ABSTRACT
On February 11, 2010, Bob Dylan appeared before President Barack Obama for a musical celebration of the civil rights era. It was a puzzling performance for several reasons, not least Dylan’s now ragged and growly voice, which sounds so different from what fans and casual listeners have sculpted in their memories. It was, nonetheless, a notable performance, with Dylan making a rare appearance with an acoustic guitar (one so beat up, it might have been with him since the 1960s) to sing a very subdued version of “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” an anthem that turned, for four minutes, into an admission of weariness and a disturbing lullaby. A few months earlier, Dylan had made another, quite similar, appearance on a PBS show celebrating Peoples’ Songs and the American folk tradition. This time, backed by electric guitar and piano, he sang (in a sweet tone that suits what’s left of his voice) one of Woody Guthrie’s dust bowl ballads, “Do-Re-Mi.” When juxtaposed, the two songs make for a startling comparison. Dylan not only owns the sixties and their popular culture because they were partially created through his work and influence on other musicians; he also is master of a counterculture that has deeper roots, the vision of American folk music, which was shaped and channeled through the waves of the folk revival from the 1930s through the 1960s, when Dylan acted as both the recognized herald of the revival and its executioner.
