We don’t talk about what racism actually does to the person who decides they’re going to impose that on other people, what it does to their humanity. To hear that as a 17-year-old kid, it sparked so much thought. But because we’ve created this energy in this place, they view each other as nemeses. The Southern white person who says he hates a Black person and decides he’s going to murder that person - if he actually takes a closer look at his life reality and the reality of the Black person who’s scratching for freedom and to have the types of life we are promised in the American republic, those two people’s experiences of living in resource deserts or being food insecure are actually the closest together.
If you actually look at the experiences of the people that that person is terrorizing, they are going through more similar things than anyone in this situation. Which is: What does it do to the man that is carrying out the most abhorrent and horrible tenets of it? The Southern politician or the sheriff, he speaks about all of them getting paid and this person guiled into being their agent. We speak a lot about the types of impediments that exist in the maintenance of white supremacy and also the maintenance of the institution of whiteness and the institution of anti-Blackness in this country, but the frame Dylan created for it is, I think, a very necessary one to consider. But here it was that this person was able to see what those people were enduring in that moment and took some agency in being clear that that wasn’t the right way. I heard those things coming out of the mouth of a person where, if you put me in a lineup next to him, you might arguably say we had completely contrasting experiences. The song broke down that cognitive dissonance that can easily be created in this country, where you think only people who look like you have your perspective or can see your experience. The first time I had a police officer pull a gun on me, I was walking home from school. At that point, those things had also crossed into my lifetime. I found a lot of synergy between the things he was speaking to and the things my grandfather and his peers and a lot of the other folks in my neighborhood would say about their experiences. I was born and raised in New Orleans, and some of the energies he’s speaking to in this piece are pretty prevalent in that environment. The first time I heard the song, I was maybe 16 or 17 years old. We were excited and stunned by all the thoughtful responses we received for this project, and we think you will be too. All spoke to Dylan’s incomparable influence, the way he kicked open some kind of door or another no matter what form an artist works in.
You’ll find David Byrne writing an essay about one of Dylan’s most recent songs, and you’ll find David Crosby remembering the first time he saw Dylan play in the Village, and a whole lot more. Consider it a bonus.) Below, you’ll find singer-songwriters working in a tradition most obviously indebted to Dylan, but you’ll also find young country stars and ascendent art-rockers and jazz boundary-pushers. (Technically, there are picks from 86 musicians here, but we didn’t want to wait another six years to publish this. Instead, we chose to celebrate the occasion by surveying a vast array of musicians on their favorite Bob Dylan song.
All of which is to say: You and I both know about Bob Dylan, and there’s little I could say to celebrate his 80th birthday that hasn’t been said many times before. A Presidential Medal Of Freedom and a Nobel Prize and who knows how many other honors mark Dylan’s towering, seismic presence as not just a musician but a cultural and literary icon of the American Century. There are books and movies and over half a century’s worth of music journalism trying to dissect the mystery and pin down the multitudes. In the almost 60 years since Bob Dylan released his debut album, countless words have been spilled on his singular legacy.
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