The Blowing in the Wind Factor
As the story goes, Bob Dylan wrote the song “Blowing in the Wind” before his first record; a record that mostly collected traditional tunes and songs he was familiar with to make the recording process easy. The song itself was released in 1963 on ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’ and after meeting with music publishers became a standard in the pop music canon. Cover recordings by the likes of Peter Paul and Mary and others went on to make far more money than Dylan’s initial recording, but all the while Dylan earned unbelievable street-cred with folk singers, political leaders, and anyone paying attention or involved with the folk/protest scene. Certainly it wasn’t this song alone that caused all the hubbub, but it was the easiest to rally around.
A friend of mine at Kalamazoo College experienced an event where students were to choose and present their favorite poetry or other art to discuss certain aesthetic and formulaic qualities of the favored pieces, and my friend brought in and played another song off of ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,’ the mammoth song “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” After hearing the recording of the song, one of the students in the class spoke coldly (I am paraphrasing). “I don’t understand why Bob Dylan is so respected,” she grumbled. “I mean, I could do what he’s doing, there’s nothing to it.” My friend was outraged. Beyond being a Bob Dylan freak, philosophically he could not understand how someone college educated could miss the obvious fact that, sure, she could do what Dylan was doing, but she hadn’t. Dylan had.
The point wasn’t that she was way off base to say she could do it like Dylan. The point was mechanically, and even thematically, she was noticing that there wasn’t much going on in the song. Going back to “Blowing in the Wind,” let’s apply the same logic of this disgruntled student. Harmonically, at least in the original recorded version, three chords occur around Dylan’s raggedy voice. Lyrically, it’s the same question over and over. And it’s never answered except to say that there is no answer. Not exactly an uplifting song. Melodically, only a few notes are used for the entire song; a range of less than an octave. To really put a stink on things, the rumor is that Dylan didn’t even write the melody but lifted it from another song he had heard. So Dylan took three chords and a melody he didn’t even write and set it to one lyrical theme; unanswerable questions. And this is genius?
Duchamp’s “Fountain” comes to mind. Someone, to emphasize certain philosophies about art aesthetics, placed a urinal on a wall and called it art. The art world was stunned. Now, the piece costs thousands of dollars to be insured and could never be replaced by another urinal. If I was to take a urinal today and ask the Detroit Institute of Arts to place it on the wall as art, I’d be laughed out of the complex, even if I suggested it as a modern fresh update on the original work (by using one of those waterless urinals). So, I have no choice but to sit around and dream about the possibility of coming up with something as cool as Duchamp’s urinal.
Again, the genius lies in the fact that Dylan did it. And not just that Dylan did it, but that he did it when he did, how he did it, why he did it, where he did it, etc. For many the genius of Bob Dylan lies in his unfailing commitment to changing; changing himself, changing the world around him, changing expectations and so on. Certainly he is known for not only changing but destroying the major label taboo of the ‘beautiful’ singing voice. But I digress from my goal (which is far too common for me, I’m sorry). Bob Dylan wrote “Blowing in the Wind” in a time when it became effective and it, along with his other early music, changed the way people thought about art and expression, the way other people wrote songs, and the way the music in the United States developed. To do the exact same thing now, and I mean to literally write “Blowing in the Wind” myself, in 2006, would mean a personal achievement but wouldn’t have the same effect. Something new and different has to be done, something unexpected and life-changing for the world around it, but just as simple. What will it be?
This idea, in essence, is what all the fuss is about in graduate school. You come in, you read dissertations, research, theses, and most people think “I could do that.” For better or worse, it’s a race to create something simple but reality-changing in whatever field you are working under. For the better, there is an enormous feeling of perpetual motion in the positive direction of your field. You work with and read articles by colleagues and elders who are constantly striving for new things to be said, in essence new “Blowing in the Winds” to be written. You see knowledge being harnessed to help others understand the future development of the cause. You find support along the route to your own personal “Blowing in the Wind.” And continuing the Dylan analogy, you see that really developing researching and publishing it isn’t that difficult mechanically or thematically either. So what’s the big deal?
