Ahead of the release of the artist’s posthumous album, a sense of awe and mystery around his huge archive of unreleased music remains
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on Bob Dylan
Displaying 1 - 20 of 23 articles
A somewhat obscure 2003 science-fiction film has a luminous soundtrack, which brings surprising solace to a locked down world.
During our current bout of collective trauma, many of our coping strategies have mimicked the ways Americans responded to the Kennedy assassination.
Fifty years ago, Sly and the Family Stone sang ‘We got to live together, I am no better and neither are you.’ The words ring just as true today.
A few musicians metaphorically took to the streets. But most fled for cover.
What is it about Westerns that tempts so many musicians into ten-gallon hats?
How can a band so slavishly derivative – and sometimes downright plagiaristic – be also considered radically innovative and influential?
Pinching musical phrases and stylistic approaches has always been a part of art making and can be a respectful exchange. But shallow, ill-informed appropriation only perpetuates tired stereotypes.
Bootlegs will continue to be manufactured.
The future of the bootleg might just reinvent the official release.
Musicians were able to connect with confused, scared and angry Americans – including those who supported the war – in a way actors, broadcasters and writers could not.
The story of the Odyssey is a quintessential quest that relates to the passage through life and the importance of love, family and home. Odysseus’s adventures have influenced everyone from Batman to Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan said songs are meant to be sung not read, and he has a point. Songs and poems obey different rules.
This extraordinarily odd speech might well be the singer’s most Dylanesque performance.
He was criticised for leaning on the crutch of his guitar, but if Dylan leaned on anything, it was his love of poetry.
Perhaps more clearly than Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen showed that songwriting can be a literary art. Within his apparently simple words lies a profound sense of playfulness and enigma.
Immigrants have contributed to America’s great success at the Nobel. Of the 350 Nobel winners from the United States, more than 100 have been immigrants.
What counts as literature? It’s less to do with genre than we think.
In 1913, an Indian literary giant named Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-white person to win the literature prize. He wrote over 2,000 songs and, like Dylan’s, they still resonate today.
Ancient poems were accompanied by a musical instrument called the lyre – from which we get the word ‘lyric’. ‘Literature’ and ‘poetry’ are categories of our own making - so moving beyond them in a major award seems long overdue.
Were there really no poets or novelists or essayists - no people who have spent their lives in the field of literature - considered Nobel-worthy? This nostalgic decision is discourteous to writers.
Top contributors
-
Professor of Writing and Literature, Deakin University
-
Dean, Graduate Research, University of Canberra
-
Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne
-
Emeritus Professor of Classics, La Trobe University
-
Director, Institute for Popular Music, University of Rochester
-
Reader in Modern Literature, University of Leeds
-
Senior Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University
-
Dean, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University
-
Associate professor in Cinema and Media Studies, RMIT University
-
DPhil in English Literature, University of Oxford
-
Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Music, University of Minnesota
-
Reader, University of East London
-
Associate Professor, Falmouth University
-
Associate Professor of Communication Studies, American University School of Communication
-
Associate Professor of History, University of South Carolina
