Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

[SHIRLEY CAESAR, "GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY"] You may be an ambassador to England or France

You might like to gamble

You might like to dance

You may be the heavyweight champion of the world

You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

You're going to have to serve somebody

Well, you will have to serve somebody

Yes

Well, it might be the devil

It might be the Lord

SPEAKER: That's Shirley Caesar singing the Bob Dylan song, "Gotta Serve Somebody." It's also the name of a documentary film about Dylan's gospel music, which would be screened tonight at 7:00 at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis. Well, since Saturday, dozens of Dylan scholars and even more Dylan fans have been dissecting the work of Bobby Zimmerman, the Bard of Hibbing.

The symposium is called Highway 61 Revisited: Dylan's Road from Minnesota to the World. And the seminars have ranged from Dylan's life on the range to his body in image and in song, to one session suggesting the time is right for a Nobel Prize for Dylan. Well, I went to the U today to talk to some of the seminar participants, and I wanted to know what drew them to a decidedly academic conference about one gravelly voiced folk singer.

KEVIN DETTMAR: I'm Kevin Dettmar. I teach English at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. I'm editing a book called The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan.

SPEAKER: And what's the big thing you've learned here, being immersed in it for a couple of days here in Minnesota?

KEVIN DETTMAR: Well, the focus of the conference, of course, is on Dylan's Minnesota and Hibbing background, and I really knew very little about that. I mean, I listened to him as somebody who grew up in LA and now lives in the Midwest, and so I don't have a real sense of place so much with Dylan and that's been real helpful to me to think about that.

SPEAKER: And what have you learned about this place?

KEVIN DETTMAR: Dave Marsh gave a moving talk yesterday about Dave Marsh being a Midwesterner and, after 40 years, really connecting to Dylan on that level. And I'm an adoptive Midwesterner now. I've been in Southern Illinois for eight years. I still don't quite think of myself as a Midwesterner, but realizing the resonance that it has for people and the way that Dylan-- maybe it was Greil Marcus, actually, who said about the defensiveness of feeling like you're from nowhere. I grew up in Los Angeles. You don't feel like you're from nowhere. You know you're not from New York, but you know it's still somewhere. So it's a different kind of attitude to place and towards your place in the American panoply, I guess.

MATT FRIEDBERGER: My name is Matt Friedberger. I'm a songwriter in a band called The Fiery Furnaces. It's hard to think of writing rock songs or whatever kind of songs without Dylan, without Dylan as a precedent or excuse for the kind of nonsense that you want to do, because Dylan is such a wonderfully confusing songwriter and recording artist. He can provide a lot of confused people like myself, the opportunity to, as a precedent, to do silly things of our own.

SPEAKER: Pick a Dylan song for me, if you have to pick one, and tell me why.

MATT FRIEDBERGER: I like the songs on John Wesley Harding because the tone of that record is very confusing to me and mysterious, I guess, is the more normal word to use about it.

[BOB DYLAN, "DRIFTER'S ESCAPE"] Oh, help me in my weakness

I heard the drifter say

As they carried him from the courtroom

And were taking him away

MARTIN KELLER: My name is Martin Keller. I'm a former pop culture critic from the Twin Cities area writing for city pages in the Twin Cities Reader and national publications like Rolling Stone and Billboard. Today I primarily work in the area of public relations.

SPEAKER: You know what I've noticed in talking to people who are here? That some of them, including you, have a bit in your inflection, in your voice that's a bit Dylanesque. Do you put that on for each other here or do you think that's the way Dylan fans talk?

MARTIN KELLER: It's funny you should say that because we just discussed that very subject in the panel I finished moderating on the language that Bob Dylan used in the context of being from the Midwest, and more importantly from being from up north. I just think it's the Midwestern way of speech. I'm from Western North Dakota originally, which is not that far removed from the way people talk here except you have more of a Germanic accent. But you know, Dylan is a master of many tongues and is capable of speaking the genres of blues and rock and clouding it over with his own inimitable phrasing, especially in his songwriting.

CHRISTOPHE: My name is Christophe. I'm from France. I teach in the University of Strasbourg, and I came here especially for this conference.

SPEAKER: What drew you to this conference all the way from Strasbourg?

CHRISTOPHE: He is a figure that is as important as Shakespeare, in a way, as important as Picasso, a giant of our time, a giant that reaches out to academics and reaches out to everyone.

SPEAKER: You realize there might be people listening who might be a little skeptical. Shakespeare, Picasso in this seminar where you're sitting, and he's being compared to Homer. So back that up for us.

CHRISTOPHE: To begin with, there is a scope of the work. So many songs, and the songs reach out to traditions which go centuries back. Dylan's empathy, Dylan's ability to reach out for what our predicament is is enormous. And then he does that in a form that's direct and that touches everyone. So yes, Shakespeare did that. Picasso does it. Dylan does it.

SPEAKER: If it's possible, pick one Dylan song that is a special favorite of yours and why.

CHRISTOPHE: One of my favorites is definitely "Not Dark Yet" from the album Time Out Of Mind. It's just Dylan speaking about the oncoming fate that awaits us all. Death. And it's just so beautiful and moving that this is a song that made me realize, wow, we have a great poet here.

[BOB DYLAN, "NOT DARK YET"] Shadows are falling

And I've been here all day

It's too hot to sleep

And time is running away

I feel like my soul has turned into steel.

I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal

There's not even room enough to be anywhere

It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

SPEAKER: "Not Dark Yet." It's from Bob Dylan's 1997 album, Time Out Of Mind. It's the favorite song mentioned by two of the Dylan scholars I talked to earlier today between sessions at the Dylan symposium at the U of M. Dylan himself did not make an appearance as you might expect, but one of the organizers there said today his manager has called and asked for copies of the tapes. On our website and the website of our sister station, The Current, as well, there's a lot more information about the Dylan symposium and the Dylan related art exhibit at the Weisman. It's all in digital form at minnesotapublicradio.org.

(SINGING) What was in her mind

I just don't see why--