the essentiality of bob dylan - an amateur's look at counterculture part 3

When i was a school kid, our History cum English cum civics teacher, who always had a penchant to put poems to tune and sing aloud in front of us, by way of teaching, turned to a new page in our english reader textbook and began his usual chores.As always , the tune was outright bad, he was singing the poem like a number from an old MGR movie. I do not know if i enjoyed the experience at that time, but i still remember that the lines left me with a numbness one would , may be too emotionally, attach to the after- feelings of a trance. I even think, that was my first love affair with free verse poetry.. the poem went like this ..

How many roads must a man walk down, before they call him a man
How many seas must a white dove sail, before she sleeps in the sand
How many times must the cannonballs fly, before they are forever banned

* The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind

How many years must a mountain exist, before it is washed to the sea
How many years can some people exist, before they're allowed to be free
How many times can a man turn his head, and pretend that he just doesn't see

How many times must a man look up, before he can see the sky

How many years must one man have, before he can hear people cry
How many deaths will it take till he knows, that too many people have died

It was written by someone called Bob Dylan. I had never seen that name before and so quickly forgot it , however the first two lines stuck with me. How many roads must a man walk down? An ardent fan of rajni kant at that tender age, i imagined the number of roads would have to be eight (ra ra ra ramaiyya song from batcha) .. 

          Many years later, when i came across a folder named bob dylan in my best friend's music files, i just passed over and went to the next folder. but my friend told me, "i think you will love bob dylan". There were a couple of songs in it.. LIKE A ROLLING STONE  and  BUTTERFLY KISSES (the latter actually a bob carlisle song)..when i heard, i was , to say the truth very amused. To my conditoned mind, this was very unorthodox. I remarked" i think this guy has something interesting to say, but why did he have to sing it..it is more like a poem"

          Six months later , i was a die hard fan of dylan and i was practically digging into everything i could find about him.. i wonder if anyone else connected with music had so much written about them- so much filmed about them, not in terms of volume, but in terms of criticisms and interpretations...

                                                                                                                 

In the sixties america, bob dylan's is not an unremarkable tale - in the land where martin luther king jr dreamt of an extraordinary american society where the black would walk to school hand in hand with the white, where the young generation (of the baby boom) tried its hand at everything that was till then taboo- alternate sexuality, drugs, oriental religion- you name it, they did it- weirdness and genius were often  a happy couple , a common sight .. 

                                                                                                                               And one would have to say, bob dylan was up to it.  A jew who hid his origins, naming himself  after dylan thomas, all the time talking about the "commie" woody guthrie, when he entered greenwich village, he must have been a sight for the onlookers. Those days, people there , were all doing something creative.. they would gather around in a cafe, someone would sing, while money would be collected in his hat upside down - almost everyone there would perform apart from being an audience. So, to make it to the top from there must have demanded something just more than 'luck' -which is often attributed to an unexplainable success story-

                                                                                          The initial songs of bob were reflective of the civil rights movements taking place at that time , infact , most of them were anthems for anti war movements- much of them still relevant .take for instance times they are a changing 

http://www.zappinternet.com/video/ViMsTofFek/Bob-Dylan-The-Times-they-are-A-changin-1965

 Come gather 'round people

Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

or listen to' god on your side', who killed davey moore, only a pawn in your game, ww 3 blues etc.. these songs have a strong political note and demands no less courage to be written and sung by a guy with not much backing, who was just in his early twenties..he became an icon of the anti war movement, people identified themselves with him- his scruffy jeans and work shirts- his drawling voice and the next door boy face..

                                                                 To say the truth, he had a finger on the pulse of his generation..his uniqueness lie in the way poetry and folk music blend to give you a treat to your mind and soul.. and the rebelliousness exuding in the way he performs alone, with just  a guitar and harmonica and mouthing out lyrics that are as impressionistic as a painting by vincent van gogh ..

                                                                                               perhaps, it is his very nature to not conform to any norms, not even the norms of the anti war movement that tried to mould him as just a protest singer or the folk music fans, who ditched him when he went electric(switched over to electric guitar) - here he truly upheld the pride and uncompromising grit so many of our artists truly lack.. he did not pawn his music to gain popularity; he risked it.He would rather not sing at all than sing to someone else's tunes.. after the late sixties, his songs experimented with all the genres and expanded the perception of, nay shattered the frontiers of popular music . However though he may have left the movement proper and entered into art for art's sake kind of stand, his role in the counter culture movement is very significant even if it is for a short time. That his songs form the chief staple of anti war concerts still , can never be refuted. Or else how does one explain his popularity in vietnam

                                                                                      Not for nothing did the pulitzer prize was given to him in 2008.. awarded him a special citation  for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power".

                                                                                   In the 1980s bob began a tour of the world traveling with musicians performing throughout.. it goes on still.. it is called the NEVER ENDING TOUR .. PERHAPS, more than anything else, this symbolises his spirit...not resting, not stagnating..

because as someone said, STAGNATION IS DEATH

COURTESY 

* WIKIPEDIA PAGES ON 1. BOB DYLAN 2. GREENWICH VILLAGE 3. BEAT GENERATION

* MARTIN SCORCESE DOCUMENTARY- NO DIRECTION HOME.. 

