Oh the course offerings, they are a changin' Students enjoy world's first ever J-term class devoted solely to Bob Dylan

Author: Mike Murali

On May 24, 1941, Robert Zimmerman was born to a Jewish family in Duluth, Minnesota. By the time he turned 18, the aspiring artist changed his name to Bob Dylan - a name that would become legendary in the world of music.

This J-term, a slew of students enrolled in a class offered by the Music Department entitled "Bob Dylan's America." Taught by Assistant Professor of Music Larry Hamberlin, this class is the first course in the United States to be taught exclusively on Dylan. It covers the cultural influence of the artist and his impact on several social movements, in particular those of the 60's.

"A few years ago, when I was teaching a survey of rock music, I started thinking about Dylan's place in music history, and I realized that he is probably the most influential figure in American musical history," said Hamberlin of the idea for the class. "I can't name any other individual who so fundamentally changed our ideas of what a popular song can be and what it can say."

From these initial thoughts, he came up with the idea for the class and spent last Fall listening to Dylan's music and conducting extensive research on him.

"Before Dylan, pop songs are somewhat universalized, in that song lyrics tend to be about generalized experiences that just about everyone can identify with. After Dylan, people expect a good song to convey a personal message and bear the mark of the songwriter's personality, even to the extent that the lyrics might be obscure and hard to understand."

The class not only deals with Dylan, but also with the politics of his time, including the Civil Rights Movement, nuclear disarmament and student antiwar movements, as well as the literature and music which influenced him, such as work by musicians Hank Williams, Little Richard and Allen Ginsberg. Chris Hassig '09 said of the class, "We've talked about his beat influences, mostly Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. We've gotten a sense of the state of music when Dylan arrived, his personal journey to prominence, his simple but brilliant combination of the folk/blues music tradition and the social commentary and poetry of the beats and his reluctant roll as a figurehead of the civil rights/ anti-war/ early 60's protest movement."

The course material includes the "Rough Guide to Bob Dylan" as well as Christopher Ricks' "Dylan's Visions of Sin," with the artist's memoirs and other materials. These written materials supplement a vast supply of music put out by Dylan which students listen to as homework.

Dylan was a major player in the evolution of folk/rock music and an emblem of the changing culture of his time.

"For many complicated reasons, including plain old luck, Dylan's songs expressed the unspoken feelings of lots of Americans in the early 1960s, and for that reason he became a musical and political 'spokesman of his generation,' to use a media label that he hated," said Hamberlin. "Even after he parted ways with the mainstream musical culture, he continued to create interesting and moving music, right up to the present day."

Dylan's music had a significant impact on the music of the time as well, influencing most American artists in the past half century. Whether large or small, the influences exist in many of the bands popular today, including Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones.

The class also influenced students' opinions of the artist. "My respect for Dylan as an artist has become exponentially higher, which I didn't think was possible," said Scott Robinson '09 "and the class has shown that Dylan was pretty removed from the 'hippie' movement and all that, even though most people associate him with being the voice of that generation." Hassig's view of the artist changed with course, as he stated, "I already had a view of him as a rambler and a very individualistic artist, but he's come off to me as even more of a loner, and I feel oddly negative toward his personality and sorry for him at the same time. It seems as though he spent so much time cultivating his artistic persona and escaping his roots that no one really knew him and thus he couldn't really cultivate very meaningful or strong connections with anyone."

Of the class, Hassig reflects, "This is one of those classes that you people who bent to self-imposed obligations or ideas of legitimizing J-term will wake up one day and regret you didn't take. In all likelihood I'll have other chances to try my hand at Organic Chemistry, Chinese, or various history topics."