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The Formative Dylan: Transmission and Stylistic Influences, 1961-1963
The Formative Dylan examines the musical roots of 70 songs from Dylan's early career, namely from his first three Columbia LPs, officially released outtakes from those sessions, and his Broadside session recordings released by Folkways. Each of these songs is presented in a short article that details melodic and lyric roots and describes contemporaneous performances to show the process by which Dylan learned or composed his formative repertoire. Three appendixes help the reader to understand this repertoire not only in the continuum of American music but as a reflection of Dylan's own compositional development.
The term "formative" conveys that at that early point in his career Dylan had not yet fully emerged as a composer. During his formative period, almost every song had a clear melodic or lyric predecessor. His influences and his own creativity had not quite meshed into an individual style. His repertoire ranged from traditional Appalachian songs to blues to topical-protest songs, representing the interaction between the traditional and popular streams of American music.
Written during a ten-month Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, this book's primary resources were the Smithsonian's Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, and the Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division.
The term "formative" conveys that at that early point in his career Dylan had not yet fully emerged as a composer. During his formative period, almost every song had a clear melodic or lyric predecessor. His influences and his own creativity had not quite meshed into an individual style. His repertoire ranged from traditional Appalachian songs to blues to topical-protest songs, representing the interaction between the traditional and popular streams of American music.
Written during a ten-month Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, this book's primary resources were the Smithsonian's Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, and the Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division.
- GenresNonfiction
Hardcover
First published October 23, 2001
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August 6, 2016
A discovery. I've been retracing paths in this book for a week, and the scholarship's solid sense authenticates itself. Todd Harvey wants to establish texts, which -- the more you know about folk songs, the literary process they participate in, the more vexingly crucial this work becomes. Harvey's musicology and compositional genetics is rock solid. It's just not a book for the layperson, so don't expect it to be. It ought to straighten out mis-prisions among the non-specialist interpreters, though I have little hope for those on this page who froth on elsewhere endlessly about Dylan's compositional methods in the memoir. Just so, it's on the short shelf of useful books about Dylan.
Displaying 1 of 1 review