介绍:
For bookies around the globe, the Nobel season is just like the Super Bowl. For years, leading bookmakers such as Ladbrokes have taken great delight in forecasting who will snap the prestigious literary award.
2016 is no exception. From long-time contender Haruki Murakami to Kenyan novelist Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, many renowned wordsmiths have become betting favourites.
Yet on October 13th, in the full view of cameras and journalists, Sara Danius, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, threw everyone off balance by her stunning announcement.
Just like this, the 75-year-old became the first American to win the Nobel Prize since Toni Morrison in 1993. For the very first time, this 115-year-old literary award is bestowed on a musician.
Many of his fans and fellow artists welcomed the decision and call the accolade "long overdue".
Yet some, including award-winning writer Jodi Picoult, contemplate whether Dylan's laurel now qualifies book authors to win Grammys.
So does Bob Dylan deserve a Nobel Prize? And how could a singer be put on equal footing with some heavyweight poets like Tagore and Yeats?
On today's Ink & Quill, let's trace back the eventful career of this legendary songwriter to find out the answer.
*************************************************************************
Before Bob Dylan became the cultural icon that we're all familiar with, he was Robert Zimmerman, a boy born in a small town of Minnesota. Growing up in a middle-class Jewish family, he developed an interest in music at an early age. As his parents recalled, he was born with "instinctive showmanship".
As a teenager, Bob Dylan's idols were blues musicians such as Johnnie Ray, Hank Williams, and Jimmy Reed.
In 1955, the film "Blackboard Jungle" was released. The theme song of the movie, "Rock around the Clock", not only transformed rock'n'roll from a musical niche to a wide-ranging cultural phenomenon, but also swayed young Bob. He formed several rock bands in high school but gradually shifted his focus on folk music.
In 1960, Bob Dylan dropped out of college. One year later, following in the steps of his music hero, folk balladeer Woody Guthrie, this aspiring young man broke into the New York music scene by singing at clubs and coffeehouses of Greenwich Village. Most of the tracks he delivered around that time were hard-core protest songs backed by loud strumming. The budding artist also changed his name to Dylan, in honour of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
In his 2004 memoir "Chronicles: Volume One", Bob Dylan fleshes out the early stage of his music career.
Change came quickly.
Dylan started to make a name for himself in 1963, after the release of his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Many songs on this album were labelled protest songs, partly inspired by Guthrie and influenced by Pete Seeger's passion for topical songs.
But among all the tracks collected in the album, "Blowin' in the Wind" is probably the most celebrated composition. Partially deriving its melody from the original Civil War era song, "No More Auction Block", Dylan's lyrics questioned the social and political status quo. Its well-known refrain, "The answer, my friend, is blowin'in the wind", has been recognized by critics as "impenetrably ambiguous" and "could be applied to just about any freedom issue".
The song was widely recorded by other artists, including the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, who performed it a few hours before Martin Luther King Jr's famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
"We sang it very slowly, very, very—in a very determined way, but with a sense of the weariness of the people that surrounded us."
"Blowin' in the Wind" soon became an anthem of the civil rights movement and anti-war campaign. In 1994, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2004, it was ranked number 14 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
Songs like "Blowin' in the Wind" helped Bob Dylan enhance his reputation and marked him as a prominent figure in the civil rights movement, but the songwriter didn't stop right there. In his third album, "The Times They Are A-Changin", the singer covered many weighty issues, such as racism, poverty and social change. In the namesake title song, a more politicized and cynical Dylan was revealed.
But by the mid-1960s, Bob Dylan, the young man who was widely considered as the legitimate heir of Woody Guthrie, turned his back on acoustic folk music. At the Newport Folk Festival, the then 24-year-old strolled onto the stage with an electric guitar and started the heavy beats.
Listen to the lyrics. This lengthy, free-formed piece contains nothing soft nor sweet. In Dylan's own word, "Like a Rolling Stone" is "just a rhythm thing on paper all about my steady hatred, directed at some point that was honest." Many fans were stunned and beyond upset by this sudden shift of genre. But history has proved that this was a defining moment for both Dylan himself and the burgeoning rock scene.
