Electric Dylan controversy

By 1965, Bob Dylan had achieved the status of leading songwriter of the American folk music revival. The response to his albums The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and The Times They Are a-Changin' led to him being labelled as the "spokesman of a generation" by the media. In March 1965, Dylan released his fifth album, Bringing It All Back Home. Side One featured Dylan backed by an electric band. Side Two featured Dylan accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. On July 20, 1965, Dylan released his single, "Like a Rolling Stone", featuring a rock sound. On July 25, 1965, Dylan performed with a rock band at the Newport Folk Festival. Some sections of the audience booed Dylan's performance. Leading members of the folk movement, including Irwin Silber and Ewan MacColl criticized Dylan for moving away from political songwriting, and performing with an electric band.

Newport 1965 set

At the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, Dylan had been received enthusiastically when he performed "Blowin' in the Wind" with Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, and other Festival performers. At the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, Dylan performed "With God On Our Side" and "Mr Tambourine Man".

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan (/ˈdɪlən/; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, artist and writer. He has been influential in popular music and culture for more than five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when his songs chronicled social unrest, although Dylan repudiated suggestions from journalists that he was a spokesman for his generation. Nevertheless, early songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" became anthems for the American civil rights and anti-war movements. After he left his initial base in the American folk music revival, his six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" altered the range of popular music in 1965. His mid-1960s recordings, backed by rock musicians, reached the top end of the United States music charts while also attracting denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement.

Dylan's lyrics have incorporated various political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the performances of Little Richard, and the songwriting of Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, Dylan has amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning 50 years, has explored the traditions in American song—from folk, blues, and country to gospel, rock and roll, and rockabilly to English, Scottish, and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and the Great American Songbook. Dylan performs with guitar, keyboards, and harmonica. Backed by a changing line-up of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour. His accomplishments as a recording artist and performer have been central to his career, but songwriting is considered his greatest contribution.

Newport Folk Festival

The Newport Folk Festival is an American annual folk-oriented music festival in Newport, Rhode Island, which began in 1959 as a counterpart to the previously established Newport Jazz Festival. The festival features performances by folk, blues, country, bluegrass and folk rock musicians, and since the 1990s has featured performers from related contemporary genres, such as alternative country, indie folk and folk punk.

History

The Newport Folk Festival was founded in 1959 by George Wein, founder of the already-well-established Newport Jazz Festival, backed by its original board: Theodore Bikel, Oscar Brand, Pete Seeger and Albert Grossman.

The festival is renowned for introducing to a national audience a number of performers who went on to become major stars, most notably Joan Baez by her appearance as an unannounced guest of Bob Gibson in 1959, and Bob Dylan, in turn a guest of Baez at the 1963 festival. Newport was not strictly limited to folk performers. In the 1960s, Johnny Cash, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf were featured. José Feliciano debuted in 1964. The festival also included many musicians from the pre-World War II country blues era who served to influence the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.

List of folk festivals

A folk festival celebrates traditional folk crafts and folk music. The following is an incomplete list of folk festivals worldwide. This list generally excludes festivals with only a partial focus on folk music or arts, though these multi-genre festivals may be included in individual subcategories of Category:Folk festivals by country.

Folk festivals may feature folk art and folk music, with a focus on both or either, as well as folk dance or ethnic foods. Featured genres are often catered to a particular region or culture, for example Celtic festivals or maritime music festivals. Diverse regional genres of folk music are popular among modern audiences, and there are major folk music festivals in many countries. It is sometimes claimed that the earliest modern folk festival was the 1928 Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville, North Carolina, founded by Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Since then festivals have grown in size, such as the Feast of the Hunters' Moon in Indiana, which draws approximately 60,000 visitors per year. Some offshoots of folk music, such as country music and bluegrass music, have festival circuits devoted solely to the genre.

Dylan

Dylan may refer to:

See also