The fans, they are un-changing. A tribute to Bob Dylan at 80
His work is at once timely and timeless. Indian followers of Dylan’s work discuss what makes him stand apart all these years later.
On November 19, 2016, prime minister Narendra Modi quoted from a Bob Dylan song. Opening a youth festival in Mumbai headlined by Coldplay, he read out 10 lines from the title track of Dylan’s 1964 album, The Times They Are a-Changin’, before concluding: “Elders must learn from these words of wisdom. We better get out of the way, as indeed, the times they are a changing.”
A month earlier, rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest bard had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The singular honour came after years of petitioning by fans from around the world. At least some of them would undoubtedly have been from India.
As Dylan turns 80 on May 24, hundreds of Indian fans will join in the global celebrations. Most of his fandom here is concentrated in the metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru. Some will bake Dylan cakes and light candles; others will sing his songs, alone or with friends and family.
Troubadour: Like a Rolling Stone
In the hill town of Shillong, veteran hell-raising rocker Lou Majaw will step out of his home with his Danelectro guitar on Monday morning. He doesn’t know where he will go yet, but the idea is to do what he has done every year since 1972 — pay public tribute to Dylan on the date he refers to as Bob Dylan’s Day.
The lockdown means fans from elsewhere in India won’t be able to make it this year (they usually come from as far away as Bengaluru, Thiruvananthapuram and Chennai). So Majaw will take on the role of a troubadour, a fitting tribute too. That’s what he did last year, amid the lockdown. “I just went from spot to spot, and did a song,” he says.
In 2020, Majaw drove down deserted streets, singing to an empty town — by roundabouts, in the middle of Don Bosco Square, in front of the bright blue gates of the Cathedral Catholic Church. “Just remember that death is not the end, not the end, not the end,” he sang out, from Dylan’s 1988 song.
This year? “Maybe I’ll take a walk down the road, go with my guitar. If I see a nice little patch, I’ll make myself comfortable. And that’s it.” One place he’s thinking of is the Shillong Golf Links, known as the Gleneagles of the East. “It’s what keeps you going… It’s love and respect for the man, for his writing. It’s just that.”
Majaw’s Dylan’s Days have become a pilgrimage for Indian fans; anywhere else in the world this would have been turned into a monetised event. You could even pluck the brand slogan from Majaw’s recollection of the first time he heard Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind: “It’s the bridge that connects.”
Such fandom is typical of India’s east and north-east, where the singer is widely loved, and where the West has long been a friend.
The Protest: It Ain’t Me Babe
Kolkata is now home to Susmit Bose, the urban folk singer-songwriter who has come to be known as India’s Bob Dylan for his use of the acoustic guitar and harmonica. Although Delhi is where he spent most of his life, his 1978 album is presciently titled Train to Calcutta. It is the city where Beat poets and sometimes-lovers Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky spent seven months in 1961-62 in the company of Bengali poets Shakti Chattopadhyay, Buddhadeva Bose and many others, where the bohemian cafés of College Street and New York’s Village seemed to meld.
Later, the city spawned India’s first urban folk music movement, called Jibanmukhi or Lifesong. Songwriters influenced by Dylan, guitar and global music wrote about themselves: their poverty, their city, their loves and their dreams.
“Here they listen to your words,” says Bose, who is primarily a protest singer. “They may not understand English, but they understand the words. It is a different temperament. It is essentially a political temperament. There is a consciousness in Kolkata that keeps Dylan alive. I’ve yet to come across a city with so many guitar players, in so many genres.” A compilation of Bose’s songs, Then & Now, has just been released as a double CD.
Two Cities and a Singer: A Simple Twist of Fate
Rabbi Shergill, the Punjabi singer-songwriter who topped the charts in 2005 with his soul-searching Bullah ki Jaana (I Know Not Who I Am), was driving one day and popped in one of a bunch of pirated CDs he had picked up in Karachi. This is what he heard:
And I was standing on the side of the road
Rain falling on my shoes
Heading out for the east coast
Lord knows I’ve paid some dues getting through
It was Dylan’s Tangled Up in Blue. “I am in the car. I hear the words, ‘With the rain falling in my shoes’,” says Shergill, stressing rain as Dylan would have. “And I am curious.”
Shergill came to Dylan late, in his early 30s. Dylan’s songs come to him from nowhere in moments of crisis. “I keep returning to Like a Rolling Stone, whenever there is tragedy. There are people calling me, asking me for help. Just a few days ago, I am brushing my teeth, looking in the mirror, and I subconsciously start humming Like a Rolling Stone. The disturbance that’s already within him is now marshalled and that disturbance is within me,” Shergill says.
