Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in popular music. Over a career of more than six decades, his songwriting reshaped the artistic possibilities of popular song, and in 2016 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Early life

Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, and grew up in the nearby town of Hibbing. He developed an early interest in music, drawing on folk, blues and rock and roll. He briefly attended the University of Minnesota, where he immersed himself in the folk scene, before moving to New York City in the early 1960s and adopting the stage name Bob Dylan.

Career

In New York, Dylan became part of the Greenwich Village folk revival and signed with a major label. His early albums established him as a leading songwriter, with topical and protest songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" becoming anthems associated with the civil rights and antiwar movements.

In the mid-1960s Dylan moved away from acoustic folk toward rock instrumentation, a shift that proved controversial among some folk audiences but produced some of his most acclaimed work. Albums including "Bringing It All Back Home," "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde" featured surreal, literary lyrics and songs such as "Like a Rolling Stone" that expanded the scope of what a popular song could express.

Over the following decades Dylan continued to record prolifically and to reinvent his style, exploring country, gospel and roots music across a long and varied discography. He toured extensively in a long-running concert schedule and became known for continually reworking his songs in performance.

Recent work

Dylan has remained active as a recording and touring artist into his later years, releasing albums of original material as well as collections of standards and earlier American songs interpreting the work of earlier generations. His later original albums were widely praised by critics and demonstrated a continued engagement with American musical history, mortality and memory. His receipt of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded for creating new poetic expression within the American song tradition, marked an unusual recognition of a songwriter by a major literary institution and prompted wide debate about the boundaries between songwriting and literature. He has also published writing, including a memoir and a book of reflections on songcraft, and has exhibited visual art such as paintings and sculpture. Over the decades he has received numerous other honors, including Grammy Awards and high national honors, and his songs have been recorded by countless other artists. Dylan is consistently cited as a foundational influence on generations of songwriters and as a central figure in twentieth-century popular culture, whose work helped expand the artistic ambitions of popular music.