'For new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition'

Bob Dylan  | On Gentleness

When Dillon, aka Dylan - Bob Dylan’s name was announced as the Winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize, there were a host of bouquets and brickbats as well! We were one of the firsts to give a beauteous bouquet to Bob on this, our past post!

The reasons are more than meets the eye! 

Well, Dylan for one, openly rebelled against existing pop music conventions, and even on the folk front, he had sought to create quite a stir and a sensation when he brandished electric instruments in his folk concert, a sheer disregard for the rule of the land as concerns folk! 

One reason why his studio album Bringing It All Back Home alienated him from some of his pals in the folk music community!

His protest songs, especially ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ made him to be categorized as a protest singer, and a politically charged artist with an agenda!

When Dylan premiered 'Blowin' in the Wind', 16 April 1962

In fact he assumed world-wide fame, laudations and celebrity status with this amazing number, that posed a volley of intense rhetorical questions dealing with freedom, war and peace.

Such was the rage and such the craze on the release of this single album on 16 April 1962, that Dylan, from thence on, was seen as a saviour of the oppressed! 

It is no little wonder then that, ‘Blowin' in the Wind’ has always been described as an anthem of the civil rights movement! 

The song also prompted the renowned Civil Rights activist and singer Mavis Staples to remark, ‘I just could not understand how a young white man could write something that captured the frustration and aspirations of black people so powerfully’.

Such was the threat, and suchmuch the hazard it posed to those in power, who oppressed and suppressed the ‘voiceless’ beyond measure!

‘Masters of War’, is yet another protest song, such an impeccable song, filled with anti-war rhetoric. The song also lays claim to being one of the most angriest anti-war songs ever to be composed on the planet!

When the JFK regimen in the US was keen on a military action in Vietnam, Dylan pens this number that literally rips apart a motley group of bureaucrats who were like the harbingers of death, orchestrating wars from behind their desks, and provoking young soldiers to wield their guns and go on a killing spree! 

These bureaucrats, to Dylan, are like ‘Judas of old’ who keep spreading a grand lie again and again, by propagating a Cold War which was not there in the first place, until it went on to assume flesh and blood.

What a way with words he’s got when he stands up, as a gentleman, tall and bold, against the atrocities of ‘man over man’ [‘violence of beast on beast’ as Walcott woulda put it!] perpetrated behind the desks with such Judas-like cunning!

Here goes the number for y’all -

Masters of War

Come you masters of war

You that build all the guns

You that build the death planes

You that build the big bombs

You that hide behind walls

You that hide behind desks

I just want you to know

I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin’

But build to destroy

You play with my world

Like it’s your little toy

You put a gun in my hand

And you hide from my eyes

And you turn and run farther

When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old

You lie and deceive

A world war can be won

You want me to believe

But I see through your eyes

And I see through your brain

Like I see through the water

That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers

For the others to fire

Then you set back and watch

When the death count gets higher

You hide in your mansion

As young people’s blood

Flows out of their bodies

And is buried in the mud

You’ve thrown the worst fear

That can ever be hurled

Fear to bring children

Into the world

For threatening my baby

Unborn and unnamed

You ain’t worth the blood

That runs in your veins

How much do I know

To talk out of turn

You might say that I’m young

You might say I’m unlearned

But there’s one thing I know

Though I’m younger than you

Even Jesus would never

Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question

Is your money that good

Will it buy you forgiveness

Do you think that it could

I think you will find

When your death takes its toll

All the money you made

Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die

And your death’ll come soon

I will follow your casket

In the pale afternoon

How much truth there is to these intense lines that flow from a paroxysm of pain on the poet! No wonder his songs were intense socio-political commentaries with a ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ impact to their lines!

Let me now proceed to highlight one last song that I felt deserved a pertinent mention! 

The song is titled, ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’. 

It was written by Dylan based on an incident that had affected him greatly. It gives a factual description of the shocking murder of a 51-year-old African-American barmaid, Hattie Carroll, a mother of ten children and several grandchildren, at the hands of a white and wealthy young man from a white tobacco farming family. 

The whole nation was shocked and enraged when the young white and wealthy man walked away with just a ‘six month’ sentence from the ‘noble’, ‘able’ ‘graceful’ ‘honourable’ and ‘gentle’ judges.

To do a quick take on the US Justice system from our own times would sure merit this post. Rajat Gupta, one of the first Indian corporate honchos who made it to the top most echelons of the US corporate world, when he was convicted and sentenced to prison by the US law courts!

Rajat Gupta observes in the Prefatorial to his memoir titled, Mind Without Fear [which we’ve discussed earlier on, over here, on this past post of ours!]

Says Rajat Gupta about the US Courts of Law - 

The judge went out of his way to block any reference to my character and to the aspects of my work that mattered most to me. The prosecutors were skillful in manipulating the press. And I missed that opportunity to tell my own story, and to let the jury, and the public, see who I am directly. For that, I take full responsibility. This book is that story.

Coming back to the case at hand, 

Well, Dylan quite couldn’t come to terms with the shocking miscarriage of justice by the Courts! Hence this song! This song with such a sting!

