Abstract - How can I resist wanting to write about Dylan again?

Music can be considered many things: art, entertainment, message, a universal language, the expression of our soul, commodity; it is life. For my final paper, I’d like to use Bob Dylan as an example to further explore and discuss the importance of sound and the variability of it to music and music artists. I will analyze some of the noise Bob Dylan has made over the past 50 years and explore how the sound he’s made has evolved over that time.

Popularly regarded for his lyrics (and not always his voice), I will focus on Dylan through the frame of music as message. Dylan’s work relates to some of the readings from class (Cage, Burroughs, Rothenberg, and “Listening”), and I will also pull from literature on Dylan, such as his autobiography, Chronicles, and critic reviews/opinions to define how he creates his music and how it is revered or criticized from the music community. Doing so is important to show the different levels of how sound aesthetic is affected by visual aesthetic.

I will analyze how he sings the same song differently, for example the differences between the Blood on the Tracks and 1975 bootleg versions of “Simple Twist of Fate” and “Tonight I’ll be Staying here with You” – it’s not just the lyrics that change, but also his vocal quality/sound, phrasing, and emotion. These different performances likewise garner variable reactions from fans. These differences can be recognized not only over time, as the differences between his earlier albums and recent ones, but in live performances over the past few years. Whether others sing Dylan’s songs or Dylan sings his songs differently, they have the power to take many shapes because of the base quality of his work—his message and how he originally conveyed it.

Through this discussion of Dylan, I argue that although visual aspects of music are currently more significant that sound in popular culture with such emphasis placed on image, fashion, videos, and awards, the sound aspects are what eventually prevail with music and manipulations of sound are what notably affect us as listeners. Dylan partakes in the visual aspects of the industry appearing in commercials and selling paraphernalia and performing at live events, but his sound is most influential. When we close our eyes and listen to the music, what we hear is most important – the sound and the message.


It kind of sounds like I’m justifying Bob Dylan’s fame, but in a way I’m asking “Why is he famous?” It seems like many artists rely on either their image or their voice for their fame, if not both (Miley Cyrus=image, Aretha Franklin=voice, Elvis=I like to think both). But, Dylan has had success with his nasally voice that many people have parodied and that many others dislike. It’s what Dylan does with his voice and his sound and his message that make him work as a music artist and help others relate to him. Some say he’s more of a poet than a musician, so his recordings could be considered a type of sound poetry.



(These are a bunch of my ideas, and I’m not sure if this topic will end up working well or not. I’m wondering if the idea’s too broad and/or if I should quickly try another one. I was also considering writing about the way sound functions differently in public versus private spaces – the way people speak differently, and the differences in the listening that occurs in these spaces.)