“My generation has been stopped in its tracks. My friends were driving around in their Ferraris on their individual trip when this tragedy happened. I’m a lost generation. I don’t know what I am. I know I like guitars.”
Driven by a thrumming economy that’s one of the largest in India and punching well above its weight, Delhi is not a city with “music in the cafes in the night, and revolution in the air”. Yet its Dylan fandom is a thing to be seen. “There have always been two cities in Delhi: poetry survives in a sea of other crudeness,” says Shergill.
Half a century ago, four teens borrowed a phrase from the album notes to Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and named their rock band Savage Rose, singing songs such as New Morning and I Want You. Three years ago, a Dylan tribute at Depot28, a South Delhi bar and restaurant, sold out within days of Rolling Stone magazine announcing the event. There was an eclectic line-up of musicians from Delhi, Kolkata, Nagaland, Nigeria and the Congo, and fans danced on the tables.
“Can you imagine, audiences sitting cross-legged on the floor below the stage in a plush south Delhi bar?” says Sharif D Rangnekar, a writer and musician who organised the tribute. “A whole new generation wants to relate to a sense of freedom. The event gave voice to their pent-up feeling.” Rangnekar is planning a follow-up once restrictions are lifted.
The South: Forever Young
Like so many others before her, Aarushi Pareek sings the songs of Bob Dylan at hotels in Bengaluru. “He is really big here,” says the 20-year-old frontwoman of The Chronic Blues Circus, a 30-year-old band. “Women turn up for our gigs… you know, skirts to saris, and sing along with Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”
It’s nice to go through his words, Pareek adds. “You dig out the meaning in them. The songs got the words from some feel – the feel of oneness.”
Oneness. There’s a perfect description of Dylan fandom in India — oneness in its continuity across diverse regions and oneness to remind us of how Dylan has smashed through the barriers of time.
FAVOURITE DYLAN SONGS AND WHY
Lou Majaw: Blowin’ in the Wind. It’s the bridge that connects.
Rabbi Shergill: Tangled Up in Blue. For its grainy, deep and succinct portrayal of a life, an affair and the times.
Susmit Bose: Blowin’ in the Wind, because it encompasses the perspective of a human being.
Aarushi Pareek: Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood), because when the flood is rising and the water is overflowing, when your best friend has left you, there is still hope.
(Dipankar De Sarkar, a journalist and amateur musician, was part of the 2018 multi-genre tribute to Bob Dylan in Delhi)
On November 19, 2016, prime minister Narendra Modi quoted from a Bob Dylan song. Opening a youth festival in Mumbai headlined by Coldplay, he read out 10 lines from the title track of Dylan’s 1964 album, The Times They Are a-Changin’, before concluding: “Elders must learn from these words of wisdom. We better get out of the way, as indeed, the times they are a changing.”
A month earlier, rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest bard had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The singular honour came after years of petitioning by fans from around the world. At least some of them would undoubtedly have been from India.
As Dylan turns 80 on May 24, hundreds of Indian fans will join in the global celebrations. Most of his fandom here is concentrated in the metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru. Some will bake Dylan cakes and light candles; others will sing his songs, alone or with friends and family.
Troubadour: Like a Rolling Stone
In the hill town of Shillong, veteran hell-raising rocker Lou Majaw will step out of his home with his Danelectro guitar on Monday morning. He doesn’t know where he will go yet, but the idea is to do what he has done every year since 1972 — pay public tribute to Dylan on the date he refers to as Bob Dylan’s Day.
The lockdown means fans from elsewhere in India won’t be able to make it this year (they usually come from as far away as Bengaluru, Thiruvananthapuram and Chennai). So Majaw will take on the role of a troubadour, a fitting tribute too. That’s what he did last year, amid the lockdown. “I just went from spot to spot, and did a song,” he says.
In 2020, Majaw drove down deserted streets, singing to an empty town — by roundabouts, in the middle of Don Bosco Square, in front of the bright blue gates of the Cathedral Catholic Church. “Just remember that death is not the end, not the end, not the end,” he sang out, from Dylan’s 1988 song.
This year? “Maybe I’ll take a walk down the road, go with my guitar. If I see a nice little patch, I’ll make myself comfortable. And that’s it.” One place he’s thinking of is the Shillong Golf Links, known as the Gleneagles of the East. “It’s what keeps you going… It’s love and respect for the man, for his writing. It’s just that.”
Majaw’s Dylan’s Days have become a pilgrimage for Indian fans; anywhere else in the world this would have been turned into a monetised event. You could even pluck the brand slogan from Majaw’s recollection of the first time he heard Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind: “It’s the bridge that connects.”
