upon Leda is about reproductive rights and the violent colonial oppression of Ireland and Palestine.

Eat Your Young is about the ruinous way the 1%/capitalism and arms dealers prioritize short-term profit over everything else to the detriment of the youth/99%

Butchered Tongue is about Irish and other indigenous languages being suppressed and erased by imperial powers.

If any of the above surprised you, please, please delve deeper into Hozier’s music, you’re missing such an important part of his work.

[ragesingoddess]

haha hahaha yeah I enjoyed the new hozier album ig

[ravenzer]

if u american hozier fans like butchered tongue may i direct your attention to

[lmaowhosemaddie]

Hozier speaking Irish on the same album where he unabashedly sings abt the preservation of native tongues in the face of colonization/imperialism….. this album may kill me dead, i fear.

[dansnotavampire]

no one butchered tongue posting? no one crying about the preservation of native languages or lack thereof? no one emotional about what it means to lose your language to colonial violence and have it only preserved through place names you can't translate any more? I'm going to kill someone

[anragaire]

if anyone wants another layer to Butchered Tongue, consider Hozier's choice mention of Hushpuckena (Choctaw) and look up what the Choctaw nation did for the Irish during an Gorta Mór (The Great Hunger).

https://www.choctawnation.com/about/history/irish-connection/

[baginamybeloved]

I’ve heard Butchered Tongue a few times, and I know this song is supposed to be about the violence of the colonization of Ireland, and the fight to survive of a language, and how there are scars left in the language that will never heal, but like as someone from a country that was colonized, and this colonization erased a big amount of the indigenous culture, this song is a love letter to the indigenous population that’s often overlooked, and suffered from great damage from the colonization, most of the country worships a foreigner’s god, and speaks a tongue that isn’t ours, there’s barely an echo of our indigenous culture in our daily lives, and hearing someone speak an indigenous tongue is pretty much a miracle, the story of who we are as a country was erased by colonization, and this song is a reminder of what was taken from us.

[not-reallyanywhere]

that man has the capability to make me go absolutely feral

[ismellpestilence]

Butchered Tongue is so....

There's something painful about being completely cut off from the culture of your ancestors. You know that there was once a connection there but its gone now and you have no idea how to get it back. You're just stuck wondering when and why things didn't get passed on to your parent or grandparent. Why did they let you assimilate?

Knowing that if your grandparents went to participate in your lost culture, they would be reclaiming it. But somewhere in the generations there is a point where it crosses from reclaiming your culture to being a tourist. And you're pretty sure that you fall directly on the other side of that line.

All you get is an heirloom or two, and a surname no one can pronounce. And that's it's you're lucky.

[mochifiction]

Not a Transformers post but Hozier released his album and no I’m not sane or okay. I wanna talk about Butchered Tongue because there’s barely any discourse about it and I am absolutely inconsolable about it. While there are a lot of elements/ central themes of Irish colonization and the preservation of Irish language and inherently history/ culture with it, as a Person of Color, I was so deeply moved. It is a song of beautiful mourning, of sorrow in the blood and scars that run through the dying of or absolute death of a language. However, it is also a celebration and expression of admiration and awe over the strength and perseverance of language and those who wield it. Every verb, noun, accent, rolling of the tongue. Every simple sound, letter, article. All of it is an act of defiance of the voice to the oppressor. It is a fibre of being healing the deep wounds inflicted by the colonizer. Every utterance screams “We are here and we are moving onward even while still bleeding.” Even then, Hozier still captivated the grief that comes with the fact that…not all cultures have that. Not every community has the ability to learn their languages. Some are gone entirely. Some stopped being passed down for the sake of survival and assimilation. The anguish that comes with a bloody tongue, one that cannot speak what it was born to utter, to scream to sing…it’s a feeling difficult to put into words. To have this song in the Circle of Violence not only brings to light the physical violence against the Irish in their colonization, but the invisible consequences of such brutality on the colonized. The murders and scarring didn’t stop at flesh. Even some languages that survived didn’t escape without scars and wounds, infused with the languages of their colonizer (ex- Tagalog having pieces of Spanish in it). This was a love letter and kiss of praise yet also a funeral dirge to those wounded by colonization, and I have never sobbed so hard over a song before. It stirred such deep grief in me that I cannot explain.

[akajustmerry]

"You might love him initially for his good looks and sultry sounds, but Hozier’s legacy will be one of championing international anti-colonial solidarity through his art, as well as his actions in a time of rampant injustices." 

The Powerful Anti-Colonialism Of Hozier by Merryana Salem

[expired-blueberries]

thinking about Butchered Tongue and Foreigner's God...

[natcat5]

*stares up at ceiling* choosing eradication of language as the cornerstone of the song for the 'Violence' circle of hell....

[andoutofharm]

hozier performing butchered tongue at the choctaw theater in oklahoma (dedicated to the Choctaw people, 10/13/23)

(see this article for why this is such a significant dedication and performance of this song)

[venice-1987]

When Hozier said "How the mouth must be employed in every corner of itself" in a song (butchered Tongue) about the pain of losing culture through the specific imagery of loss of language after he said "The unemployment of the mouth" in Through Me (The Flood) in a verse about trying to measure loss

[kaizey]

On Gaelic vs Gaeilge vs Irish

Since several people have been asking me stuff regarding this today, and with Unreal Unearth adding to the eyes on it, I wanted to lend an irish voice to the pile already saying this, but it can be useful for non-irish people to learn (mostly americans)

Anyway; Gaelic vs Gaeilge vs Irish

Gaelic: This is infact an english word. As béarla, ok? It derives itself from the irish Gael, which itself comes from the old irish Goídel, an adapted word from old welsh meaning "wildman" or "forestman". In our actual language, the word for 'gaelic' is itself 'gaelach'

Gaelic, also, in the broader sense, is more than just language. Its a word covering the Goidelic languages originating in Ireland, and of wider Gaelic culture across Ireland, Scotland and Mannin. These are widely disparate places in our regional cultures, lexicons and yes, language.

Irish: The english word for our language and by far what the majority of anyone here will refer to as our language when speaking about it i mBéarla

Gaeilge: The Linguonym for irish *in* irish. Its by far the second most encountered term youll hear anyone from here use when talking about irish other than the english word. See where the common term "as gaeilge" comes from

tl;dr Youre not technically incorrect for saying Gaelic when referring to the irish language. But its much less accurate than just calling it irish, and in our language, we refer to it as Gaeilge (general pron. Gw-ale-guh)

Anyway, Go raibh math agat and hope youve been enjoying the Unreal Unearth as much as I have. Definitely not emotionally wrecked by it or anything

Slán