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22 <p class="center"><img src="kor.jpg" alt="kor.jpg (387534 bytes)" width="353" height="284" class="center" /></p>
24 <p class="center"><img src="3_bdparis02.jpg" alt="3115_BigBob.jpg (58952 bytes)" width="319" height="301" /></p>
27 <p class="greenbox"><a href="../sound/deus_dylan.mp3" target="_blank">Another beginning, in sound this time</a></p>
29 <p>In the case of the gregorian invitatory, we
32 of a rock concert. So what do they have to do with each other? </p>
33 <p>The setting is of course different, but apart
34 from that, there are actually significant similarities between the two sound events. They
35 are both formalized ways, repeated exactly the same way every time, of introducing
36 communal actions that involve people in different roles that are more or less fixed. They
38 characteristics that are fitting or even necessary for the occasion, various props
39 necessary to complete the action, and they are both laden with meaning which goes beyond
40 the mere fulfillment of the action.</p>
41 <p>In other words: according to this description,
43 were. That is: they are ways to focus everyone‘s attention on ritual and all that it
44 entails.</p>
45 <p>My point is not to say that a Dylan concert and a
47 the double question: What will a ritualistic perspective add to the understanding of a
48 Dylan show? and vice versa: what may the application of this perspective on a Dylan show
53 meaningful, is a question to which I will return) to regard a Dylan show as a parallel to
56 same way at just about every single concert – to the extent that to the audience (or
57 congregation) it no longer is an announcement but an element belonging to the proper order
58 of things – a liturgical item. <a href="footnotes_ritual.htm#[1]" target="footnotes">[1]</a>
59 But even what precedes the invitatory is fixed: the preparation of the hall with buckets
60 (literally) of Nag Champa incense, and portions of Aaron Copeland‘s Rodeo suite form
61 the sound system, while the audience (or congregation) fills up the venue; then house
65 unpredictable. A brief look at his setlists will reveal the opposite. A Dylan concert
66 always involves fixed and variable elements. During most of the 90s he always played All
67 Along the Watchtower as song #3, and other songs have had similarly fixed positions in the
68 ceremony over shorter or longer stretches of time. Then there is a group of songs that are
71 in the Wind, Mr Tambourine Man etc. Finally, there is almost always one or two songs for
72 the die-hard fans: a rarely heard song from an obscure 80s album, an old hillbilly
73 standard or an unlikely cover song. All in all: a sequence of songs that could very well
75 some songs that will be heard every night, like a Kyrie or a Credo, and others that belong
77 <p>During all this, the celebrant(s) and the
78 congregation alike perform certain acts, well aware of their respective roles. A Dylan
79 concert is usually a seated thing (maybe due to the average age of his faithful
81 when, as if on a given sign, the initiated rush to the front of the stage, to spend the
83 Post-concert talk within this group of people tends to bring up whether or not one got
88 all this? Ambiguously. This is mainly owing to the fact that he has a double role, being
90 unemotionality of a celebrant who performs an office he knows goes beyond himself, thereby
92 the personal: he hardly ever speaks on stage; he does move, but not with the normal
94 looking like a cross between Elvis and a shy kid from Hibbing, Minnesota. He is just up
97 <p>At the same time, he is well aware that every
100 at my feet, and all I see are dark eyes", most easily interpreted as the
102 other phrases in the song opens up for the possibility to regard the whole song as
103 something heard from high up on a cross: "A cock is crowing far away and another
105 possible allusion to the thief on the cross. </p>
106 <p>During his career Dylan has related himself to
107 this duality in different ways. Let me just point to three examples.</p>
111 The grand idea behind the tour was that it was supposed to be a never-ending touring
112 circus, where the artists on the bill would change all the time. The revue would also be
113 self-served with sound equipment etc. so that they could make landfall here and there
114 without much prior planning, and without having to go through the administrative treadmill
115 of managers, concert organizers etc. In this perspective, the RTR was an expression of
116 Dylan‘s wish to be nothing out of the ordinary, just another musician, at any time
117 replaceable with any other member of this creative community.</p>
120 these concerts was the use of masks and facial painting. Dylan would frequently come on
121 stage with his face painted white. A powerful scene from one of the concerts shows Dylan
