{"id":323,"date":"2011-04-11T10:48:11","date_gmt":"2011-04-11T14:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/?p=323"},"modified":"2012-07-15T19:57:37","modified_gmt":"2012-07-15T23:57:37","slug":"bob-dylans-asia-tour-has-freedom-lost-its-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/bob-dylans-asia-tour-has-freedom-lost-its-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Dylan\u2019s Asia Tour: Has Freedom Lost Its Voice?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cMoney doesn\u2019t talk, it swears.\u201d\u2014Bob Dylan<\/address>\n
<\/address>\n

Bob Dylan\u2019s not an easy man to pin down. He confounds the public, at one moment a sage and a prophet decrying materialism and war, and the next an eccentric aging musician doing gigs for Victoria\u2019s Secret. His music is equally unpredictable, at times so insightful it resonates on the deepest level of your being, and the next barely tolerable\u2014especially when, as John Jurgensen describes it in a piece for the Wall Street Journal<\/em>, it is couched in his \u201calways-raspy voice, now deteriorated to a laryngitic croak.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet despite the vagaries of his musical career, his often mundane live performances and his own eccentricities, Dylan has remained a potent reminder of all that the Sixties generation once stood for (peace, love, hope) and all they fought against (war, materialism, human rights abuses). Thus, the news that Dylan would embark on a concert tour of Asia\u2014including stops in Beijing and Shanghai, notable for their being Dylan\u2019s first appearance in Communist China, as well as Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, the target of many of Dylan\u2019s anti-war protest songs\u2014had many waiting to see what, if anything, the man once hailed as the voice of freedom would say to audiences long oppressed by their governments. So far, the so-called voice of freedom has remained mute.<\/p>\n

Indeed, not only did Dylan not<\/em> speak other than to introduce his band, but during his performances in China and Vietnam, he also left out many of his most famous protest songs\u2014allegedly at the bidding of the Vietnamese and Chinese governments. As reported by Asia-Pacific News<\/em>, \u201cBrad Adams, executive director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, criticized Dylan for allegedly letting the Chinese and Vietnamese governments \u2018tell him what to sing.\u2019 \u2018He has a historic chance to communicate a message of freedom and hope, but instead he is allowing censors to choose his playlist,\u2019 Adams said. \u2018This sends a strong message to his Vietnamese fans that the Communist Party’s reach even extends to the heroes of America\u2019s civil rights era,\u2019 the rights campaigner said. \u2018Dylan should be ashamed of himself.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Dylan\u2019s decision to not only perform a series of concerts in Vietnam and China, which has unapologetically escalated its human rights abuses over the past few years, most recently with the arrest of dissident Ai WeiWei, but to play only<\/em> a government-approved song list notably lacking in any of his trademark protest songs is significant on many levels\u2014morally, spiritually and politically\u2014not only for what it says about him but for what it says about the rest of us.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Bob Dylan performing in Vietnam. Photo courtesy of Le Quang Nhat\/AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For those who came of age in the Sixties, Bob Dylan was the voice crying in the wilderness\u2014the conscience of our generation. He set to music what many of us were struggling to put into words and in so doing, he gave the civil rights movement some of its greatest anthems. Classic protest songs such as \u201cBlowin\u2019 in the Wind,\u201d \u201cThe Times They Are A-Changin\u2019,\u201d \u201cDesolation Row,\u201d \u201cChimes of Freedom\u201d and \u201cMasters of War\u201d\u2014none of which were performed during Dylan\u2019s recent trip to China\u2014set the mood for a youth-driven cultural revolution that was all about peace and love and fighting oppression.<\/p>\n

Powered by idealism, the Sixties generation rejected materialism, helped put an end to racial segregation, opposed the military establishment and its never-ending wars, brought down a president (Nixon) and essentially put a halt to the Vietnam War. And Dylan provided the soundtrack for all of it. As Judy Collins observed:<\/p>\n

