Public enemy Bob Dylan said he had “identified”

But a decade before his emblematic protest song, during his world emergence in the early 1960s, Dylan’s voice immediately captured the anthropological zeitgeist. From the start, “Blowin” in the wind “presented the world to a vocal assassin, a lyricist so fine that in a ballad of picking the three -minute fingers, he could ridiculous quickly Man’s inability to abstain from perpetual conflict and social injustice. And so thereafter, music fans were hung on each of their words to help navigate the sticky waters of the modern world when they were trying to understand.

Such an artistic depth earned him the Tom Paine Prize in 1963 of the Civil Liberties Civil Emergency Union (Eclu). A distinction given to people for their fight for civil freedoms, it has rarely been awarded to musicians and, therefore, has promised to be a monumental moment in the recognized relationship of music with politics.

After acceptance of the prize, a Dylan in disregarding delivered a speech punctuated by a choir of hoots for his reference to the assassator of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald. Speaking of the man who shot the president only one month before the speech, the evening transcriptions reveal that Dylan said: “I will get up and I will stand without compromise, which I must be honest, I just have to be, as I could admit that the man who shot President Kennedy, Lee Oswald, I don’t know exactly where – what he thought he was doing, but I was able to admit Honestly that I too – I saw part of me in him ”.

After the initial shock of the declaration, Dylan continued, aimed at providing a context: “I don’t think it would have disappeared – I don’t think it could go so far. But I have to get up and say that I saw things he felt, in me – so as not to go so far and shoot “, fighting through the hoots, he continued” you can huer but the hums n ‘Have nothing to do with that. It’s one – I’m just – I must tell you, guy, it’s the Declaration of Rights is freedom of expression and I just want to admit that I accept this Tom Paine Prize on behalf of James Forman NO STUDENTS Violent coordination of the coordination committee and on behalf of the people who went to Cuba. “

After the event, the president of the Eclu, Corliss Lamont, wrote a letter to the dinner participants, apologizing on his behalf, declaring: “Many of our friends have disapproved of our choice of Bob Dylan for the Tom Paine Prize . Without defending his speech of acceptance, I would like to tell you why we think he deserved the price ”.

He continued to explain that the committee “defends the right of all Americans to defend their beliefs. This is not limited to ideology or political groups. It should certainly be extended to our own young people, who, according to many experts, are becoming more and more alienated and lost in our current society. Whether we approve or not, Bob Dylan has become the idol of young progressives today, whatever their political factions. He speaks to them in terms of protest that they understand and applaud ”.

Dylan himself followed the president’s letter with his own answer. Written in free verse and with many span, he saw Dylan in an environment that was perhaps more comfortable for him, the world of art made as opposed to an impromptu public speaking and therefore has it led to provide a context in his own unique style. He said, “When I talked about Lee Oswald, I was talking about the time / I was not talking about his act if it was his act. / The act speaks of itself / But I am sick / so sick / in Hearin “we all share the blame” for each bombardment of the church, the battle of firearms, the catastrophe of the mine, the ‘Explosion of poverty, a president killing this / presents himself. “

Further from his response, he said: “Yes, if there is violence in time, then / There must be violence in me”.

Despite the context, the reference of Dylan to Oswald was a shocking inclusion in a speech delivered to a nation still at the raw stadiums of national mourning. While the intention was surely to talk about the complicity of the company in isolated tragedies, the dust was expelled from the declaration threatened the position of Dylan as a fierce defender of civil rights. However, in the years that followed, the poetic refutation of Dylan at the Eclu gave way to his music, which painted the wider image of his point with the kind of nuance than a discourse of acceptance of price could never realize.

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