122 holding his hands crossed in front of him, as an incantation. In other words: the concerts
123 involved a play with symbols of various kinds, symbols that are easily associated with
124 religious ritual, but without a clear symbolic background in the specific context in which
125 they were used. The gestures thus appear as signs removed from a sign system that can
126 render them understandable (which, on the other hand, does not preclude that they can
128 throughout the tour to settings such as Gypsy mythology and Indian shamanism, etc.</p>
129 <p>All this is closely related to the fact that
131 group of musicians. Dylan had brought a film crew on the road, and just about everything
132 that happened, on stage and behind it (and behind the tour bus), was filmed. The outcome
134 was released in 1978. The film itself was an immediate failure. Be that as it may, the
135 meaning of the actions on stage go beyond that of a rock concert. The movie, the songs
138 violence, trust, children, identity. This is enacted in a meta-narrative taking place both
139 on stage and in some sort of reality, but lines between the world as lived and the world
141 takes on a meaning which goes beyond the statement itself, because it belongs in all the
147 extreme evangelical Vineyard Fellowship in Tarzana, CA, and only performed new songs,
148 filled with evangelization and images of end-time apocalypse. The concerts from his
149 born-again period may, paradoxically enough, serve as a contrasting example to the RTR.
151 virtually turning his concerts into Christian services. In a way, however, this is the
152 period which is the least intersting from a ritual perspective, precisely for this reason:
153 the message was over-explicit, in the well-established tradition of evangelical preaching
154 – there was little left of the transcendental message of the earlier tour, only a
159 The man who said things that many felt. The religious importance of this may be gauged
160 from the reactions when he stopped saying what at least some of his followers wanted him
162 message from his songs. But in fact, he has always claimed to be uninterested in politics:
165 <p>Implicit in this, and in the examples above, is a
166 notion of the artist as a medium, as someone with special gifts who is thereby able to
168 the wind.</p>
169 <p>One might ask: what is the character of this
170 wisdom? And, again, the answer is dual, even the answers Dylan himself has given. On the
171 one hand, he sees himself as just any other guy who goes to work with what he‘s best
173 out of my mind with inspiration. So what can I tell you about that?" (<em>Rolling Stone</em>,
182 Interviewer: And how would Dylan say it?<br />
186 <p class="first">If this is a way of saying that he does not have a "profound" message, Dylan
188 as someone with a special gift. He comments upon a statment from Woody Guthrie, that all
189 the songs are already written, floating around in the universe, ready to be picked up:
193 done.<br />
194 Kurt Loder: It just came to you?<br />
195 BD: It just came out through me.</p>
198 tour, he describes its origin in terms of a religious experience on stage: </p>
203 of knew: I‘ve got to go out and play these songs" (<em>Newsweek</em> Oct 13, 1997). </p>
210 there is anybody playing the type of songs that we‘re playing." (MOJO feb 1998). </p>
213 it was. I'm telling you now Jesus is coming back, and He is! " (Concert rap,
216 understood until maybe 100 years from now. What I've done, what I'm doing, nobody else
222 what is that, if at all anything?</p>
223 <p>In the present context, I would point out at
224 least three areas where such a concept would be meaningful in ways that at least
225 approximate that of religious services. One is the notion of a transcendental truth,
226 revealed and administered by the artistic medium. This function is the prerequisite of the
227 other two: that of creating a community and a sense of connection, and that of serving as
229 – as that which defines our identity as historical beings, that through which our
230 experiences are anchored to the continuum of societal time. The validity of the two latter
231 functions ultimately hinges on the experience that what the man is saying is right, and
234 it. The strong status of the truth of this revelation stands in stark contrast with the
237 interview from 1984, these two opposing approaches appear in the same part of the
238 discussion: </p>
240 anything different to say to people, then what would be the point of it? </p>
243 borderline case [ . . . ] You can‘t keep on depending on one person to give you
244 everything.</p>
246 performed on this – which addressee does he have in mind who could in any way listen
247 to the message without by necessity violating it? <a href="footnotes_ritual.htm#[2]">[2] </a>–