We wanted so much to change the world; we all wanted to stop the war; we wanted to stop social injustice. They were good causes because they had an innocence about them. But there was something about what Dylan was doing, a certain sophistication, that deepened our understanding of what’s really going on here. Bob dragged us from literary immaturity and made us grow up emotionally. He dragged us into the world of alliteration and metaphor in a way that nobody else could do. He was our higher education.<\/p>\n

From the beginning, Dylan\u2019s songs taught that there is an incestuous relationship between authoritarianism, social evils, militarism, and materialism and that the solutions to corruption are spiritual. Dylan proclaimed the existence of a God who brings judgment, a \u201chard rain\u201d as one of his songs puts it, on those who perpetrate evil. Dylan\u2019s topical songs mixed the power of Beat poetry with the folk style of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger\u2014all with prophetic overtones. Although his songs often incorporated real events, they went beyond mere journalism to the moral underpinnings.<\/p>\n

Bob Dylan was one of the few pop singers of any real influence who clearly articulated political ideas in his music. But, as if in midstream, Dylan abandoned politics. Perceptive enough to realize that politics is never a real answer, Dylan knew the times were not changing as he had expected.<\/p>\n

The initial sign that Dylan was becoming disillusioned with the left and the political movements of the sixties came late in 1963. Only days after the country had been traumatized by the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Dylan was invited to the grand ballroom of the Hotel Americana in New York to accept an award for his work in the civil rights movement. The result was a disaster. An intoxicated Dylan felt alienated from his adoring audience, which included many aging activists from the left-wing movement. He first appeared to insult them, saying, \u201cIt\u2019s not an old people\u2019s world.\u201d He then simply baffled them with his speech, in which he spoke about race, class and the establishment:<\/p>\n

I look down to see the people that are governing me and making my rules\u2014and they haven\u2019t got any hair on their head\u2014I get very\"\"<\/a> uptight about it\u2026. And they talk about Negroes, and they talk about black and white\u2026. There\u2019s no black and white, left and right to\u00a0me anymore; there\u2019s only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I\u2019m trying to go up without thinking of anything trivial such as politics\u2026. I got to admit that the man who shot President Kennedy, Lee Oswald, I don\u2019t know exactly where\u2014what he thought he was doing, but I got to admit honestly that I, too\u2014I saw some of myself in him\u2026. I saw things that he felt in me\u2014not to go that far and shoot. [Boos and hisses] You can boo, but booing\u2019s got nothing to do with it. It\u2019s a\u2014I just, ah\u2014I\u2019ve got to tell you, man, it\u2019s Bill of Rights is free speech\u2026.<\/address>\n

Dylan\u2019s drunken rant reflected his growing view that all people are victims of those who control the system and that even the black hierarchy had compromised to gain political power. The speech caused an uproar, and Dylan left the hall amid a mixture of boos and applause.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to write for people anymore. You know\u2014be a spokesman,\u201d Dylan told Nat Hentoff in 1964. \u201cFrom now on, I want to write from inside me.\u201d Thus, by 1965, Dylan had abandoned the civil rights campaign and moved beyond political activism. Indeed, although he had participated in key civil rights events, Dylan was not present for the final and most grand civil rights event where black and white protesters and musicians came together\u2014the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1965\u2014where over 5,000 people sang Dylan\u2019s \u201cThe Times They Are A-Changin\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the musical front, he abandoned the acoustic folk sound and became a rocker. By the time he went electric with his breakthrough album Highway 61 Revisited<\/em>, it was clear that Dylan had assumed a new role. He had abandoned the shabby rambling-man look and assumed the countenance of a pained and scrawny ascetic.<\/p>\n

While most of the sixties generation would soon choose flower power, love and the fallacy that drugs were going to create a new society, Dylan saw the apocalypse approaching. A pivotal song is his 1966 masterpiece \u201cDesolation Row,\u201d which cries for humanity to renounce materialism or face destruction and alienation. As he sings:<\/p>\n

