by Diego Morra
One essay popped up in one daily recently wondering how Robert Allen Zimmerman, better known as Bob Dylan, would have written a rosary of ballads to grieve, uplift and goad a benighted country to be aware of its interest, committed to democratize itself and rid it of the triangle of oppression, exploitation and judicial coercion.
Apparently, the commentator has been missing out on what is happening all around him, unaware that many Filipino cultural workers have written songs that cannot be unsung, ballads that cannot be excised from the heart and anthems that have been vocalized by unarmed warriors. Bob Dylan was not born a musical genius, and his initial verses concerned some pets, not the terrific lyrics of a Woody Guthrie or the spirituals and blues that he had to encounter in search of his own art.
Born just as the impact of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl was etched into the neurons of American brains, Dylan was both a chronicler and a “shameless” creative borrower, making “Lord Randall” sound contemporary in “A Hard Rain’s A- Gonna Fall.” Attracted to Guthrie, Dylan naturally sustained the working class content of folk songs. It was Guthrie who denounced Fred Trump in “Old Man Trump” for discriminating against Blacks and imposing strict rules for tenants like himself.”
Dylan turned 85 on May 24, decades after he sharpened his musical skills as a session artist and as a performer in Greenwich Village, where he worked with the likes of Pete Seeger of The Weavers, a musician whose banjo was nearly indicted for membership in the Communist Party. Dylan would later live in with Susan “Suze” Rotolo, a humanities student and daughter of Italian union organizers and Communist Party members who introduced him to the works of Rimbaud and his jealous lover Verlaine and his absinthe, as well as other poets.
Of course, he became Bob Dylan because of Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet forever intrigued with the “dying of light.” Blame Rotolo for the radical tinge in Dylan’s lyrics but she had to leave for Italy, feeling that she was suffocating as Dyland found fame and fortune. “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” was written because of that parting. Joan Baez wrote “Diamonds and Rust” to describe a love that cannot prosper. Dylan himself was no stranger to such types of songs and he wrote one, “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” perhaps in tribute to his wife, Sara Lownds.
Ever heard of “Subterranean Homesick Blues”? That 1965 ditty, regarded as the piece that prefigured “rap” music, said it plainly: “You don’t need a weatherman to know where the wind blows.” A more militant section of the Students for Democratic Society (SDS) called itself The Weathermen. Critics said Dylan must have read Jack Kerouac’s “The Subterraneans” (1958) and the agony of the beat generation but back in 1962, her already wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind,” the song that the Civil Rights Movement embraced along with “The Times They Are A-Changin.”
Dylan also rued the murder of National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP) Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963, writing “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” of how racists repudiate reason and justice to maintain segregation and deny minorities their civil and political rights. Bod Dylan reworked Dominique Behan’s “The Patriot Game” (1957), which in turn was a traditional English folk song, and produced “With God on Our Side” in 1964, right smack into the height of protests for civil rights. This song tackles US violence, the country’s addiction to wars (in its 250 years, the US enjoyed only 15 years without war) and Dylan questioned why no one gets the reason for fighting.
Will Bob Dylan visit us for a gig? Why not? Just as he did “Joey” about a Mafia don, won the freedom of boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (who was wrongly convicted) with his song and even chronicled his journey to religious fundamentalism, Judaism and back, Dylan would certainly oblige, just as he championed Farm Aid, an annual event to help American farmers battered and bruised by Trump’ transactional politics. Let’s bring him here to work on “Sara’s Impeachment Blues,” “The Seas They Are A-Takin’” about China’s expansionism and uncouth behavior” and “Murder No More,” about extrajudicial killings (EJKs.) That would be the day… and BoyD would be delighted, along with an old dog who never tired of listening to Roni Duncan at Hobbit House.#
