“Two men died beneath the Mississippi moon.” Don’t fret the death mentioned because this is an influential quote from Bob Dylan’s song Oxford Town. This is a song about a Mississippi student trying to enroll into college, which led to raised emotions of his rights to being admitted. Bob Dylan, the artist who wrote and sang the song, influenced many people of all ages with his music. His music was commonly written on highly debated and touchy topics such as segregation and the Vietnam War. Overall, Bob Dylan was at the head of the impacts of music at the time, which could ultimately lead to resolutions of major issues. Bob Dylan’s great skills with music influenced many people, which resulted in a song that is not commonly known, but is immensely effective called Oxford Town.
Although Dylan was immensely talented, he had to start somewhere. Dylan was born Robert Allan Zimmerman and in the city of Duluth, Minnesota. His family moved around to adjust for jobs which caused Dylan to not like where he lived therefore he ran away more various times before finally leaving home at 18. He lived off of the roads with minimal education, but focusing on his love and passion for music (The H.W. Wilson Company). At this time and so on in his life, Dylan’s songs would hit the topics that were stressed at the time. His songs were labeled as social protest songs with the genre of Folk and later forming to Folk-Rock (ABCCLIO Interactive). Bob Dylan’s major success came once he was found and represented by a “folk-music critic of New York Times, Robert Shelton” (The H.W. Wilson Company). Dylan began his fame in the world playing his guitar, harmonica, or piano and even created the stage name Bob Dylan during his years shortly after high school (ABCCL...
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...sage, for people to begin to take notice and reason out actions of civil equality between not only blacks and whites but all people. Dylan stands by his belief of the relevance that his songs, even Oxford Town, are to the society during the time written and future years for as long as it is heard. To conclude Dylan’s ballad, his influences are neither gone, nor disappearing, but he continues to ask in the lyric, “Why doesn't somebody investigate soon” (Oxford Town).
Works Cited
ABCCLIO Interactive. Bob Dylan. 1 January 2001. 22 April 2014 .
Doyle, Jack. Only A Pawn in Their Game. 13 October 2008. 25 April 2014 .
Oxford Town by Bob Dylan. n.d. 25 April 2014 .
The H.W. Wilson Company. "Dylan, Bob." 1972. Ebsco Host. 21 April 2014 .
As I gazed across the book isles and leaned over carefully to pick one up out of the old dusty vaults of the library, a familiar object caught my eye in the poetry section. A picture in time stood still on this book, of two African American men both holding guitars. I immediately was attracted to this book of poems. For the Confederate Dead, by Kevin Young, is what it read on the front in cursive lettering. I turned to the back of the book and “Jazz“, and “blues” popped out of the paper back book and into my brain. Sometimes you can judge a book by it’s cover, I thought. Kevin Young’s For the Confederate Dead is a book of poems influenced by blues and jazz in the deep rural parts of the south.
He has shed his nonviolent nature on this subject. Turning to aggression, he writes about the lynching of blacks and how the truth of history was changed. He laments the history of blacks, and how their story, a ghost story, is being forgotten in the past where no one looks. Even Hayes had forgotten the truth that blacks were in the confederacy. This fact reveals that even Hayes has forgotten the truth. Hayes wrote that blacks have “lightening struck a window on the courthouse he’s been haunting ever since” (39-40). This statement suggests that injustice happened many years ago and conveys his disagreement with the handyman. He demands that he handyman be haunted by this history. In the next stanza, he wrote “your presence is requested tonight”. In doing so, he revealed that this story is no longer about justice. Rather, he wants the haunting of injustice to fill the handyman's life. Hayes says he’s a reasonable man, but revenge is on his mind, and his use of reason may be questionable.
The lyrics sung slowly, the instruments aided by the mournful violin and harp, all gave the song a haunting quality. Its lyrics, while simple, hold depth. The first three verses are repetitive, the first verse talks about Abraham Lincoln, the second refers to John F. Kennedy and the third is about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The verses explain how one day the men were no longer around because they were shot and killed. It then says how he freed a lot of people, that is referring to the fact that each man was an advocate for civil rights. Finally, it sums up the verse explaining how the good die young and each man died suddenly. The next, fourth verse, changes a bit. It states, how each man stood for a valuable cause and saw the good in people. it also states hope that their dream of equality will one day be achieved. Finally the fifth and final verse starts similar to the first three remembering Bobby Kennedy. It states, how he died for his beliefs and in doing so, joined the men who had done the same before him, including his older brother, John Kennedy. It was not a shock when the song did so well on the music charts. While rarely heard on the radio in the twenty-first century, in the decade following its release Abraham, Martin, and John was constantly playing. Numerous bands have done covers of the song as well, including a popular version by Whitney Houston.
In The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, It says, Dylan Thomas was born on October 27, 1914, where he spent his days growing up in Swansea, South Whales. His father was an English teacher at the grammar school. Dylan Thomas left the school in 1931 to go write on his own instead of going to college. In 1933, Dylan Thomas was “discovered” as a poet by winning a poetry contest in a popular newspaper (Thomas, English 2444). In 1934, at the age of twenty he published his first book called 18 Poems. That same year he then moved to London and several other villages where he started drinking a lot. In 1936, he met Caitlin Macnamara, a young Irishwoman, who had a bad temperament just like him and they got married and had three children. He supported himself in the last years in part with the long lecture tours of the United States, during which drunk or sober he gave great readings of poems on a dozen of college campuses (Thomas 101). His drinking gradually took up most of his time, which aided him in his early death in New York City (Thomas 102).