*PENNEBAKER'S DOCUMENTARY, DONT LOOK BACK 

* I M NOT HERE - A MOVIE BY TODD HAYNES

AND ALL THE SONGS OF BOB DYLAN

                                                               

world war 2, vietnam and rock n roll- an amateur's look at counterculture PART2

what is the world war connection to 60's music, one might surmise.. ever wondered what would have happened to maternity  when all the men went to war... how many children were born in the nation in those 5 years... conversely, how many babies jumped into life and america after the war, WHEN THE MEN RETURNED HOME...no prizes for good guesses, it was called the BABY BOOM....
                                                                                                      this understood, one might easily realise what is the average age of the single largest chunk of population in the sixties.. we are now looking at a population whose twenty year olds easily outnumber the others in a sense that their opinion cannot be easily brushed away as is so often done in modern DEMOCRATIC societies ..Ironically, these youngsters (and later hippies ) who came out of the wombs of second world war, came of age thanks to another evil war - vietna(pal)m-
THEY SURELY DIDNT LOVE THE SMELL OF NAPALM IN THE MORNING-
                                                                                                                    The music of that age, like everything else reflected the boiling broth that was the young american mind... this was not a generation that relished the AMERICAN DREAM, this was a generation that reacted to it.. revulsion to a past they did not want to be a part of, moulded them in the attire of rebels... bob dylan came on to the scene, strumming his way into the midst of makeshift stages, singing songs of protest- following a rich tradition that was nurtured by the likes of woody guthrie, pete seeger and many others..
                                                                               later , we see lennon turning to marxism as well..it
is in this context we must  view the music of the entire sixties...everywhere , rebellious bands bloomed like mushrooms- (their hairstyle very much similar)-singing songs, crying aloud to the purple skies, " sex, drugs and rock n roll"-m the hippies had entered-
                                                            all this makes so much sense in the music of the doors- here was a band led by a frontman who ,until then, had no proper training in music and whose prime time occupation was acid tripping in the top floors of los angeles hotels- supposedly, taking notes in the incredible rock n roll concert going on in his head- even their name was derived from aldous huxley's "doors of perception"-( which when cleansed would reveal man's infinite nature)
                                                                        The roots of their band, it could be easily said lay in the marshlands of poetry that was jim morrison's mind...unlike other bands of the time, who sometimes explicitly mouthed political messages and protest songs, the search of the "doors" predominantly lay in the tangle that the youngster had gotten himself into - the father and the mother who so willingly sent their young to die in 'nam - the politicians who labelled every voice of dissent with the powerful weapon of COMMIE SCARE (Communist scare) and the all negating , existential bliss seeking of the hippies- and the eventual liberation that seemed to be nowhere-
                                 i do not know if i am right when i say the 60's american was not happy with his identity- infact i doubt if he ever thought he had one- but, watch this very funny video when a journalist asks the name, age and occupation of the DOORS .. JIM'S REPLY sums up the culmination of the mindset of contemporary american youth..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBs3CmEWIG0

world war, vietnam and rock n roll-- an amateur's look at counterculture music- PART 1

I first listened to jim morisson and the doors towards the end of my third year as a medical student in tirunelveli.. i happened to be lucky enough to get the friendship of one mr vasu anand,- who called himself as LUCIFER-who , to me , at that point of time was something of an aficionado -what with scribbling pink floyd lyrics in the back pages of his pharmac notes and painting in gaudy orange color, the walls of his worn down hostel room as ROCK HEAVEN-  boy, i was truly impressed..

                                                                         at that time, i was trying to get over a girl who denied my courtship and began to look up to me in fraternal terms- which, obviously is much more of an insult and disgrace than plain hatred and turning one's proposal down.. and then jim was hissing over his own voice in RIDERS ON THE STORM.. at that point of time, it was something new to me.. here was a song that used the rain as something of a shamanic cry..his voice had that faunal abandon.. before i saw his face , his voice led me to assume that he must be an intellectual of some sort, though later his prankster outlook did nothing to dispel that initial notion.. rather, it only enhanced the enigma that was his whole persona... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-2TNXqEP-Y

                                                                                                           the END was a call to the darkness within, a darkness divine and unique , something we have always been instructed to be ashamed of, by our teachers,- who, doubtless are ashamed of themselves- the song , at first sounded very dystopic, the modern oedipus calling his children to the ever open gates of euthanasiac  apocalypse.. only later, i could see it was a voice that sung on behalf of the battered young generation of the 60's america.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDN9y2vTdUs

                                          what was unique about the sixties america.. what made them what they were.. these are questions that i asked myself very much later...
beyond this, it would help a little, if you would listen to the two doors songs....

p.s. i am intending to post this on a part by part basis.. so people can stop me writing this by expressing their dislike..i will be very encouraged if i get a overwhelming 100% dislike.. i will still post the article.. hurray to counterculture