249 part of his current live repertory: their effect is partly based upon the assumption that
250 words that were laid down a long time ago, can transcend their own historical situation,
253 <p>In all these areas it is possible to regard Dylan
254 in the light of medieval representational liturgy – as the one around whom a
255 community forms and through whom the community partakes in the revelation.</p>
256 <p>What makes it particularly relevant to bring up
257 this in a medievalistic context, beyond the loose analogy of cultural phenomena, is the
258 setting in which this is presented: the concert genre. This way of presenting music has in
259 itself firm roots back to medieval ritual. The polyphonic mass of the late Middle Ages,
261 and, last but not least, the cult of the genius in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
262 are all practices where it is hard to draw sharp lines between the religious and secular
265 inherent in the concert genre itself, is the bringing together of this tradition with
266 popular culture, in its two incarnations, as folk culture and mass culture. Dylan –
267 along with other artists – has started over again, so to speak: from a genre which
268 was originally functional in a way similar to medieval ritual music, only fulfilling other
270 entertainment, has evolved a new concert genre where, at least to some extent, the music
272 aestheticization of the functional mass music in the fifteenth century.</p>
273 <p>This is a genre that spans the whole continuum
274 from mindless entertainment – even the commercial mass appeal, as evidenced by the
276 – to the deepest seriousness, which encompasses meaningfulness, world view and
277 ideology. A Dylan audience is usually very quiet, hanging on to every word that comes from
278 the stage. But there is also dancing in the aisles, and visits to the bar (and,
279 consequently, to the restroom) by the less faithful. Thus, a Dylan concert has fundamental
280 similarities with, but also differences from, e.g. a Britney Spears concert, in that it
282 something is offered which goes beyond entertainment. The action carries a level of
283 meaning which transcends the surface level of the action.</p>
286 </p>
290 <p>The ambiguities I have pointed to in connection
291 with Dylan correspond with a fundamental ambiguity in the lexical definition of ritual.
293 unproblematic in relation to a medieval service: <i>the form and manner of religious
295 about ritual today, we usually mean more than that: various ritual scholars have
296 emphasised things like the connection with myth and the way ritual and myth consitute the
297 world view of a culture. And in everyday language, just about any action that is repeated
298 the same way every time, and where the way it is done is ascribed some kind of meaning,
299 can be called a ritual. This corresponds with the second definition: <i>a custom</i>, <i>usage</i>,
301 <p>It would be difficult to claim that a Dylan show
302 entails religious observance – there are no ontological overtones, no dogmatics, no
304 But still, the fact that surprisingly many people lead their lives, make their choices in
305 life and form their outlook on life in accordance with what Dylan says, does, sings, means
306 – not just by nodding symphathetically to the words of his songs, but in more
309 comparison – the anthropologist Diana Smay has suggested that the dramatic rise in
310 cases of obsessive compulsive disorder over the past fifty year or so, may be related to
312 civilization. I‘m not sure if I subscribe to her entire line of argument, in
313 particular her suggestion of a biological basis for ritual behavior seems problematic. But
314 apart from that, her overall approach to the question of ritual is intriguing.</p>
315 <p>Dylan fandom ranges from the deep appreciation of
316 a musical and lyrical artistic production, to the almost religious obsession with
317 everything that is related to him. But both extremes imply both the sense of community
318 created by repeated, communal activities, and the resonance of one‘s own experiences
320 status.</p>
322 – together with the ascription of meaning of a kind that goes beyond what actions are
323 actually taking place, in any way comes close to a modern understanding of what
324 constitutes a ritual, and an understanding which can also be applied to medieval religious
325 ceremonies, then there is certainly a connection between the two, despite the distance in
326 time and the obvious differences. </p>
329 inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again</i>, may indeed be contrary to the
331 condition of ritual, is something I personally am looking forward to do (in this
332 particular case, anyway), as many times as I will be offered the opportunity. </p>
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