- Person
- Bob Dylan
- Lived
- b. 1941
- Field
- Music
- From
- American
The story
Bob Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman in 1941 and grew up in the small, close-knit Jewish community of Hibbing, Minnesota, where he had his bar mitzvah in 1954. In 1961 he moved to New York to pursue music, and within two years he had written some of the most influential songs of the century.
He wrote Blowin' in the Wind in 1962 and first performed a two-verse version at Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village on April 16 that year, adding a middle verse soon afterwards. The lyrics were first printed in May 1962 in Broadside, a magazine devoted to topical songs. Pete Seeger identified the melody as an adaptation of the spiritual No More Auction Block, sung by people who had escaped slavery, and Dylan later acknowledged the debt. The words pose a series of questions about peace, war and freedom, and answer only that the answer is blowing in the wind.
The song opened his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, in May 1963. Three weeks later Peter, Paul and Mary released their version, which sold 300,000 copies in its first week, reached number two on the Billboard chart and won two Grammy Awards. That summer the song spread far beyond the folk clubs.
Together with The Times They Are a-Changin', released the following year, it became an anthem for the civil rights and antiwar movements. Mavis Staples was astonished that a young white man could capture the frustration and hopes of Black Americans so powerfully, and Sam Cooke added the song to his repertoire and was inspired by it to write A Change Is Gonna Come. In August 1963 Dylan sang at the March on Washington, and his songs became part of the movement's soundtrack.
Blowin' in the Wind was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1994 and ranked 14th on Rolling Stone's 2004 list of the greatest songs of all time. Its refrain has entered everyday speech, and generations of marchers, students and campaigners have sung it since. It remains one of the best-known protest songs ever written.
Why it matters
The song gave the civil rights movement a shared language of hope and questioning that is still sung around the world.
About Bob Dylan
Singer-songwriter; Nobel laureate in Literature for transforming American song.
More about Bob Dylan
- Bob Dylan campaigned for Rubin Hurricane Carter in songIn 1975 Bob Dylan released Hurricane, an eight-minute ballad arguing that the imprisoned boxer Rubin Carter was innocent, and performed it at every date of his Rolling Thunder tour.
- Bob Dylan sang at the 1963 March on WashingtonOn 28 August 1963 Bob Dylan sang at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the day Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his I Have a Dream speech.
- Bob Dylan wrote songs about victims of racial injusticeIn 1963 and 1964 Bob Dylan wrote songs about the murder of Medgar Evers, the death of barmaid Hattie Carroll and James Meredith's ordeal integrating the University of Mississippi.
- Bob Dylan gave his Christmas album royalties to fight hungerBob Dylan donated all his royalties from his 2009 album Christmas in the Heart to Feeding America, the UK charity Crisis and the World Food Programme.
- Bob Dylan joined the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971On 1 August 1971 Bob Dylan made a surprise appearance at George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh, the first major rock benefit concert, raising help for refugees.
- Bob Dylan's words at Live Aid inspired Farm AidAt Live Aid in 1985, Bob Dylan suggested some of the money could help struggling American farmers, prompting Willie Nelson to organise Farm Aid for debt-ridden family farms.
- Bob Dylan's archive became a public centre in TulsaAbout 6,000 of Bob Dylan's notebooks, lyric drafts, recordings and letters were acquired for Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the Bob Dylan Center opened to the public on 10 May 2022.
Sources
- Bob Dylan Wikipedia
- Blowin' in the Wind Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.