'Nobel Laureate' Bob Dylan: 'The Times They Are a-Changin'... Truly

This file photo taken on July 1 1984 shows US singer Bob Dylan performing during a concert in Sceaux France PicAFPAn unconventional singer with a raspy almost nasal voice instead of honeyed tones burst into public consciousness in the early 1960s with a brace of selfwritten hardhitting songs expressing the growing social unrest and questioning tradition and injustice How many years can some people existBefore theyre allowed to be free he asked and told the establishment that The Times They Are aChangin Over half a century later the Swedish Academy acknowledged Bob Dylans message by making him the first songwriter to be conferred the Nobel Prize for LiteratureThe Nobel for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition caps a long illustrious career for Dylan who turned 75 this May and is already the recipient of 11 Grammies including for Lifetime Achievement a Golden Globe an Oscar a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a special Pulitzer Prize citation for his profound impact on popular music and American culture marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2012This file photo taken on June 11 2009 shows US singer Bob Dylan performing during the 37th AFI Life Achievement Award A Tribute to Michael Douglas at Sony Pictures in Culver City California US songwriter PicAFPDylan seemed to embody for popular music Karl Marxs dictum that philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways but the point however is to change it Be it the iconic Blowing in the Wind excerpted above Masters of War You that build all the gunsYou that build the death planesYou that build the big bombsYou that hide behind wallsYou that hide behind desks and more his ballads not only became anthems for the American civil rights and antiwar movements but can still articulate deep concern at global and social conditions both then and nowHe however vehemently disputed that he was a spokesman for the 1960s youth while many of his most famous works dont seemed restricted to the age when they came out or the setting Such as The Times They Are AChangin with its Come mothers and fathersThroughout the landAnd dont criticizeWhat you cant understandYour sons and your daughtersAre beyond your commandYour old road is rapidly aginPlease get out of the new one if you cant lend your handFor the times they are achangin seems as valid anywhere now as in 1960s AmericaBorn Robert Allan Zimmerman in Minnesota on May 24 1941 to a Jewish family with its roots in Tsarist Russia he displayed an interest in music right from his school days and in 1961 dropped out of university for a fulltime music career He also changed his surname to Dylan in homage to Welsh poet Dylan ThomasBooks by US songwriter Bob Dylan who was announced the laureate of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature are displayed at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm Sweden on October 13 2016 PicAFPThough his first album Bob Dylan 1962 with renditions of popular existing folk and gospel hits remained unnoticed it was his second The Freewheelin Bob Dylan with 9 of its 11 tracks written by him and then The Times They Are AChangin all selfwritten that catapulted him to recognition and renownBesides rights and peace they also chronicled various social injustices such as The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll about the unprovoked senseless killing of a black hotel barmaid by a young wellconnected white man socialite who gets off lightly but his vivid unsettling and even surreal lyrics leave a marked impressionTake the aftermath of nuclear war I saw a white ladder all covered with waterI saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all brokenI saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young childrenAnd its a hard and its a hard its a hard its a hardAnd its a hard rains agonna fall or on the Red Scare of hidden communists I wus lookin high an low for them Reds everywhereI wus lookin in the sink an underneath the chairI looked way up my chimney holeI even looked deep down inside my toilet bowlThey got away Talkin John Birch Paranoid BluesDylan who is still active kept on reinventing himself moving across the whole spectrum of musical genres rock and roll blues country gospel jazz while once riling the establishment of folk music his original by performing with an electric band and then even being part of pop band The Travelling Willburys comprising among others Roy Pretty Woman Orbison and former Beatles member George Harrison It is however his initial record that makes up his abiding legend