“HERE he is! The legend in his lifetime”, a Beat poet known as ‘Wavy Gravy’ once introduced a young Jewish aspiring musician from a small mining town in America’s Midwest whose name he didn’t even know, to an audience at a Greenwich Village folk club where fellow Beat wordsmiths such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg hung out, in 1961 New York City.
The chubby-faced bumpkin – a vagabond who had been sojourning at various places ever since 1959 when he’d left home aged 18, initially for the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis where he briefly enrolled in a liberal arts programme in which he was supposed to major in music and from which he dropped out after just a few months – was far from being befitting of such an élite tag, let alone even being a polished musician at the time!
Unbeknownst to ‘Wavy Gravy’, his enthusiastic introduction of the young man was apposite to the then still unknown troubadour who made a point of presenting an alternative identity and reality of himself, such as when, in October 1959, he gave a name completely not his upon the owner of a coffee house he had requested to play in enquired as to his identity – in addition to make-believe stories he constantly conjured, ranging from claiming to had ran away from home with his guitar and harmonica whilst aged 10, to varying versions of when and where he first played his guitar in New York.
Such conscious or deliberate biographical distortions were in willingly not only fantasizing an origin for himself as a freewheeling itinerant – but actually actualizing such a lifestyle. His outlook on life resonated with those of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, the free-spirited non-conformist protagonists in Kerouac’s On the Road – the travelogue he incidentally described as being “like a bible” to him, relating the journeys across America of the afore-mentioned duo.
Wavy Gravy’s theatrics aside, ensuing time would prove his utterance about the then precocious musician to be prophetic.
That is one of the tidbits abounding in Bob Dylan: Jewish Roots, American Soil – a tome collating the formative period of musician Bob Dylan’s career written by Harry Freedman, Britain’s leading author of popular works of Jewish culture and history. Concentrated on the 1960s spanning the struggle for civil rights, the McCarthy-era, President Kennedy’s assassination, the Vietnam War, the babyboomers’ advent, et cetera – Freedman delves into the enigma born with a German surname (Zimmerman is Dylan’s real family name). His is a part life story of an intrepid figure whose histrionics evoke impressions reminiscent of Tinseltown hero James Dean’s roles – a leading man of his own terms who, unlike the Dean starring movie title, is in fact a “Rebel-With-a-Cause!”
Dylan, to borrow a Frank Sinatra song title, has always done things his own way – such as when he took several months to accept the Nobel Prize in Literature he was conferred with “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition” in 2016. Ye gods, ‘twas even unconventional for a musician to be thus honoured (the only other singer-songwriter to have received the accolade was Rabindranath Tagore, unto whom it was awarded in 1913) – and the decision provoked a brouhaha from the cognoscenti and the media who expressed outrage at the Nobel Committee’s judgement of choosing a singer rather than a writer!
A quintessential archetype, his being enduringly true to himself even extended to his once marrying an African American woman – viz, Carolyn Dennis, his back-up singer, with whom he had a daughter – in contravention to intermarrying with Gentiles being verboten among his people. His hobnobbing with African-Americans further involved his identifying with the Civil Rights movement, which he supported when he performed on the National Mall on August 28, 1963 during the March on Washington.
On that historic moment, Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” oration would have resonated with Dylan’s own wordsmithery and lyrics such as, “Yes, and how many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?” – contained in his anthemic song, “Blowin in the Wind”.
The ties also pertained to his craft, with a prominent African American folk singer and guitarist named Odetta influencing him to switch from electrical to acoustic guitar – subsequent to having crossed paths with her in Minnesota in 1960.
Dylan would refer to her music as “spiritual food”.
Another standout influence on Dylan’s oeuvre was Woody Guthrie, a folk singer he sought out to emulate at the genesis of his career – with Ginsberg and Kerouac also molding him as an artist.
Freedman’s narrative paints a tableau of a Hollywoodesque hero (he even has Dylan tumbling off a Triumph motorcycle at Woodstock on July 29, 1966 – which resulted in his ceasing touring for seven years afterward); a bohemian who once smoked marijuana with the Beatles; a soul once described as a “scruffy little pale-faced dirty human being” by fellow folk singer Joan Baez (whom he’d have a brief affair with) upon encountering him in 1961; a performer called out as a “Judas” by a concertgoer enraged with perceived betrayal for Dylan switching from acoustic to electric guitar.
The fuss about Dylan hinges on his addition of sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 1960s, infusing it with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry. His lyrics incorporate political, social and philosophical influences which defy pop music conventions and appeals to prevailing counterculture.
Self-taught on the guitar, there’s no indication he ever received formal guitar lessons. His guitar playing and singing style is instead, attributed to selfpractice, listening to and being influenced by other musicians through his absorption of the music scene around him.
Freedman’s is the tale of a balladeer who, in Dylan’s brother David’s description, “set out to become what he is.”
A trade paperback, Bob Dylan: Jewish Roots, American Soil is published by Bloomsbury and distributed in South Africa by Jonathan Ball Publishers.
Available at leading bookstores countrywide, it retails for R450.
