Now the time for popular artists to be popular is getting shorter and shorter, and many small flowers and small fresh meats are pursuing to make quick money, and they often have a short flowering period, and soon no one cares.
There is a singer who can cross the age barrier and release a new single even in his 70s and be active on stage. He is considered to be different from other singers, making records not to make money, nor to produce popular hits, but many music has been sung by everyone for more than fifty years.
He was once described by Jobs as "one of the most respected poets and musicians of our time, and he is also my personal idol." ”
He was the only singer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for "creating a new poetic mood in the great American folk tradition." ”
He's Bob Dylan.
01
A natural troubadour
Bob Dylan was born in 1941 in Hibbing, Minnesota, and grew up in a middle-class Jewish family.
Dylan showed a talent for music from an early age, teaching himself guitar, harmonica, piano and other instruments, forming a small rock band in high school, and performing in the school auditorium.
Later, while studying at the University of Minnesota, he was influenced by the folk music of the time and began to perform in the folk circle near the school. Folk music includes old mountain songs, blues, country dances and story songs that sound as if they were written by the wind and contain the soul of the singer.
Dylan debuted with "Blowing In the Wind" (the answer is flying in the air). The performance form of guitar + harmonica became a symbol of folk songs.
There is no dragging rhythm in his music, and the simple melody coupled with the hoarse voice unconsciously hits the human heart.
Dylan loves to adapt traditional folk songs, and his greatest talent is to bring the past to people's eyes, to give it fresh flesh and blood, to bring old music to life, to turn it into new songs.
Since 1990, Dylan has released two covers of old blues and folk standards, containing centuries-old songs, ballads, and tunes. Ancient songs and heritage unleashed Dylan and gave him a whole new lease of power.
02
The pioneer of folk rock
Dylan went from folk music to rock music in 1965, combining folk and rock to form the musical genre of folk rock. With the help of the simple and direct melody of folk music and the strong beat of rock and roll, the theme of the song is expressed in popular ways.
From March 1965 to May 1966, for more than a year, Dylan released three albums with great talent and astonishing creativity, almost all rock songs accompanied by an electro-acoustic band, declaring that all rules had been broken and abandoned, and that great cultural liberation was opening doors for all forms of expression.
The song "Highway 61 Revisited" became a gospel song in the rock world with profound lyrical metaphors and rich imagery.
In American music, "The Great Road" is a narrow theme based on class, sexism, and race, and the Great Road song is about a man who has no money, nowhere to go, and is homeless, and wandering is a crime, and people who have no money and no hope of making money step on the road to live, not some romantic adventure.
Dylan gives Route 61 a whole new dimension, with five chapters of stories covering religion, ethnography, international relations and literature, metaphors and obscure logic and indescribable complex emotions that make it impossible to accurately say the meaning of the lyrics, but there is a sense of enlightenment, it makes you believe that the road is full of surprises and everything can happen.
Dylan's 1965-1966 tour, which ended almost every night in a state of fanaticism, dramatization, and proximity to struggle and conflict, also propelled him to the pinnacle of honor and controversy.
But a motorcycle accident in 1966 brought his career to an abrupt halt, and a serious neck injury forced him to recuperate.
In 1967, he and the band played music in an underground studio, and recordings of these clips eventually became basement tape for the double albums. In 1969, he released the album Nashville Skyline, which pioneered the country rock genre, and his unforgettable songs made him highly acclaimed.
03
A musical legend that lasts for half a century
But like anyone who reached the pinnacle of the summit in his early years and did not die young, a curse that lasted for life began.
The great shadow of his early success always hung over him. In the 1970s and 1980s, a full twenty years passed dilation, dylan entered a long and tangled period. Although he still maintained a high output, although occasionally scattered in the pearls of various albums, most of his works were quite mediocre.
In his own words: "I am the kind of person who people call it... The mirror had turned over, and I could see my future—an old actor rummaging through the trash cans outside his past glorious theater. ”
However, this is like being in the desert, and it is not a waste. More than a dozen albums with mixed styles and different standards have struggled with repeated exploration, trial and error, and ups and downs.
He returned the same way, drawing inspiration from the folk songs he had sung as a young man. The 1997 album Forgotten Time, 2001's Love and Steal and 2006's Modern Times have regained their surprising vibrancy.
In his later years, Dylan seemed to have finally discovered how to consciously create works that could be created unintentionally in his early years.
Today, after regaining his peak and receiving every honor imaginable, the elderly Dylan is still touring, releasing new albums and songs.
As one commentator put it: "The man who many have prepared to bury may no longer be a factor in the pop equation, but is still fighting time." ”
04
People ahead of the times
Dylan, in the common imagination, is far more than a singer who became popular by chance. He feels the pulse of the times and is a person who is always one step ahead of the times. He was able to translate the vagueness and even the changing threats and warnings of his time into a language that was immediately and thoroughly understood.
Dylan wrote many protest songs, and a song he wrote about arms dealers in 1963, "Master of War", was voted the first place in the "One Hundred Greatest Protest Songs".
The lyrics are simple and straightforward, "Come on, you war masters, you built all the guns, you built death planes, you built big bombs," he criticized the death and destruction caused by the war masters.
The song "Answers Flying in the Air" is set against the backdrop of the anti-war craze during the Vietnam War.
"How many times does it take for a cannonball to pass across the sky to be banned forever?" How many ears does a person have to hear the cries of those behind him. How many lives have to be sacrificed to know that too many people are dead. ”
He attracted the attention of young people with his unique creative skills, and whenever there was a war, he always reminded people of this song.
In 1964 Dylan published his famous "The Times They Are a-changing" (times are changing). It was born in an era when the civil rights movement was in full swing and people were calling for change:
Come on, Senators and House Members.
Pay attention to the summons, don't block the aisle, don't block the hall. Those who do not act must be those who will be hurt in the future.
There's a fierce battle outside that will soon shake your windows and make the walls rattlle. Because times are changing.
Dylan called on people to work hard to participate in social change and move history forward.
Many people say that they started listening to Bob Dylan because he could express feelings that they couldn't express clearly, that he could extract their own unformed anger, fear, and fear, and turn them all into reality, even poetry.
Dylan writes that to do what he did, a man must:
"Being able to see through things, seeing through the truth of things — not seeing through metaphorically — is actually looking, just like seeing through metal and letting it melt." It is necessary to see it as it is, and to reveal it with powerful words and extreme insight. ”
Dylan's creation made music begin to have ideas, turned music into a tool to express the outlook and attitude of life, and he gave music the subversive power to change people and the world.
Dylan incorporated the form of poetry and ideas concerned with social issues into the music, and his songs passionately expressed concerns about civil rights, world peace, environmental protection, and other serious global issues.
Let's follow this collection of bob Dylan's selected reviews to learn about his work, and I believe that after reading it, you will find the secret behind the song.
Author: Onion, a member of the Intensive Reading Club. An insightful and humanly trained woman wants to think deeply with you and change her life.