Now at midnight all the agents
\nAnd the superhuman crew
\nCome out and round up everyone
\nThat knows more than they do
\nThen they bring them to the factory
\nWhere the heart-attack machine
\nIs strapped across their shoulders
\nAnd then the kerosene
\nIs brought down from the castles
\nBy insurance men who go
\nCheck to see that nobody is escaping
\nTo Desolation Row.<\/address>\n

Dylan biographer Robert Shelton writes that \u201cDesolation Row\u201d brought Dylan to the level of the great apocalyptic poets such as T. S. Eliot. Moreover, Dylan became a prophet whose main concerns are moral, not political. And he condemns virtually all he sees. \u201cAll along the way, we encounter Dylan\u2019s condemnation of the modern assembly line: mad human robots out of Chaplin\u2019s Modern Times<\/em>,\u201d writes Shelton. \u201cThen, almost as an aside, Dylan makes a shambles of simpleminded political commitment. What difference which side you\u2019re on if you\u2019re sailing on the Titanic? Irony and sarcasm are streetlamps along \u2018Desolation Row,\u2019 keeping away total, despairing darkness, gallows humor for a mass hanging.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dylan\u2019s conversion to Christianity in the late seventies didn\u2019t soften his views on the nature of the world. As late as 1991, when asked about the apocalypse, Dylan replied: \u201cIt will not be by water, but by fire the next time. It\u2019s what is written.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, in recent years, we\u2019ve seen less and less of Dylan the prophet and more of Dylan the self-promoter and entertainer. Yet not even his appearance in a Victoria\u2019s Secret commercial, surrounded by scantily clad, winged lingerie models, or reports of his being picked up by police after being mistaken for a wandering vagrant managed to diminish his impact on those who have taken his music to heart. In a tribute piece for AARP in honor of Dylan\u2019s 70th<\/sup> birthday on May 24, 2011, Bono shares:<\/p>\n

When I was 13, Bob Dylan started whispering in my ear\u2026 it was a hoarse whisper, jagged around the edges, not-too-plain truths\u2026ideas blowing in the wind about how the world could be a better place if we could just get it out of the hands of the hypocrites. When I was 16, Bob Dylan whispered in my ear about how the real enemy was not flesh and blood, but of a spiritual nature. At 21, with the slow train of faith having picked up a little too much speed, I stood at a religious crossroads and heard \u201cEvery Grain of Sand\u201d stop time. When I got married at 22, Bob Dylan was whispering in my ear about love and infidelity. When I had my first child at 29, Bob Dylan wrote “Ring Them Bells” and “What Good Am I?” When I ran out of gas in the late ’90s, I had\u00a0Time Out of Mind<\/em> to hold on to. When the world crumbled around two shining towers, and New York had its two front teeth knocked out, I had\u00a0Love and Theft <\/em>to hang on to. Now, having faced 50, I’m realizing I knew much more then than I do now. I’m returning to the brutal truth that \u201cThe Times They Are A-Changin\u2019\u201d \u2014 but you don’t have to let them change you. In short, all my life, Bob Dylan has been there for me.<\/p>\n

Still, despite the glowing tributes, Dylan\u2019s also getting his fair share of criticism for \u201cplaying it safe\u201d during his concerts in China and Vietnam. \u201cBob Dylan, whose rasping songs of protest were once the definitive clarion-call for activism and dissent, belted out an unmistakably neutered version of his world-famous repertoire last night as he made his concert debut in Beijing,\u201d reported Leo Lewis for The Times<\/em>. \u201cAlthough ground-breaking and heartily welcomed by fans, the long-awaited concert bore the hallmarks of compromise with authority \u2014 precisely the sort of accommodation the 69-year old singer railed against with such venom in his earlier days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Groundbreaking while they may be for Dylan on a personal level, the China concerts especially, staged during the height of China\u2019s clampdown on activists and Dylan\u2019s own reticence to speak out about the abuses, have caused some to question whether Dylan still believes what he used to sing about\u2014namely, justice, equality and human rights.<\/p>\n

