Ambiguity in Folk Music and Culture: Bob Dylan & Kara Walker

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American singer-songwriter and folk musician Bob Dylan describes in his autobiography, as well as his life and music in general, the ambiguity of folk songs and their ability to be openly shared, interpreted, and even fabricated, and he believes that human nature is such that we are most comfortable with this opacity. The work of African American artist Kara Walker reinforces this belief, and applies it to history with the exploration of cultural ideas regarding race, sexuality, identity, gender roles, repression, and violence.

In Dylan’s Chronicles Volume One, he says, “folk songs are evasive – the truth about life, and life is more or less a lie, but then again that’s exactly the way we want it to be. We wouldn’t be comfortable with it any other way.” He goes on to also confirm the ambiguity of folk music, saying that “[a] folk song has over a thousand faces and you must meet them all if you want to play this stuff. A folk song might vary in meaning and it might not appear the same from one moment to the next. It depends on who’s playing and who’s listening” (71). One of the characteristics that Bob Dylan possesses, and that has helped him be such a successful folk artist, is his ability to recognize this ambiguity. His ears were and still are immune to the literalness of time, and upon hearing something new, he can apply what he does not know to his listening, instead of confining his interpretation to what knowledge he already has. This is the basis for what folk music taught Dylan in some of his most formative years, that “[i]f you told the truth, that was all well and good and if you told the un-truth, well, that’s still well and good” (35). Even old folk legends are unclear in their origin and factuality, such as the widel...

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...de ourselves into the altered consciousness of reality that Dylan found in songs, what “Greil Marcus, the music historian, would some thirty years later call…‘the invisible republic’” (Dylan 34), we must close our eyes to the truths that cause trauma and open them to this invisibility, and we can find in our comfort a new folk legend to be heard.

Works Cited

Dylan, Bob. Chronicles: Volume One. Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2004. Print.

Johnson, Emma. "Review: Kara Walker's Darkytown Rebellion." Web log post. Emma Johnson Writer/Artist/Musician. 7 Jan. 2010. Web. 04 Dec. 2011. .

Simblist, Noah. "Kara Walker by Noah Simblist." ART LIES: A Contemporary Art Journal. ART LIES: A Contemporary Art Quarterly. ART LIES. Web. 04 Dec. 2011. .

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