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So well deserved. Congratulations Robert Zimmerman!
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That's what the prize is for, people whose writing is not just of a high calibre, but changes the world, reflects certain values, and makes an impact. He deserves it.
Now, by contrast, the UN is investing Wonder Woman as their ambassador for empowerment of girls and women, and there'll be a ceremony. That's a tough one to fathom. She won't be attending the ceremony in person .....
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Way back in the early 1960s when I first heard Dylan, I was so put off by the voice (nails on blackboard) and crude accompaniment (random harmonica doodles) that I never got around to considering the words. I simply filed him, along with most rock and roll, in the deepest circle of musical hell -- a place I never wanted to go. Ever since, the notion has seeped into my perhaps prematurely closed mind that the man has done significant work. The Nobel is the clearest expression of that cultural respect. Is it significant that the respect comes from a literary rather than musical quarter? Perhaps I've simply filed Dylan in the wrong drawer. I think there's an album of Judy Collins singing Dylan songs. Perhaps I should see if I can find them tolerable when sung by a competent vocalist.
Does the fairly modest notice in this (musical) forum suggest that Dylan's true metier is essentially nonmusical?
Dylan is first and foremost a poet, whose material is put to music in a genre he was passionate about, namely folk-singing. And originally he had political urgency as motivation too, which became a tide.
But we need to remember that music at its most basic origin is people creating with what they have, where and when they have it. We can't treat the symphonic tradition as the only valid pinnacle, because that would result in an elitist world where the vast majority of talent and creativity would go unexpressed. Very often there's a subculture of music commentators to whom any kind of actual creativity in the field isn't even on the radar. That's one reason why Frank DeWald's music notes are so good he knows the structure and evolution of the material.
Yes sometime the single balladier can become the clichéd product of a cynical music industry, but that's where all music began. Plus, the sung lyric nails down message and direction rather than as just Pied Piper emotion.
His gravelly delivery is part of the idea that music is for people, all people, and can be used to express creativity and lend wings to what needs expressing.
And in Dylan's case, he didn't start out just writing about the welter of adolescent sexual emotions and romantic projections, as so many do and which is so easily exploited by the industry (all youth have hormones and desires), but he affected the stance of the prophet, a more mature base and legacy.
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One of Robert's best:
https://youtu.be/mYajHZ4QUVM
"He not busy being born is busy dying"
What a bloody great line!
"Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying
Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying
Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you’d just be one more
Person crying
So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing
As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred
Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked
An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it
Advertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you
You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you
A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to
Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to
For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something they invest in
While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him
While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in
But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him
Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony
While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely
My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough, what else can you show me?
And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only"
Copyright©Warner Bros..
That's in the realm of Yeats.
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I remember reading a piece years ago by someone who had nominated Dylan for the Nobel Prize. He pointed to the early song "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." He said that the listener inherently knows that the protagonist is black, yet Dylan never says so in the lyric, and that this was only one example of the skill that Dylan had with lyrics even as early as 1963.
Probably not available outside UK (and licensing rules were tightened up recently) but I find there's a 30 minute BBC radio documentary on that song, with many interviews with people who witnessed the original events here: Joan Baez too:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s77wp
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I was into pop music and glam rock back then, and some 60s soul and then film music. I never "got" dylan. He was for my older brother and the older lad next door. The sixth formers in oxford bags and maxi coats and long hair. You had to be 18 and understand the anti vietnam msg and rebellion. Dylan was an album artist and i only had exposure to chart singles. Thats the way it was.
It was only later - after i was older and got to see Pat Garrett - that i began to understand the talent of Dylan.
The rawness and simplicity of folk music. And then eventually i was old enough to understand the words.
People dont instantly associate singing with poetry but as William shows us there, poetry to music is just the medium Dylan uses.
Well deserved if not just for his talent but for his effect and contribution to that period when he was most vital.
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Posted: |
Oct 15, 2016 - 12:01 PM
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By: |
OnyaBirri
(Member)
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Dylan deserves the prize for this song alone:
Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet ?
We sit here stranded, though we're all doing our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there's nothing really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind.
In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman's bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the D-train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane
Louise she's all right she's just near
She's delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna's not here
The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He's sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I'm in the hall
Oh, how can I explain ?
It's so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna they kept me up past the dawn.
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower frieze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeeze
I can't find my knees."
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel.
The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for him
Saying, "Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him."
But like Louise always says
"Ya can't look at much, can ya man."
As she, herself prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes everything's been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.
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They really don't get it!
Dylan Nobel snub 'impolite and arrogant' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37740379
Do they expect the man (or his persona the prophet) who called churches and political parties 'social clubs in drag disguise' to happily conform to their imposed (no matter how well intentioned) ritual?
Different league.
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Certainly Joan, but Bobbie isn't you or I ... his work of art extends beyond just the songs themselves, and he has to live the character. And he didn't solicit it.
Back in 2007 the writer Doris Lessing got home from a trip to Tescos or the like, and there were reporters on her doorstep to tell her the news. See the result:
https://youtu.be/vuBODHFBZ8k
https://youtu.be/3mA-Tr6cJa0
She did accept it, but she knew the score. I mean, you award the prize, that's it. The theatre associated is maybe just a wee bit self-obsessed.
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Joan, this Newsnight vid might explain her reluctance, the Nobel representatives early on visited her to tell her she'd never get it!
https://youtu.be/BPv6Gbof4BM
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