Such fandom is typical of India’s east and north-east, where the singer is widely loved, and where the West has long been a friend.
The Protest: It Ain’t Me Babe
Kolkata is now home to Susmit Bose, the urban folk singer-songwriter who has come to be known as India’s Bob Dylan for his use of the acoustic guitar and harmonica. Although Delhi is where he spent most of his life, his 1978 album is presciently titled Train to Calcutta. It is the city where Beat poets and sometimes-lovers Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky spent seven months in 1961-62 in the company of Bengali poets Shakti Chattopadhyay, Buddhadeva Bose and many others, where the bohemian cafés of College Street and New York’s Village seemed to meld.
Later, the city spawned India’s first urban folk music movement, called Jibanmukhi or Lifesong. Songwriters influenced by Dylan, guitar and global music wrote about themselves: their poverty, their city, their loves and their dreams.
“Here they listen to your words,” says Bose, who is primarily a protest singer. “They may not understand English, but they understand the words. It is a different temperament. It is essentially a political temperament. There is a consciousness in Kolkata that keeps Dylan alive. I’ve yet to come across a city with so many guitar players, in so many genres.” A compilation of Bose’s songs, Then & Now, has just been released as a double CD.
Two Cities and a Singer: A Simple Twist of Fate
Rabbi Shergill, the Punjabi singer-songwriter who topped the charts in 2005 with his soul-searching Bullah ki Jaana (I Know Not Who I Am), was driving one day and popped in one of a bunch of pirated CDs he had picked up in Karachi. This is what he heard:
And I was standing on the side of the road
Rain falling on my shoes
Heading out for the east coast
Lord knows I’ve paid some dues getting through
It was Dylan’s Tangled Up in Blue. “I am in the car. I hear the words, ‘With the rain falling in my shoes’,” says Shergill, stressing rain as Dylan would have. “And I am curious.”
Shergill came to Dylan late, in his early 30s. Dylan’s songs come to him from nowhere in moments of crisis. “I keep returning to Like a Rolling Stone, whenever there is tragedy. There are people calling me, asking me for help. Just a few days ago, I am brushing my teeth, looking in the mirror, and I subconsciously start humming Like a Rolling Stone. The disturbance that’s already within him is now marshalled and that disturbance is within me,” Shergill says.
“My generation has been stopped in its tracks. My friends were driving around in their Ferraris on their individual trip when this tragedy happened. I’m a lost generation. I don’t know what I am. I know I like guitars.”
Driven by a thrumming economy that’s one of the largest in India and punching well above its weight, Delhi is not a city with “music in the cafes in the night, and revolution in the air”. Yet its Dylan fandom is a thing to be seen. “There have always been two cities in Delhi: poetry survives in a sea of other crudeness,” says Shergill.
Half a century ago, four teens borrowed a phrase from the album notes to Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and named their rock band Savage Rose, singing songs such as New Morning and I Want You. Three years ago, a Dylan tribute at Depot28, a South Delhi bar and restaurant, sold out within days of Rolling Stone magazine announcing the event. There was an eclectic line-up of musicians from Delhi, Kolkata, Nagaland, Nigeria and the Congo, and fans danced on the tables.
“Can you imagine, audiences sitting cross-legged on the floor below the stage in a plush south Delhi bar?” says Sharif D Rangnekar, a writer and musician who organised the tribute. “A whole new generation wants to relate to a sense of freedom. The event gave voice to their pent-up feeling.” Rangnekar is planning a follow-up once restrictions are lifted.
The South: Forever Young
Like so many others before her, Aarushi Pareek sings the songs of Bob Dylan at hotels in Bengaluru. “He is really big here,” says the 20-year-old frontwoman of The Chronic Blues Circus, a 30-year-old band. “Women turn up for our gigs… you know, skirts to saris, and sing along with Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”
It’s nice to go through his words, Pareek adds. “You dig out the meaning in them. The songs got the words from some feel – the feel of oneness.”
Oneness. There’s a perfect description of Dylan fandom in India — oneness in its continuity across diverse regions and oneness to remind us of how Dylan has smashed through the barriers of time.
FAVOURITE DYLAN SONGS AND WHY
Lou Majaw: Blowin’ in the Wind. It’s the bridge that connects.
Rabbi Shergill: Tangled Up in Blue. For its grainy, deep and succinct portrayal of a life, an affair and the times.
Susmit Bose: Blowin’ in the Wind, because it encompasses the perspective of a human being.
Aarushi Pareek: Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood), because when the flood is rising and the water is overflowing, when your best friend has left you, there is still hope.
(Dipankar De Sarkar, a journalist and amateur musician, was part of the 2018 multi-genre tribute to Bob Dylan in Delhi)
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