I think the first time I ever heard the former Mr. Robert Zimmerman was at a get together my 6th grade classmates at one of my friend's home. The year is 1966. Our host pulls out a record that makes a significant impression on us all. For one thing, the song lasts about 6 minutes.  Hold on. How can the radio play a record that long? You must understand that at this point in our popular history most songs we’d hear ran about 2.5 minutes. 6 minutes was, well, revolutionary. The song was “Like a Rolling Stone.” It was then and there that Bob Dylan became a serious part of my life. All our lives.

Recently it was announced that Mr. Dylan has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. There are those who protested this decision on the grounds that a songwriter is not a poet.  One critic of the Swedish academy’s choice was afraid that this will set a dangerous precedent, honoring the authors of simplistic tunes expressing teen passions.  The poetic music of Dylan belongs in a different universe. More often than not a popular song needs both the lyrics and music to be appreciated to the fullest. You’ll have a hard time finding someone who appreciates the works of The Beatles more than I. However, few of their songs, as a group or their solo efforts, can stand alone on a piece of paper.  It is only when combined with an instrumental track that magic is made. But so many selections from the canon of The American Bard are complete with or without. His music that acted as a delivery system was, on the other hand, rarely complex. Though it could be compelling.

Prof. Gordon Ball, an instructor of English at Washington & Lee University has been a champion of Dylan for years, submitting his name to the Nobel Academy since the 90s. As to the recent accolades he writes:

“Idealism and benefiting humanity often, of course, move hand in hand, and Dylan’s idealistic, activist songs have indeed helped change our world.  His 1963 Tom Paine Award (an earlier recipient, Bertrand Russell, was one of 3 philosophers — not counting Sartre — to win the Nobel in literature) came after “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Oxford Town,” and other works, as well as his going South to help with voter registration drives. An attitude aired in his 1965 “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”— “. . . even the President of the United States / sometimes must have / to stand naked” — may have helped revise our view of presidential authority, encouraging inquiry into what became Watergate…For a generation raised in conformity, Dylan validated imagination and independence of thought; his work is emblematic of the creativity of the 1960s in the U.S., and has affected others across the globe. Asked …if growing up in Germany he had an “American Dream,” German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer replied, “Not an American Dream, but my very own dream of freedom. That was for me the music of Bob Dylan.”’

If you didn’t grow up in the ‘60s in the United States, it’s hard to relay just what we were going through. Those of us in the Baby Boom were raised in relative comfort compared to our parents who survived the Great Depression and World War II.  While most of us were not conflicted with enjoying the comforts of personal mobility, education, food enough to waste* and enough spending money to get us through the weekend, there was an inner angst that many felt. The previous generations lived with extended familial and ethnic communities just scraping by. We were often subjected to suburban living, far flung from the roots that sprung us. The pressure to “be successful” and to prostrate before “The Establishment” was a potent force.  While not obvious, The Establishment (a conglomeration of business, political, social and religious factors that often worked in unison to suppress dissent and, as Dr. Ball writes, encourage conformity) created networks that covertly or otherwise promoted racism, sexism, unhealthy corporate cultures, fear based politics and stunted spirituality. Bob Dylan was arguably the most prominent voice in music at this critical juncture in our culture.  His songs urged us to question authority (The Times They are a-changin’) and to come right out and mock it (Subterranean Homesick Blues).  These were not merely songs, but inspired anthems that were sung at rallies across the nation.

Bob Dylan was often referred to as a prophet. Many think that a prophet is one who supposedly tells the future. That is one definition. But the dictionary also says that a prophet is  “one gifted with more than ordinary spiritual and moral insight; especially an inspired poet.” It could be argued that Bob is eligible to be considered both.  We paused with skepticism at every governmental pronouncement, stopped going to church, and shook our fists at the mighty evil perpetrated by western countries called the Viet Nam War. And looking back at all that Dylan and his peers wrote and sang about it doesn’t take a weatherman to tell that the wind has blown in the direction they charted. Sadly, the greater society (The Establishment) tends to catch on slowly. This is why we need to be reminded again and again how power tends to corrupt.  But to my point, the socio-political views expressed in the music of Mr. Dylan that were so revolutionary back then are now considered pretty mainstream. The war was bad, unrestrained corporatism is to be challenged, concern about domestic communism was way overblown, unexamined religious dogmas are to be approached with caution and we work better as a diverse nation with liberty and justice for all.

I refer in this humble offering's title to Dylan’s “many incarnations.” What I mean by this is that he has been a master at inhabiting a persona for only so long and then dropping it overnight for something quite different.  From Greenwich Village vagabond to electric folk-rock frontman, to Country & Western crooner (when many fans deserted), to romantic troubadour, to born again Christian to being Jewish again to…well, you get the picture.  A couple years back he recorded a CD of Christmas carols. Because he can, I guess.

And it cannot be emphasized enough how so much of Dylan’s staying power is generated by his every effort not to take himself so bloody seriously.  This was the pitfall of many a 60’s folkie.  They were so earnest all the time. But ol’ Bob could make you question the insanity of the arms race on one album cut and have you giggling 10 minutes later while singing to Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat or Rainy Day Women.

Like many in his profession, or calling, if you prefer, Bob has made great attempts to solve the world’s problems while not always taking care of business at home. He would be the 1st to tell you not to follow him or treat him as some kind of messiah.  But many wise men and women who have contributed greatly to the evolution of civilization were just as mortal.

The fact that Bob Dylan can be named as a peer of the great Hindu Nobel laureate in Poetry, Rabindinath Tagore, proves one thing: That in the midst of this very troubled world where many of the ideals that he hoped would be remedied by now, the times they have a-changed.

*There is never enough food to waste 

Pic Credit: By Alberto Cabello from Vitoria Gasteiz (Bob Dylan) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons