Music, English, Drama and Religion scholars will gather at Stanford University to deconstruct the work of one of Minnesota's most famous sons, Bob Dylan. The conference is billed as "The First U.S. Bob Dylan Conference" and will focus on Dylan's art and cultural legacy. MPR’s Lorna Benson interviews Tino Markworth, organizer of conference.
SPEAKER 1: We did not invite him to the conference because this would be kind of silly to have the object of your conference just sitting right next to you, but we thought he might come and play and perform. But unfortunately, he had a previous engagement and he's playing the same night in New York with Van Morrison.
SPEAKER 2: What is the most exciting thing in the lineup of speakers? Some of the lectures that caught our attention are the sound of one dog barking, Bob Dylan and religious experience. What is that all about?
SPEAKER 1: OK, the line is actually refers to, I don't if I should give it away here, but it refers to a song that Bob Dylan recorded in the '80s. It's called Every Grain of Sand. And he put out a different version on the so-called bootleg volumes. He put out 3D sets called the bootleg volumes. And there he gives us the original recording. And what we hear is a dog barking in the background.
And so that he does something like this, every other artist would give us a clean up version, but he keeps the dog in the song. And it adds to the authenticity, and it also shows what kind of approach he has towards recording.
SPEAKER 2: Well, does it mean anything?
SPEAKER 1: Well, it means something in the sense that for Dylan, what's most interesting to him is capture the moment, capture what's going on in this moment in the recording studio. And if everything else is going fine and it's right on the target, then he doesn't care if there's a dog in it or not.
SPEAKER 2: What makes Dylan more than just a classical folk singer?
SPEAKER 1: Well, this is a difficult question to answer because I think it is the authenticity that comes through his music, that is probably Leonard Cohen would be the other example at least from the lyrical point of view that is very different from what's going on nowadays in popular culture and popular music.
SPEAKER 2: Of all of the people that you could have spent an entire conference looking at, why Bob Dylan?
SPEAKER 1: Well, I think Bob Dylan is unique in a way that-- I think his art is unique if you compare it to pop culture. And actually, I think he fits more in the tradition of troubadours and ancient poets. And Bob Dylan is not just a '60s icon, but he's somebody who produced really good material in the last 30 years. And he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature last year. I think slowly the perception changes.
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