Bob Dylan & History

Kevin Kulig

This week seemed like more of a history lesson than anything else. There’s good reason for this, as it is important to understand how the world was when the music we discuss came out. This week we mainly talked about Bob Dylan. We were assigned to write a short essay on one of Dylan’s songs, and I chose “Blowin’ In The Wind”. To keep it short, the lyrics discuss that the answer to many of the questions we may have are just blowing in the wind, right in front of us. The song was interpreted to be speaking out against the Vietnam War, but Bob Dylan states that he never intended it to be that way. During our Thursday class, we watched parts of a documentary on the music of the 60’s. What I found really interesting about it was the small groups they would get in and play music with each other every week, especially how many of the soon-to-be popular musicians would be in these groups with one another. Towards the end of class, we watched Bob Dylan’s live performance of “Maggie’s Farm” and compared it to the Rage Against The Machine version. They are extremely different from one another, to the point where the entire message of the song seems to change with the performance. What I mean by this is, Dylan’s rendition seems very upbeat, with people dancing and clapping along in the background. When you listen to the RATM iteration, it sounds angry, and aggressive. It puts an entirely different mood into the song. Though the lyrics may be the same, the moods of the two versions are polar opposites. Speaking of lyrics, it is very hard to even understand what Bob Dylan is saying in the song during the live performance. That’s another big difference, considering RATM sung the lyrics less, and instead took a sort of rap approach, just stating the lyrics angrily.