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Bob Dylan

Stanely Mushava Literature Today

When Bob Dylan was announced as the Nobel Prize for Literature’s surprise laureate last month, some accused the panel of erasing the margins between literature and music. The decision was bitterly felt in Africa where many believe that Ngugi wa Thiong’o, an immense figure in the cultural and political canons of the global south, is long overdue for the recognition.While Dylan’s creative potency is not in doubt, some argue that the progenitor of mid-century pop must have been honoured in his proper place, as a musician not as a writer. For yet others, it is not so much a question of Dylan not deserving the Nobel as it is of the Nobel not deserving Dylan.

Although he has insistently refused categorisation, Dylan has been appropriately claimed as a champion of the underclass. Dylan earned early recognition as a force in counter-culture movement that chanted down war and institutionalised racism in the mid-century US.

His adversarial response to control stratagems of the global elites, particularly the US government, keenly felt in classics such as “Masters of War”, “The Times They Are Changing”, “With God on Our Side” and “Blowing in the Wind”, set him apart as something special among advocates of the disenfranchised.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o – pic from NewLiberian.com

For his anti-war credentials secure in the radical tendency of popular music, some feel Dylan must refuse the Nobel Prize, whose originator Alfred Nobel reportedly came into the money as a maker of explosives.

Naturally, a lot of competing post-mortems are inbound in the aftermath of the award. But many heads will be turning to Dylan for the fresh oil of inspiration. The critical and commercial reception of is set for a new stretch. His publisher, Simon and Schuster, is cashing in on the latest achievement with a new transcript of his discography, “Lyrics, 1961-2016”, released on November 1.

The music, at least the ubiquitous uploads on the Internet, is freshly inundated with comments assessing Dylan’s stature, this time not just as a musician but as a man of letters.

Like a zealot born out of time, I happened into Dylan this way last week, furnished with references by culture critic and fellow Herald columnist David Mungoshi, always one to map the generational strivings of nations through their music.

After initial reservations over Dylan’s insistently rough and ready delivery, having been raised on the jit and sungura staple of the far south, I slowly warmed into the more accessible songs. The rugged format is a device apart. Having tapped into the spiritual frequency, one cannot indulge smoother cover versions which seem to peel away the method for the message.

But Dylan’s supreme achievement is not the harmonica soothing over accusatory lyrics in idyllic interludes, or the folk sequence which occasionally tugs you into the artiste’s element or the rugged vocals which defy classification.

Dylan’s artistic mainstay is to be located in the poetry. His songs aggregate a sequence of visuals, stripped down to simplicity and immediacy, yet loaded with profundity and eternity.

His mastery of paradox carries the listener along a wave of becoming in protest songs such as “With God on Our Side”. In “Tomorrow Is a Long Time”, love, vulnerability and obscurity, trinal elements in every artiste’s universe, merge into a terrible beauty. “Idiot Wind” is a visual cache wired from person to persona, coded yet captivating.

Imperial America is on trial in Dylan’s formative set. “Masters of War”, an impassioned response to the debilitating trail of the Cold War, does not scale up the pacifist’s petition to grand ideology but strips it down to bare sincerity, to the lowest subconscious denominator. The most hardened ideologue will shudder at Dylan’s indictment of global elites and power-mad despots who crunch away populations on their geopolitical chessboards.

“You’ve thrown the worst fear/ That can ever be hurled/ Fear to bring children/ Into the world/ For threatening my baby/ Unborn and unnamed/ You ain’t worth the blood/ That runs in your veins.

“How much do I know/ To talk out of turn/ You might say that I’m young/ You might say I’m unlearned/ But there’s one thing I know/ Though I’m younger than you/ That even Jesus would never/ Forgive what you do.

“Let me ask you one question/ Is your money that good/ Will it buy you forgiveness/ Do you think that it could/ I think you will find/ When your death takes its toll/ All the money you made/ Will never buy back your soul.”

The tragedy of war is that it takes the heaviest toll on those who have nothing to gain from it. Dylan serves these loyally in a series of potent verses.

Critics will accuse global elites of patronising a dissident’s gravestone in advance, for willing away the sting of dissent with a Nobel olive branch.

But Dylan’s discography defies simplistic categorisation. The mythic singer-songwriter maintains his right to define himself, even the right not to know himself. He has encouraged speculation that he will turn down the Nobel by reportedly not picking calls from the Swedish Academy, the panel responsible for bestowing the honour.

But the Nobel Prize’s Facebook page recently poured cold water on the speculation, revealing that the infamously mercurial 75-year-old songwriter had called to acknowledge the honour.

“The news about the Nobel Prize left me speechless,” he reportedly told panellist Sara Danius. “I appreciate the honor so much.”

The Nobel citation credits Dylan “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. Herself a nostalgic fan, Danius, generously compares Dylan with classical notables Homer and Sappho.

“We’re really giving it (the Nobel) to Bob Dylan as a great poet – that’s the reason we awarded him the prize. He’s a great poet in the great English tradition, stretching from Milton and Blake onwards. And he’s a very interesting traditionalist, in a highly original way. Not just the written tradition, but also the oral one; not just high literature, but also low literature,” Danius said.

“I came to realise that we still read Homer and Sappho from ancient Greece, and they were writing 2 500 years ago. They were meant to be performed, often together with instruments, but they have survived, and survived incredibly well, on the book page. We enjoy their poetry, and I think Bob Dylan deserves to be read as a poet,” she said.

For me, one of the more endearing aspects of Dylan is the Christian fundamentalist harvest of lyrics from “Slow Train Coming” to “Tempest”. Dylan has suffered a torrent of secular censure for the Bible-beating phases of his career but songs like “Precious Angel”, “I Believe in You” and “Slow Train Coming” and are powerful statements, even if only for shunning group affirmation in desperately depraved times.