After being labeled the king of folkie/protest, Dylan began to rebel against the rebellion. Dylan’s fourth album, Another Side of Bob Dylan, likely refers to his romantic and whimsical side, or anything that rebels from his folk label. This album is also unique in its experimentation with free form poetry in the lyrics. In February 1964, Dylan embarked on a trip across the U.S. to “find enough inspiration to step beyond the folk-song form, if not in the bars, or from the miners, then by peering deep into himself” (Another Side of Bob Dylan). He wrote the songs for this album in the back of the minivan, and recorded 14 of them in one night at the studio.
Music has been around since the very beginning of time. The human body flows in a rhythmic syncopation. Music is used to change one’s mood and to inspire those who open their minds. It has the potential to cure diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. Humans, of every culture and society, function with a type of rhythmic music. As humans, we are hard wired to respond to music (Mannes). The human brain responds to music in such a way that the brain becomes more open to new rhythms, ideas, and values. Music has the power to take over the human body. This makes it easier to overcome conflict and change the ideals of somebody while using music (The Power of Music).
Woody Guthrie’s music provided a type of comfort to struggling people that couldn’t be provided by anybody else. His own suffering made him able to understand the feelings of people. It was through his good and bad experiences in which he gained the ability to connect with others. He used this ability to help soothe the emotional pain of the everyday people of the dust bowl. Although he stole the lyrics for most of his songs; he put his own
Born in Minnesota in 1941, Bob Dylan, then Robert Allen Zimmerman, befriended those less fortunate than him as a child. Through his childhood friends Dylan learned a valuable life lesson that material objects do not necessarily matter. Dylan’s childhood experiences of being the underdog shaped the political outcries that he sang about in the early 1960s. As a child, Dylan was influenced by early rock stars such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, and “Little Richard (whom he used to imitate on the piano at high school dances)” (Bob Dylan). Young Bob Dylan even formed his own bands, which included The Golden Chords and Elston Gunn. Dylan then went and attended the University of Minneapolis and became a part of the folk scene. While in school Dylan became aware of the political and sexual freedoms amplifying among his peers. After dropping out of college Dylan then moved to New York and began to play small gigs until he was signed by Columbia Records in October of 1961. January of 1962, Dylan started to utilize his music in order to “show the experiences of injustice within American society” (Bob Dylan: 1960s Political and Social Movements ).
In 1959 he left for college, but instead of consentrating on his studies he devoted himself to his music. He sang wherever he could, his performance style, a nasal tone with annunciation problems sometimes drew applause while other times critisism, yet this would later became his trademark sound. It was also around this time when he began performing with a guitar and harmonica. It was during his performing days in Dinkytown that the young Bob Zimmerman first began using Bob Dylan as his stage name. No clear reason can be assertained for the choice of Dylan. Whatever its source, the name gave him a public image distinct from his Jewish heritage, enhancing his already growing career.
To analyze Hughes’s poem thoroughly, by using Eliot’s argumentative essay, we must first identify the poem’s speaker and what is symbolic about the speaker? The title (“The Negro Speaks Of Rivers”) of the poem would hint off the speaker’s racial identity, as the word Negro represents the African-American race not only in a universal manner, but in it’s own individual sphere. T.S. Eliot’s essay, mentions that “every nation, every race, has not its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind”(549). In another sense, different societies have their own characteristics, however, with a racial mixture, shadowed elements can be formed. If one were to analyze in between the lines of Eliot’s essay and Hughes’s poem, he...
He had exposure to several different genres growing up in his St. Louis, MO hometown. He heard country from the whites, rhythm & blues (R&B) from mostly blacks, even Latin music. His family environment set him up well for future success while growing up in a middle class home in the middle of the Great Depression of the 1930s. His parents sun...
Bob Dylan was born as Robert Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, in Duluth Minnesota, where he spent the first six years of his life, and then his family relocated to Hibbing, Minnesota. By the time this musically inclined boy turned ten he could already play the harmonica, piano, and taught himself how to play the guitar. In his first year of high school, he formed a group, the Golden Chords. Dylan then went to the University of Minnesota for arts only to stay there for three semesters. After playing at various coffeehouses he realized school was not for him so he moved to New York, when he turned twenty years old and had hopes of meeting his idol, Woody Guthrie, who he visited many times at the hospital. (Bob Dylan Biography | Rolling Stone) During his time there, he signed with Columbia Records after being spotted by John Hammond, who he is still with today. In 1965, Dylan married Sara Lowndes and they stayed together for twelve years and had four children together, one of their kids, Jakob, is in a band called the Wallflowers. (Bob Dylan Biography) The first album he composed was folk songs with him singing while also playing the harmonica and guitar. This album self-titled, Bob Dylan, had only two of his original songs, “Song for Woody” and “Talking New York”. His second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, inc...
Another analysis of Hughes wishing America to be America again is when he refered to himself in the fifth stanza , line one, two and three; "Negro bearing slavery scars, red man driven from the land, and the immigrant clutching hope I seek--". Tracing back to history on how everything began, Hughes refrenced slavery...
In conclusion these poets have both proved to be dedicated to changing our society, but in opposite ways. Hughes takes the angry resentful view and Dylan takes the reconstructing positive one. The individual styles work for these remarkable artists.
Today, the most difficult day in my family’s life, we gather to say farewell to our son, brother, fiancé and friend. To those of you here and elsewhere who know Dylan you already are aware of the type of person he was and these words you will hear are already in your memory. To those who were not as fortunate, these words will give you a sense of the type of man he was and as an ideal for which we should strive. My son has been often described as a gentle soul. He was pure of heart and had great sensitivity for the world around him. He had a way with people that made them feel comfortable around him and infected others to gravitate toward him. Dylan exuded kindness and pulled generosity and altruism out from everyone he touched. He was everyone's best friend.