Me thought of giving y’all the song, to feel the import of the lines, and to magnify Dylan, Bob Dylan, on this, his immense social responsibility, as a song writer, when any many of his ilk were busy doling out romantic chart busters by the day and hogging the limelight at the billboards! 

Thanks to Dylan, we still speak about the 51-year old Hattie Carroll.

That’s where Dylan clearly outlines for us all, the role, the relevance and the transformative power of poetry to society, subtly hinting that, a pop song could be both a means of social commentary, and as a vehicle of protest that doubles up as a form of self-expression (poetry) as well!

So here goes the song –

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll

With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger

At a Baltimore hotel society gathering

And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him

As they rode him in custody down to the station

And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder

But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears

Take the rag away from your face

Now ain't the time for your tears

William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years

Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres

With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him

And high office relations in the politics of Maryland

Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders

And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling

In a matter of minutes, on bail was out walking

But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize fears

Take the rag away from your face

Now ain't the time for your tears

Hattie Carroll was a maid in the kitchen

She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children

Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage

And never sat once at the head of the table

And didn't even talk to the people at the table

Who just cleaned up all the food from the table

And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level

Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane

That sailed through the air and came down through the room

Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle

And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger

And you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears

Take the rag away from your face

Now ain't the time for your tears

In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel

To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level

And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded

And that even the nobles get properly handled

Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em

And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom

Stared at the person who killed for no reason

Who just happened to be feelin' that way without warnin'

And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished

And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance

William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence

Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears

Bury the rag deep in your face

For now's the time for your tears

Just take some time to observe his intense lines on the rule of the land and the rule of law. Also take even more time to observe carefully the last lines of each stanza, and how they taper off to a bold acme towards the end!

The song greatly impacted me with its take on gentleness! Dylan subtly contrasts the ‘gentlemanly’ high brow behaviour of the wealthy pig Zanzinger with the real life gentle and graceful Hattie, who ‘carried the dishes and took out the garbage, and never sat once at the head of the table, and didn't even talk to the people at the table, who just cleaned up all the food from the table’! 

Then he proceeds to say, that the cane of Zanzinger sailed through the air and came down through the room determined to destroy the gentle Hattie, who never harmed the wealthy Zanzinger in any way whatsoever!

Clifton and Anne, Dylanologists, ;-) in their article titled, ‘Bob Dylan and Religion’, have an enlightening observation on this count! 

Say they –

In one of the song’s most beautiful lines, associating Hattie Carroll with the ancient poor and forsaken so often remembered by Isaiah or Jeremiah, Dylan speaks of her death as betokening the destruction of “all the gentle,” drawing the irony from the last word with its Latinate origin as a term referring to the well-born. 

By this clever inversion, a technique Dylan borrowed straight from the prophets, the well-born have destroyed their claim to gentleness and passed judgment on themselves, even if the corrupt judge won’t do the same; and if any gentleness remains, in the way of virtue, it has been passed on to the servant class.

Her death, therefore, to Dylan signals the destruction of ‘all the gentle’ or the ‘noble’ or the ‘highbrow’ or the ‘elite’! 

Moreover, it also helps in a paradigm shift – a shift of core values of gentleness – once the forte of the wealthy and the rich – to the so-called working class, referred to here as the ‘servant class’ by Dylan for that much-needed emphasis!

It would do a world of good to sum up this little post on Dylan, Bob Dylan with his own sweet lines -

Come you ladies and you gentlemen, listen to my song,

I’ll sing it to you right but you may think it’s wrong,

It may make you mad, but I mean no harm!

No wonder, he like Ali, Mohammed Ali, floats like a butterfly, and stings like a bee!

The topping on the cake would be from a book I consider so precious and so dear, gifted to me by my sweet cousin! It’s titled, Why Dylan Matters, by Richard F. Thomas, another Dylanologist of the highest order! ;-)

When talking about Dylan’s fan base, Richard F. Thomas here remarks –

Bob Dylan may not say anything to his audience, but he is curious about who’s out there; he’s taking it all in. “What are you seeing from the stage?” Robert Love asked him:

Definitely not a sea of conformity. People I cannot categorize easily. I see a guy dressed up in a suit and tie next to a guy in blue jeans. I see another guy in a sport coat next to another guy wearing a T-shirt. 

I see a woman sometimes in evening gowns, and I see punk-looking girls. I can see there’s a difference in character, and it has nothing to do with age. 

I went to an Elton John show; there must have been at least three generations of people there. But they were all the same. Even the little kids. They looked just like their grandparents. It was strange.

This inclusivity, this variety, this multicultural ambience, was, is, and will continue to be his forte and his sure reward too!

Well folks, now you woulda sure known the devil and his angels who woulda opposed tooth and nail the conferring of the grandest prize in Literature – the Nobel – on Dylan - Bob Dylan! Now go ahead and read the first two paragraphs once again. ;-)

Thank you ladies and gentlemen!

To be continued…

images: Michael Ochs/Gettyimages, Maria Zlatani