Yes, this can be called a protest song but 80-year-oldlyricist Bob Dylan cannot be identified clearly with any distinct kind of political ideology. Yes, he belonged to the Woodstock generation, yes he protested the US immigration’s move to throw out John Lennon and Yoko Ono from the USA, yes he did participate in the civil rights movement of the 1960s steered by Martin Luther King Jr. It was a time of many songsters, post-Elvis Presley, pre-Michael Jackson. Among the many, it is Dylan who remains iconic.

Yes his words are prophetic. He can more correctly be called spiritual; his words have touched millions to the core of their beings. In the protests against the war in Iraq, protestors were singing ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ and ‘We shall Overcome’. Dylan is universal. ’…The battle outside ragin’, Will soon shake your window…’can just as well be sung for the powers that be in today’s India as well.

Dylan is reclusive, so reclusive that he refused to surface to accept his Nobel prize for Literature in 2016. Almost a year later, the Academy conferred the honour on him in a private ceremony at a hospital charity concert in Sweden. Dylan’s speech was rambling, he began with, ‘I got to wondering how my songs related to literature. I wanted to reflect on it and see where the connection was’. He then took his listeners on a tour of all the works that influenced him, including Moby Dick and ended with Odyssey when Odysseus visits Achilles in the underworld. Achilles says, ‘if he could, he would choose to go back and be a lowly slave to a tenant farmer on Earth rather than be what he is—a king in the land of the dead’. He is definitely a reading man. Bob might display his humility, but the Nobel Committee decided all that Bob Dylan writes is literature.

Dylan’s actions continue to tell us how far-sighted he is. In December 2020, Bob Dylan sold to Universal Musichis entire songwriting catalogue of more than 600 songs in what is deemed to be the biggest acquisition ever of a single act’s publishing rights valued at $300 million. The song, The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind’ was inducted in 1994 in the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2004, it was ranked number 14 on Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs list. ‘The Times are a changing’ was 59 in the list. ‘It’s no secret that the art of songwriting is the fundamental key to all great music, nor is it a secret that Bob is one of the very greatest practitioners of that art’, said Lucian Grainge, the chief executive of the Universal Music Group. Dylan’s memoir Chronicles: Volume One opens in 1962 with the signing of his first music publishing deal. His latest album, Rough and Rowdy Ways is included in the Universal deal.

So, who is Bob Dylan? He is so mysterious that not many know Bob Dylan is not even the name he was given at birth. He was named Robert Zimmerman, born on 24 May 1941; he grew up in a Jewish community in Minnesota. His mother was Turkish Jew and father from an Odessa community on the Black Sea. Their families were migrants to the New World at the turn of the twentieth century. Bob was already deeply into music in school and in his first year at the Minnesota University, he decided to make New York his professional playfield. That’s when he went all American and legally changed name to Bob Dylan, drawing inspiration from the writer Dylan Thomas.

He did long tours in the USA, UK and Europe from 1962 to ’65. He married Sara Lownd, a model in 1965. Soon after he met with a motorcycle accident and stopped his public appearances for eight years. His angst on divorce is said to be expressed in Blood on the Tracks. His second marriage was to singer Carolyn Dennis. He also began to paint seriously and has 137 pieces of artwork to his credit.

All this time, his then manager, Albert Grossman ensured Dylan’s lyrics flooded popular cultural shows. Grossman also provided Dylan’s Calcutta connection, with the Baul singer Purna Das Baul who was invited to perform in the USA at the time. Dylan and Purna Das hit it off at once. In a 2019 documentary titled If Not For You that chronicles Kolkata’s love affair with Dylan, the equally reclusive 87-year-old Purna Das tells producers Vineet Arora and Jaimin Rajani, ‘We would cook one-pot meals… that was when Dylan started loving the spicy Indian khichdi’.

The two songsmiths toured and performed together between 1966- 67. The families have been friends ever since and Purna Das was again at Dylan’s birthday in 1974 and Dylan was in Kolkata in 1990 to attend Purna Das’s son’s wedding. This association led to Dylan being called the Baul of America and Purna Das being called the Bob Dylan of India.

Film maker Anjan Dutta calls Dylan’s music ‘intelligent’. It was Bob Dylan, who defying huge criticism in the industry, popularised electrical instrument in rock ’n’ roll and blues and gave dignity to the word. With his innovation and energy, Bob Dylan has changed the world of music, across languages and genres. (IPA Service)