- Person
- Bob Dylan
- Lived
- b. 1941
- Field
- Music
- From
- American
The story
In October 2009 Bob Dylan released Christmas in the Heart, his first Christmas album and 34th studio album. Recorded that May in Santa Monica with his touring band, Los Lobos' David Hidalgo and a small choir, it collects hymns, carols and popular seasonal songs such as Little Drummer Boy, Winter Wonderland, Here Comes Santa Claus and Must Be Santa, and Dylan produced it himself under his pseudonym Jack Frost.
The album surprised many listeners. Dylan explained that, although he was born and raised Jewish in Minnesota, he had never felt left out of Christmas as a child, and he described the songs as part of his life, just like folk songs. He and his band studied versions by singers such as Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra, then tried to find their own arrangements while doing the songs justice.
Dylan arranged for all his royalties from the album to go, in perpetuity, to charities fighting hunger and homelessness. Sales in the United States benefit Feeding America, the national network of food banks. Royalties from overseas sales go to Crisis, the British charity for homeless people, and to the United Nations World Food Programme, which provides food aid in emergencies. In a statement Dylan said it was a tragedy that more than 35 million Americans, 12 million of them children, often went to bed hungry, and when he released a video for Little Drummer Boy on Amazon, the page linked directly to Feeding America.
The album opened at number one on Billboard's holiday album chart and won generally warm reviews; critics who had expected a novelty praised how sincerely, and how playfully, the old songs were sung. Its exuberant video for Must Be Santa has been watched millions of times, and because the royalty gift has no end date, every new sale still helps.
In 2015 the Recording Academy's MusiCares charity named Dylan its Person of the Year in recognition of his philanthropic and artistic contributions. Christmas in the Heart remains a quiet example of how a popular record can be turned into a lasting source of meals for people in need.
Why it matters
Every sale of the album, in every year since 2009, has helped fund meals for hungry and homeless people in the US, the UK and around the world.
About Bob Dylan
Singer-songwriter; Nobel laureate in Literature for transforming American song.
More about Bob Dylan
- Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind became a civil rights anthemBob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind, released in 1963, asked whether war and injustice would ever end, and with The Times They Are a-Changin' became an anthem of the civil rights movement.
- 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 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
- Christmas in the Heart 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.