Bob Dylan Vietnam Analysis

The protest music movement of the Vietnam War took a stand against US involvement in the war, the unjust treatment of US troops and the war draft. Through guitar strums, controversial lyrics and a little bit of vibrato, the protesters provided a wide reaching and beautiful voice for those American civilians and fighters who felt they had lost theirs.

Turmoil for the small Southeastern-Asian country of Vietnam began in the early 1940’s with the spread of communism. Ho Chi Minh was a Vietnamese born man who found work early in life as a cook aboard a French steamer ship and later began to live on land in France. During his time in France, Minh was immersed into communist culture. In 1917 a young Minh received word of the Bolshevik revolution.

He grew up taking inspiration from the up and coming genre of rock music and began to pursue a career in the music industry by playing in bars and preforming for special events in the many small bands he was a part of. As the US political climate began to change, Dylan’s folk/country style was gaining popularity. Dylan, like many others in his generation, strongly sided against US involvement in the Vietnam War and used his newfound fame to express his opinions on the matter through song, piloting the movement that would influence America for years to come. Bob Dylan wrote his first protest song in 1962 in response to the death of Emmett Till and continued to write music in a 20 month protest writing storm until late 1963. The songs written in this time period covered both events from the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war. Many of these songs were brought to the public via Dylan's first album , "The Freewheelin." The album sold a mere 5,000 copies in its first year butskrocketed soon thereafter, reaching no. 22 on the Billboard charts and being played on repeat in the homes of millions of

Dylan's combination of fantastic musicianship and lyrics that expressed the forgotten views of the war would help him to become the catalyst of the movement that would soon transfix the nation.

In the years that followed the release of Dylan's akbum, more and more up and coming artist began to join the protest music movement. Bands and solo artists such as, Tom Paxton, Jan Baez, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Peter Paul and Mary, The Grateful Dead, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, and many others started to create their own protest songs in response to the Vietnam war as well as produce covers of other respected artist's