During our current bout of collective trauma, many of our coping strategies have mimicked the ways Americans responded to the Kennedy assassination.
The Supremes, with their polished performances and family-friendly lyrics, helped to bridge a cultural divide and temper racial tensions.
AP Photo/Frings
Aram Sinnreich, American University School of Communication
How can a band so slavishly derivative – and sometimes downright plagiaristic – be also considered radically innovative and influential?
The Rolling Stones performing in Hamburg during the ‘No Filter’ European tour: the band’s legacy is entwined with the pioneers of black American music.
Morris Mac Matzen/Reuters
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 - across formats - have experienced buoyancy within the music marketplace for the last 40 years or so.
Shutterstock
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.
Odysseus and his crew escape the cyclops, as painted by Arnold Böcklin in 1896.
Wikimedia
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.
Bob Dylan pictured in 2012: his long synopses of a seemingly random list of books made up the bulk of this week’s Nobel Prize speech.
Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
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.
What does the Nobel mean for America?
Amelia Gapin
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.
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.
Is Bob Dylan a poet in the great tradition of Sappho?
In the days of Sappho, John William Godward
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.
Dylan is a musician, who has been well recognised in his field.
Simon Murphy/Flickr
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.
Kenyan author Ngugi Wa Thiong'o shows his newly released book “Wizard of the Crow” during launch at a Nairobi bookshop.
Antony Njuguna/Reuters