On the negative side, you have a lot of people who think they are Bob Dylan who are more like Peter Paul and Mary covering Bob Dylan. And there’s even more people who think this or that is “Blowing in the Wind” just because it has all the pieces; the three chords, the simple melody. It’s a simple human trait, our pride, that draws us to the idea that harnessing these observations into some kind of communicable fact helps to mold us into mini-omniscients, mini-deities. I saw plenty of moments where people I read, hell, people I met or knew seemed fully confident that their research was “Blowing in the Wind.” I am not immune from this. I have my interests and my goals in research and I believe that some of the research I plan to conduct and/or support will change the face of music education. I want it to. What is so wrong with confidence? The problem is, sometimes what we’re doing is nothing special, and fits the bill mechanically and thematically but just isn’t that significant, and there isn’t anything wrong with that. Most of the research I’ve read isn’t that earth-shattering, at least, not really. Most of the research I’ve read, no matter how shocked and excited I was to read the results and application sections… most of the research is restating mind-numbingly obvious observations on the world.
Certainly Watson and Crick, or Copernicus, or Newton were more than stating obvious observations. They were creating what would become common accepted knowledge. I admittedly don’t walk around observing the design of my DNA. I say this because I know very well that research, in essence, is observation and there’s nothing negative about that on its own. Research includes (and should!) little things that can lead to bigger things. To make a forest you have to start with seeds.
It’s more the claim to the research that seems to be the problem. Sometimes, I get the idea through reading research and talking to colleagues that research is being done more to be known as the Bob Dylan of your specific field, rather than to write something as special to the community as “Blowing in the Wind.” Sure, the process is similar, and the final published product is the same, but sometimes admitting results just aren’t that important is difficult to admit. The problem lies in our need to be known as the classic writer, to get accepted by the community first by writing something small, like a tribute song to Woody Guthrie, and then move on up to the larger works and eventually write a whopper of a song like “Desolation Row” or “Like a Rolling Stone.”
The college student at Kalamazoo College was getting at something important, despite using it for a sad reason. Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind,” Duchamp’s “Fountain,” and even Carl Orff’s method don’t seem to really have much to them, and if the time was right and you were around, maybe you would’ve come up with them and been hailed as great. The fact is, you didn’t come up with any of those things. And so what if you didn’t. You live your life one way or the other.
This is my point. Sorry; I’m long winded. What I’ve seen very clearly at Michigan State is a divide between cultures over the importance of research. I’ve also had my eyes opened to the harsh reality of research’s relationship to those talking about or expecting to get heralded for their self-labeled “Blowing in the Wind.” I also see a far larger group not interested in fishing through all the rhetoric and expectation of research. Worse still, I see groups of people who are looking to use research only to support and validate their preset choices, which destroys the value of research by making it nothing more than a tool for rationalization.
This last year I heard a colleague of mine tell me “the only people who care about research are the people involved with research.” This made me start wondering who is at fault for this disconnect between practice and theory. How can it be changed? I’m not sure I know the answer to that. If anyone reading this does, please let me know.
Bob Dylan wrote “Blowing in the Wind” before he was 21 and we all didn’t. Beethoven and Mahler wrote their symphonies, Schoenberg invented serialism, and Duchamp put a urinal on a wall. Watson and Crick found DNA. We will never do any of those things. I don’t see it as being depressing, nor do I see it as inspiration to get my piece. I can’t see the statement of “we will never write ‘Blowing in the Wind’” as anything more than a literal statement, because writing that exact song in that exact situation really isn’t possible.
What information needs to be gleaned from all my blathering? I think Dylan wrote the song and it became important because the opportunity arose for him to do it. He did it, and it connected with people for whatever reason.
I think Music Learning Theory came forth because the researchers would have had to work extremely hard to ignore their observations and instincts, so they did what they had to do.
Research is so damn important, and it’s hard to sift through a lot of it, I’ll admit. But when it seems as though researchers don’t want non-researchers to sift through
any of it, I get concerned.
I’ve learned that the best research just happens and only gets stained when it isn’t allowed to just explain itself. After all, “Blowing in the Wind” would be a pretty lame song if every time Dylan started the song he said, “this song is important and you should accept its impact on the world and let it move you because I’m Bob Dylan and I wrote this song and it’s important.”
