Blog 3
Bob Dylan (Robert Allen Zimmerman) is an American singer-songwriter, author/poet, and even an occasional painter; though, he’s most famous for his popular broadside ballads that spanned across his nearly fifty year long career. His musical tastes ranges anywhere from jazz to folk and gospel to rock and beyond. His preferred musical instruments include the piano, harmonica, and the acoustic guitar. He’s most recognizable works, like “Blowin’ in the Wind”; discuss the civil rights movement during the 60’s. This particular song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, and made the Rolling Stone’s ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time’ at number 14.
The above is Paul Kaplan’s remake of “Blowin’ in the Wind” called “The Answer”. Instead of discussing civil rights, it focuses on the use of wind energy as an alternative to fossil fuels. The topic of alternative energy, while not extremely up to date, is still current and a major political platform issue for American’s today. This is what makes it a great subject for the broadside ballad. The topic is not so recent or complex that few people have heard of or understand it. In other words, it is a concern of the average American, and it is still contemporary to today’s society.
To tell the truth about broadside ballads in general, I’m still not exactly sure I’m sold on their “power” or their ability to “raise awareness”. I certainly would argue that they are not “powerful” in the traditional sense of the word. How I evaluate the “power” that a song has a two-fold criteria: what they prompt people do and the uniqueness of their ideas.
Reasoning 1.) Half of the point of being a broadside ballad is that the subject must be ‘vanilla’ in substance. As explained in paragraph two, the topic matter (not just what they say) must be by now mainstream enough for the politically moderate populations to have already weighed in on it and find it’s relevance to their daily lives. A broadside does not introduce a novel injustice but repeatedly reminds and engrains it into the listener’s/singer’s mind, until it is unthinkable to ignore it anymore and motivates that person to action. Now, this starts sounding a bit like the chicken and the egg paradigm to say that either a person’s political beliefs are influenced by their musical preferences or vice versa. Perhaps, there have been psychological studies that dispute this logic and unequivocally show that it is the music that defines a person’s thoughts, beliefs and interactions with others. I have not heard of any such case study and am more than willing to read anything you could suggest for me.
Reasoning 2.) As discussed briefly in paragraph two, the broadside is ideally supposed to represent the average person’s views on the world around them. With this in mind I would claim that the other half of being a true broadside ballad is that it is, essentially, the art of being the ‘moderate’. Moderates, while arguably having the best grasp of the complexity of a social issue or a public policy, are not known for the ‘innovative’ thinking, nor known for their commitment to strong political beliefs. Thus, the songs’ “power” cannot lay in the novelty of what they say, as their thoughts are not unique, simply at best, a synthesis of one or more extremes.
I would like to point out, that I am not saying that music, itself, has no point or that broadsides have no value or place in our society. No doubt, the songs can be an emotional experience on the whole. They incite passion in the most conservative of us. They can inspire patriotism, unity, hope, anger, and understanding. They are strong, in the sense that they can give comfort to the scared and disheartened with a simple tune and melody, in ways that a speech would be ill-suited. However, I would argue that it is a broadside’s relevance to the current social/political climate that is its true valuation of its strength. The historical application of it is critical to evaluating broadside ballads strength. If you hear a happy song while being sad, does it not more dramatically affect your mood than if you were happy at the time anyway? In the words of an economic theorist, it is a case of diminishing returns. In the end, all things are relative. If you cannot sympathize with the pain and suffering of the plight of the African American community, for example, how strong can the words to Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” be to you?
Thus, I would summarize the argument above, that the true “power” of the broadside ballads cannot be evaluated by what they prompt people to do or in their novel approaches to a problem, but in its context and empathy with fellow human beings. What do you think?
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