by Jeremy Ford

Created on: December 30, 2009

Singer, songwriter, guitar player, musician, poet, novelist, artist, painter, actor, and legend of American music and culture.  Raw, rugged, cynical, audacious, heavy, soft, romantic, and crude.  Bob Dylan changed rock n roll by pioneering the incorporation of poetics, politics, poverty, reality, beliefs into the rock n roll sound; deviating from the classic relationship centered lyrics of the genre.   When he first showed up in New York City in the winter of 1961, he was an unknown Midwesterner, playing folk songs in the local coffee houses and bars in Greenwich Village, emulating his biggest musical influence, legendary folksinger Woody Guthrie.  He was cast as a Guthrie impersonator, unoriginal, facsimile. 

He would prove to be just the opposite; from the raunchy screech his echoing harmonica to the unique idiosyncrasies of his high-pitched grating voice.  And of course his lyrics- imagery and melody juxtaposed in rhythmic articulation- individual, believable, cosmic, and thought provoking.

Dylan will always be remembered for his songs.  The classic songs that have been performed and recorded by hundreds, probably thousands of other musicians.  Songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are a-Changin,” “Don’t Think Twice, it’s Alright,” “Like a Rolling Stone.”  These songs and others will live on, along with any other form of legacy that may persist.

The best way to define Dylan is indefinable.  He was never one to use labels to define a person, and it wouldn’t be fair to label Dylan’s legacy.  It is best left ineffable, to just listen to his words and music and formulate your own opinion of the work.

His career has consistently evolved one step ahead of the conventional.  Perhaps his most widespread legacy he will leave behind is the effect he had in the evolution of rock n’ roll when he “went electric” in the public’s eyes, most notably at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival where his performance was met with a mix of emotions, both positive and negative.

But Dylan’s contribution to American art and culture goes far beyond his move to electric.  And it’s not as if Dylan had never played an electric guitar before the Newport Folk Festival.  He had experimented with an electric guitar at an early age but traded it in for a Martin acoustic as it was more apt for what he was doing at the beginning of his career, playing folk songs in the small coffee houses of Greenwich Village.

Dylan’s legacy in the words, lyrics, in the continuation and persistence of the written word, of American folk tales and stories; it is films and the influence he had on the evolution of music.  His career was in constant evolution, the only way an artist is able to remain in the spotlight for any significant period of time.  Despite the fact that his more recent work may be different than his earlier acoustic and electric albums, the Dylan sound is still there.  He will always be remembered for his supplementation to the civil rights movement, to rock n roll, and to American folk music.  He words are timeless, his music innovative and his legacy forever instilled in the soul of American culture.

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