Bob Dylan "voice of a generation"

          This week in class we learned about Bob Dylan and his important role through music in the 1960's. Dylan became the "voice of a generation" through his protest songs during the Civil Rights Movement. His songs were always very political and he always had a message or point he wanted to get across. For this blog we get to pick a Bob Dylan song and look deeper into its lyrics and meaning. I chose to look into the song "Blowin in the Wind."

          The reason I love this class so much is because it opens me up to so many new types of music. Bob Dylan isn't someone I would typically listen to and neither is the genre of music that his songs fall into. But, it was really interesting to listen to his songs and get an insight into the impact he had on the 60's. The song "Blowin in the Wind" stood out the most to me because the whole song is very open ended and depends on how one interprets it. The song itself is very repetitive but the whole time questions how many times something has to happen before its stopped or changed. The whole song seems like its questioning life itself. One of the lyrics that stood out the most to me is "how many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free?" This specific lyric stood out to me because it relates to the racism and slavery of the time. He is question how long African Americans will have to be on this earth before they will get the same freedom that whites had at the time. Another lyric that really stood out to me was "how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?" This part of the songs relates to war and how many times war will happen. This is really interesting because Dylan is question how many wars it will take for people to realize that we aren't getting any benefit from it and that the only thing we get out of war is losing people of our own. Lastly at the end of every line where Dylan questions something that is going on in society he says "the answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind The answer is blowing' in the wind." This line is really important to the song not only because its the title but also because all of the statements and questions he is making/asking have no definite answer. We never know how long it will actually take for a change to be made.
         
          I really love this song because it doesn't specifically focus on one thing that happened during the Civil Rights Movement. Every line shines light on a different issue from that time period. The song talks about everything from marches, symbols of peace, racism, and war, to belief in freedom and equality for all. This song is a really important form of protest during the Civil Rights Movement because Dylan took it into his owns hands to make sure everyone knew what was going on at the time  and make them think about when it would stop or something they could do to make a change for a certain situation.