Dylan and politics
- sciart0
- Apr 12
- 1 min read
Excerpt: "It is why the Democrats can’t be a left-wing party if they want to survive. It is why they have to be the moderate, sane alternative to the authoritarian Republicans.
It is why the true liberals sitting in the audience in Newport 1965 gasped with ecstasy when Bob Dylan plugged in and sang, “Once upon a time, you dressed so fine…” And giggled when Bob launched “Highway 61” with the wild whistle he’d bought on the street in Greenwich Village.
That brilliant merger, the joining of literacy and electricity, was close to the heart of American music. For Dylan, there were sources in blues, folk, rock, country, church music, the American songbook; it was something the world had never heard before.
The end product of true American music—still evolving—deals only tangentially with class or ethnicity. Woody and Dylan had that in common: they were about the fresh, wild spirit of This Land."