Springsteen Archives at Monmouth University will present Dylan talk by Sean Wilentz

SEAN WILENTZ

The second annual President’s Lecture on Music History and Contemporary America presented by Monmouth University’s Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music will be of interest to those who have seen the new movie “A Complete Unknown,” as well as anyone with an interest in Bob Dylan or ’60s culture. Dylan expert Sean Wilentz, a history professor at Princeton University, will speak at the university’s Pollak Theatre on the subject of “ ‘I Don’t Write Protest Songs’: Bob Dylan, 1963,” Jan. 30 at 3 p.m.

There will be no admission charge, though advance registration is required. Click HERE.

“A Complete Unknown” is devoted to Dylan’s life and career from 1961 to 1965.

“To this day, Bob Dylan’s early work gets tagged as political or topical or protest music, despite his own protests about it,” said Wilentz in a press release. “He has always refused to be categorized as a protest singer or a political spokesman or anything else other than a songwriter and performer. ‘I don’t write protest songs,’ he declared to the audience at a Monday night hootenanny at Gerde’s Folk City in 1962.

“Yet that renunciation served as Dylan’s introduction to his first-ever public performance of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ a song that within months would become an anthem of the burgeoning civil rights movement. Although he spoke only for himself, the shifting politics of Dylan’s early output expressed a strong point of view that was essential to his emergence in Greenwich Village, perhaps the most rapid leap into genius of any artist in modern times. That development accelerated early in 1963, led to an extraordinary burst of creativity beginning in the middle of the year, and culminated in a landmark concert at Carnegie Hall on Oct. 26, the end of the beginning of Dylan’s long career.”

According to the press release, “Wilentz’s lecture, drawing on rare and in some cases uncirculated recordings from the time, will assess the tension and energies behind this exceptional formative period in Dylan’s art.”

Copies of Wilentz’s 2010 book, “Bob Dylan in America,” will be available for purchase and signing, after the talk.

Wilentz is a member of the board of directors of The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music. He received a Grammy nomination for his liner notes to Dylan’s 2004 album, The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall.

The first President’s Lecture on Music History and Contemporary America, last year, featured author and historian Douglas Brinkley, whose talk was titled “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology): Long Sixties Protest Music and the Earth Day Revolution,”