According to Jessica Beaton writing for CNN, Dylan, like all artists performing in China, had to submit a set list beforehand for approval by the Chinese Ministry of Culture (a similar protocol was followed in Vietnam), which in its formal invitation reminded Dylan that he would have to \u201cconduct the performance strictly according to the approved program.\u201d In other words, if Dylan wanted to perform in China (and Vietnam), he had to avoid any songs about human rights issues.<\/p>\n

Remaining silent and falling in line with censors in Vietnam is one thing, but to agree to do so in China is to become complicit in China\u2019s ongoing human rights abuses, which range from outright censorship and religious persecution to forced abortions and sterilizations for those women who violate the government-mandated One Child policy and unlawful arrests of peace activists, with the most recent being Ai Weiwei. Sadly, Dylan not only performed in China but was so well-behaved as to cause Brad Adams of Human Rights Watch to remark, \u201cIt\u2019s shocking to see him collude in this kind of censorship. Back in the day, if he had been in Ai\u2019s shoes, he would have expected someone to speak up for him. What does he have to lose?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mind you, this is the same man who walked off the Ed Sullivan Show in 1963 rather than submit to a censored song list. This is also the same man who, as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette<\/em> points out, \u201cin previous years refused to sign a pledge drawn up by the Chinese Ministry of Culture that obligated him \u2018not to hurt the feelings of the Chinese people\u2019 by performing counterrevolutionary songs.\u201d So how could Dylan the prophet, Dylan the protester, Dylan the castigator of materialism and war, the same man who was praised in 1985 as being \u201cone of America\u2019s great voices of freedom,\u201d agree to perform a censored song list in China and not say something<\/em> about its long history of abuses?<\/p>\n

Or as commentator Tony Norman asks, \u201cHow could the man who walked out on a gig on \u2018The Ed Sullivan Show\u2019 not stand up for a similar principle when singing his songs nearly a half century later? It could be because Bob Dylan stood on that stage in Beijing knowing that everyone in the room had access to every song he’s ever recorded, including bootlegs he hasn’t officially released.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then again, perhaps Dylan the activist who once claimed that a hero was \u201csomeone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom\u201d has simply given up the fight and wants only to be Dylan the musician. As he once remarked, \u201cSongs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.\u201d After all, why should Dylan be any different from the rest of his once idealistic generation, many of whom have now become part of the very establishment they once opposed?<\/p>\n

For that matter, perhaps too much is being said about Dylan\u2019s silence and too little is being said about the rest of the world\u2019s kowtowing to China, including the American government, which is financially indebted to China. As Daniel Blackburn points out in the Spectator<\/em>, \u201cWestern governments have largely ignored Beijing\u2019s clampdown, which began in February as democratic activism spread from Cairo to Chinese websites. No trade sanctions or UN Resolutions are being issued here, just stern communiqu\u00e9s.\u201d Blackburn continues:<\/p>\n

Given that it\u2019s nearly 50 years since Dylan purposefully stopped being the \u2018voice of conscience\u2019, his reticence does not come as a shock… Why should\u00a0Dylan\u00a0do what we are too timid and politic to do? Besides, what could he achieve?\u00a0Dylan\u2019s words might be welcome to some Western ears, but he\u2019s just one man selling records. He does not command divisions, even in the metaphorical sense. Human rights violations in China are for governments to challenge. Perhaps\u00a0Dylan’s silence expresses that.<\/address>\n

Then again, perhaps not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMoney doesn\u2019t talk, it swears.\u201d\u2014Bob Dylan Bob Dylan\u2019s not an easy man to pin down. He confounds the public, at one moment a sage and a prophet decrying materialism and war, and the next an eccentric aging musician doing gigs for Victoria\u2019s Secret. His music is equally unpredictable, at times so insightful it resonates on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,214],"tags":[95,93,96,8,94,97],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3055,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions\/3055"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}