Editorials & Other Articles

Judi Lynn

(160,623 posts) Mon Feb 24, 2014, 06:17 AM Feb 2014

The Times They Are a-Changin’: Fifty years of Bob Dylan’s stark challenge to liberal complacency

The Times They Are a-Changin’: Fifty years of Bob Dylan’s stark challenge to liberal complacency
By Mike Marqusee, The Guardian
Saturday, February 22, 2014 7:23 EST

Fifty years ago this month the 22-year-old Bob Dylan released his third album, The Times They Are a-Changin’ – the acme and as it turned out the end of his “protest” period. Dylan renounced this genre so quickly, and took his fans on such a giddy journey afterwards, that there’s a tendency to downplay the extraordinary achievement and impact of his work in this brief initial phase of a long career.

As a collection, the album is one of the high watermarks of political songwriting in any musical genre. These are beautifully crafted, tightly focused mini-masterpieces. And they have a radical edge, a political toughness, that one rarely finds in the folk music of the period. Abstract paeans to peace and brotherhood were not for Dylan; the songs are uncompromising in their anger and unsparing in their analysis.

The album includes the two songs Dylan had sung at the March on Washington, six months earlier. But while Martin Luther King appealed to an inclusive future, Dylan struck a very different note: When the Ship Comes In was a revenge fantasy whose joyously vindictive climax is a vision of the total destruction of the oppressors; the other song, Only a Pawn in Their Game, was written in response to the assassination of the civil rights leader Medgar Evers in Mississippi, in June 1963.

The subject of this song, however, is not the martyred activist, but the man who killed him. And rather than a villain or psychopath, Dylan portrayed him as the product of a system: a system that set poor white against poor black for the benefit of an elite. A South politician preaches to the poor white man / “You got more than the blacks, don’t complain. / You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain.It was a class analysis of white supremacy, made at a time when this was a fringe idea even within the civil rights movement – though that would soon change.

More:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/22/the-times-they-are-a-changin-fifty-years-of-bob-dylans-stark-challenge-to-liberal-complacency/

7 replies

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The Times They Are a-Changin’: Fifty years of Bob Dylan’s stark challenge to liberal complacency (Original Post) Judi Lynn Feb 2014 OP

IMO, liberals in 1964 were a lot less complacent. merrily Feb 2014 #1

Being drafted to possibly die Enthusiast Feb 2014 #5

Complacent Liberals? randr Feb 2014 #6

I'm sorry, what? I was busy buying a Chrysler :-/. n/t cactusfractal Feb 2014 #2

I never got into to Dylan RedstDem Feb 2014 #3

His voice, meh. merrily Feb 2014 #4

Times sure have changed.... BrainDrain Feb 2014 #7

merrily

(45,251 posts)

1. IMO, liberals in 1964 were a lot less complacent.

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Mon Feb 24, 2014, 07:15 AM

Feb 2014

If liberals in 1964 found that song so challenging, it would never have become the hit that it became. Hordes of people don't buy things that make them uncomfortable and it's a safe bet that conservatives of the day weren't lining up to buy it.

Also, rock music was the genre of the day, not folk. The folk protest songs became best sellers because they were giving voice to sentiments that had already existed--pro-civil rights, anti-war. Neither would have been challenging to a liberal of 1964.

JMO.

Enthusiast

(50,983 posts)

5. Being drafted to possibly die

Reply to merrily (Reply #1)

Mon Feb 24, 2014, 08:53 AM

Feb 2014

in an unjust war was a huge factor.

How would we, or the Vietnamese, be better off today if we had won? They might even be worse off now, with a far right authoritarian government.

randr

(12,414 posts)

6. Complacent Liberals?

Reply to merrily (Reply #1)

Mon Feb 24, 2014, 09:11 AM

Feb 2014

There was not a week go by that marches and sit ins where held in most major cities across our Nation. Civil Rights rallies, anti War marches, Women's Rights you name it. Thousands of 'liberals', including every major religious organization (notably except the Southern Baptist's), college campus groups, WWI, WWII, and Korean War Veterans, grand parents-aunts and uncles, each and every weekend for years showed their disdain for the system we lived in.
And we changed it!
Voting Rights Act, women's empowerment, and the final end to the Viet Nam crisis after almost a decade of protest.
Unfortunately it was not these people who wrote the final chapter of this history. When I talk with people today they believe the protests were scattered, unorganized, and mostly small groups of 'hippies' as portrayed by the media. That was not the case.
These days a small group of liberals camp out with their designer gadgets and cappuccino for a month or two and it becomes a cause celeb-re.
Lets see some current 'liberals get shot on campus' if our current batch are so dedicated to their cause, real protests in our Nation are too far and in between.
An edit re: Dylan--IMHO
We are gifted to live in an era with artists like Dylan. His words not only speak to social injustices but strike to the heart of every one of our souls with the honesty of a lightning bolt. Let he who has ears hear.