Award-winning rock star Bruce Springsteen, in his speech for Dylan's inauguration into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, elaborated on Bob Dylan's impact on modern music history.
"When I was a kid, Bob's voice thrilled and scared me. It made me feel irresponsibly innocent and it still does…Dylan was a revolutionary. The way that Elvis freed your body, Bob freed your mind… He showed us that just because the music was innately physical did not mean that it was anti-intellect. He broke through the limitations of what a recording artist could achieve. Without Bob, the Beatles wouldn't have made Sgt. Pepper, maybe the Beach Boys wouldn't have made Pet Sounds, the Sex Pistols wouldn't have made God Save the Queen,U2 wouldn't have done "Pride (In the Name of Love)," Marvin Gaye wouldn't have done "What's Going On," Grandmaster Flash might not have done "The Message," and the Count Five could not have done "Psychotic Reaction. "
Bob Dylan's fondness for tweaking and reinvention carried on in the 1970s. In 1972, he provided the backing music for the movie, Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid and played a minor role. Despite the film's poor performance in the box office, the song, "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" became an instant hit. His later compositions, such as "Hurricane," "Blood On The Tracks" and "Street-Legal" also amplified his literary bent.
In his recording career of more than 50 years, Dylan has explored different music genres, ranging from folk, blues, and country to gospel, rock and roll, and jazz. Since the late 1980s, he has toured steadily on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour. His accomplishments as a recording artist and performer have been central to his career, but song-writing is undoubtedly considered his greatest contribution.
American actor Tom Hanks once concluded.
"That man has altered the consciousness of our country and the world, and he started when he was a very young man in 1959. I remember reading the liner notes on his very first album, you know, talking – making – singing songs about Port Elizabeth, New Jersey. He shaped our generation and he shaped – I think he shaped the artistic response, the responsibility of the artist, simply by being so authentic to his desire to tell the truth in song. And he's always writing songs even now. He's still stopped. He's not a man who had a couple of hits and decided to coast on it. His output now is just as great as it's ever been. We should all, we should all aim for Bob Dylan-esque."
Since 1994, this high-profiled artist has published six books of drawings and paintings, which drew the attention of major art galleries. As a musician, Dylan has sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. He has also received numerous awards including eleven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award. The Pulitzer Prize jury in 2008 awarded him a special citation, for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."
As the Swedish Academy bestows Bob Dylan as the 2016 Nobel Literary Prize winner, the multi-talented musician has been put under the spotlight again. Dylan, who gave the world "Like a Rolling Stone," ''Blowin' in the Wind" and dozens of other iconic ballads, now finds himself on a list that includes Samuel Beckett, Toni Morrison and T.S. Eliot, whom Dylan referred to in his epic song "Desolation Row."
As the accolade generates controversy about the definition of literature, Steven Rings, Professor of Music at University of Chicago voices his opinion.
"By and large, people know him through his songs. And I think in our culture and certainly the kind of elite culture that surrounds something like the Nobel Prize, we tend to separate out literature from performance. Literature is something that you read on the page. But there is, of course, an extremely long tradition of performed literature going all the way back to Homer. "
Sara Danius, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy and a professor in literature in her own right, also defended the decision.
"Bob Dylan is a great poet, it's as simple as that. He's a great poet in the great English language tradition, stretching from William Blake onwards - from Milton and Blake onwards I should say. At the same time, he embodies the tradition, and I'm not speaking about the high tradition only, but also the low tradition. His repertoire stretches from folk songs in the Appalachians, delta blues in the south, all the way to Rimbaud, of French modernism. And he handles this heritage in this absolutely original way. No one has ever done anything like him."
However, despite the heated debate, the winner himself kept silent. It wasn't until nearly a week later that his website finally acknowledged the win. But as a man who set off a lasting debate over whether lyrics can be regarded as art, a singer whose songs change the musical landscape of a whole generation, what's really going on in his mind?
Let's wait and see.
大家还在听
