When I first heard Bob Dylan’s music in 1962, it was too “folky” for me, too distant from what I considered “authentic” at the time. I learned to appreciate commercial folk music later, but at that time I was a diehard country music, blues, rhythm and blues, and rock ‘n’ roll fan. I didn’t appreciate Dylan until 1965 when his album Bringing It All Back Home came out. It was solid, raucous, innovative rock ‘n’ roll, and all of a sudden I felt a connection with him—his music, his lyrics, his persona. I’ve been a fan ever since.
In his study of Dylan’s shift from acoustic folk music to rock ‘n’ roll, Elijah Wald gives us a detailed history of that period, including the folk revival which provided the context for Dylan’s emergence as a performer. Wald starts with a focus on Pete Seeger as a key figure in the development of the revival and a major influence on Dylan and on the leftist politics of the movement. After a brief description of Dylan’s life growing up in Hibbing, Minnesota, where he listened to and started playing rock ‘n’ roll, Wald moves on to Minneapolis where Dylan heard popular folk revival music (Harry Belafonte, Kingston Trio, New Lost City Ramblers). The focus then shifts to “New York Town” in the early 60s where Dylan became part of a thriving folk music scene in Greenwich Village. In this context, Wald first takes up the issue of authenticity but doesn’t deal with it in any depth until later in the book. He clearly recognizes what a significant part of the revival authenticity was, but he doesn’t cite all the relevant scholarship, for instance Regina Bendix’s In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies or Richard Handler’s and Jocelyn Linnekin’s “Tradition, Genuine or Spurious” (Journal of American Folklore 97,1984: 273-90).
As Wald points out, during this period “folk music was more than just another pop trend; it was a social phenomenon expressing the concerns of a generation,” and he proceeds to analyze the revival accordingly. One of the revivalists’ concerns was current politics, which were also the topic of some of Dylan’s earliest songs. A good example is “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” which is about the assassination of a black man by a southern white man:
A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers’ blood
A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man’s brain
But he can’t be blamed
He’s only a pawn in their game.
I used this song in two courses I taught on Bob Dylan at Ohio State because it is one of his most political. I was disappointed Wald didn’t quote a verse or analyze it in as much depth as it deserves, although he does make an important point about it. “‘Only a Pawn’ expressed a sensibility at odds with any mass movement. Collective action depends on individuals serving at least to some extent as pawns, small and relatively insignificant figures in a larger plan.”
The Newport Folk Festival was an important reflection of the folk revival, and Wald devotes most of chapters 5 and 6 to it. Wald’s research is very thorough, giving the reader the kind of detail that sometimes makes us feel we’ve been there. He analyzes how Newport reflected concepts about the folk including the issue of their authenticity: some of the singers and musicians “were true [emphasis added] folk performers in the sociological sense, amateurs who played for their friends and neighbors at parties and picnics in their local community, and they were a long way from home.” According to Wald, the true folk include “dauntingly unfamiliar artists from Louisiana: the raw fiddle and guitar duo of Butch Cage and Willie Thomas.” “True” here suggests authentic performers and not just popular folk singers like Pete Seeger, Odetta, or Joan Baez.
George Wein, director of the Newport Folk Festival, pointed out a similar dichotomy within an audience: “Never was there so clear a contrast between the ‘authentic’ folk audience—a small devoted band of aficionados—and the wider public…the so-called national ‘folk boom’ had more to do with celebrity than with any deep grassroots interest.” This dichotomy was a persistent topic among festival performers, audiences, and critics. One contemporary journalist, Paul Nelson, wrote about the age factor in this cultural/aesthetic split:
“Old men with banjos aren’t the kind of Saturday heroes the young generations understands very well; they may be tolerated because Pete Seeger says to love them and they are on the same stage with Joan Baez and Bob Dylan but they can’t expect to be understood. They are quaint and lovable, like old teddy bears with lines on their faces but when they sing they sound funny, and they just sit there most of the time anyway.”
This condescending attitude was undoubtedly there, but I have seen different responses at the Smithsonian American Folklife Festival and the National Folk Festival when it was held in Ohio. This can probably be explained by the fact that there weren’t any famous performers at either of these events.
The most reasonable and insightful comments on the issue of authenticity are from Pete Seeger, who was a wise and enlightened man. “The best of the new songs will be remembered, and passed from singer to singer, gaining improvements and additions. And a century from now some folklorist can come along and call them folksongs if he wants. Our dust will not object.” This suggests that academic terms like authenticity are slippery abstract concepts (socially constructed) that don’t have much to do with the actual process by which songs are passed on.
Dylan Goes Electric is a thoroughly researched, well-written, and densely informative study of not just Bob Dylan’s career but of the entire folk revival.
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[Review length: 985 words • Review posted on May 4, 2016]