{"id":468,"date":"2011-04-27T16:33:51","date_gmt":"2011-04-27T15:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=468"},"modified":"2011-05-14T11:50:51","modified_gmt":"2011-05-14T10:50:51","slug":"dont-follow-leaders-bob-dylan-in-china-and-vietnam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/dont-follow-leaders-bob-dylan-in-china-and-vietnam\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t follow leaders: Bob Dylan in China and Vietnam"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bob<\/a><\/p>\n

This article has been published in Solidarity<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Bob Dylan recently performed in China and Vietnam for the very first time, prompting critics to denounce him for \u201cselling out\u201d \u2013 and not for the first time.<\/p>\n

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd led the charge. In a recent column she denounced the singer, ending with these powerful lines:<\/p>\n

Maybe the songwriter should reread some of his own lyrics: \u201cI think you will find\/When your death takes its toll\/All the money you made\/Will never buy back your soul.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Strong stuff indeed.<\/p>\n

But of course Bob Dylan wasn’t writing those lines about \u201cprotest singers\u201d who had betrayed their values.<\/p>\n

He wrote them about the arms industry, the merchants of death who profit from the world’s wars, in his song \u201cMasters of War.\u201d<\/p>\n

I doubt if anyone seriously believes that Dylan is somehow the moral equivalent of mass killers.<\/p>\n

And did any of the critics bother to check what songs Dylan did choose to perform \u2013 songs that he admittedly submitted to censorship by the Communist regimes?<\/p>\n

The second song on his Beijing set was \u201cIt’s all over now, baby blue\u201d \u2013 widely understood as anti-Vietnam war song. The tenth was the powerful anti-nuclear war song \u201cA hard rain’s a gonna fall\u201d. The set ended with other 1960s-era classics including \u201cBallad of a Thin Man\u201d with the famous refrain,<\/p>\n

Because something is happening here
\nBut you don\u2019t know what it is
\nDo you, Mister Jones?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is certainly true of the critics who single out one or two Dylan songs from his early years that were not performed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe times they are a-changin’\u201d is given as an example of the kind of song Dylan would have sung — if he’d had any courage.<\/p>\n

But has anyone listened to that song since it was first recorded nearly a half century ago? It’s not about fomenting a popular uprising in a totalitarian country like China. It is full of specifically American content, such as a call on Senators and Congressmen to heed the voices of protest.<\/p>\n

To an audience living in a completely unfree society with no free press elections or parliament, such a song might have little impact.<\/p>\n

But the more complex, poetic language of songs like \u201cA hard rain’s a gonna fall\u201d might well resonate.<\/p>\n

The last stanza of that song contains a powerful celebration of dissent and protest:<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
\nAnd reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
\nThen I\u2019ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin\u2019
\nBut I\u2019ll know my song well before I start singin\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To understand why some critics have got it completely wrong you don’t really need to know Dylan’s biography. He was never really all that political, as his friends and colleagues have pointed out. He never wanted to be \u2013 and probably never really was \u2013 the voice of a generation.<\/p>\n

But even if you knew nothing at all about him but his songs, you’d understand the problem with the critics.<\/p>\n

Dylan’s lyrics are often deeply subversive, even when they don’t seem to be about politics at all.<\/p>\n

And some of his weakest songs are the ones that are most explicitly political. (For example, none of the critics are suggesting that he sing one of his most political songs \u2013 \u201cGeorge Jackson\u201d \u2013 which is regarded as one of the worst he ever wrote.)<\/p>\n

Finally, why do Dylan’s liberal critics assume that any political message he’ll want to deliver is one they would want heard?<\/p>\n

In a career spanning a half-century, Dylan has not fit into anyone’s neat boxes, and some of his most explicitly political songs would actually be an embarrassment to some of the liberals who are now criticizing him.<\/p>\n

For example, would they want him to sing the bitterly ironic 1983 song \u201cNeighborhood Bully\u201d with its explicitly pro-Zionist message?<\/p>\n

Singing that song in Tel-Aviv when he performs there in June will not require much courage. But maybe the real test would be if Dylan sings it two days earlier, when he performs in London?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article has been published in Solidarity. Bob Dylan recently performed in China and Vietnam for the very first time, prompting critics to denounce him for \u201cselling out\u201d \u2013 and not for the first time….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-solidarity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":483,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions\/483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}