By Willie Gordon Suting
Bob Dylan turned 77 on May 24. His words are light that guided many. Shillong has a rich musical history of celebrating the Nobel winner’s birthday annually. Organised by Lou Majaw since 1972, local and national musicians are invited to perform classic Dylan songs and originals. This year, concerts and poetry readings were held at St Joseph’s Girls Higher Secondary School, Café Shillong, Dylan’s Café and The Evening Club. The performers included Majaw, Andrew Thabah and Friends, Paul Lyngdoh, Rahul Guha Roy, Jop Wahlang, Asher Bordoloi and Leo Syiemlieh.
Dylan’s wide-eyed thematic world would fail to fit in paragraphs for he covered everything. His songwriting is loyal to poetic greats without replicating them entirely. Dylan was a voice for the voiceless, a writer of logicality and penetrativeness.
During the years when I was unemployed, Dylan was solace. The beatnik existence of hitchhiking being down and broke was an imaginative escape for me. There was a characteristic bravado in the tales of hobos and drifters. Reminiscent of Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, “the road” to Dylan is the very journey of life. It is symbolic of the trials and tribulations we face. Dylan was humorous too with playfulness in imagery.
Dylan sang of the poor oppressed by hierarchical order. He spoke fiercely against the corrupt. Dylan is in essence a voice of conscience.
Most of Dylan’s love songs like Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright and It Ain’t Me Babe are devoid of oversentimentality. The logic lies in one’s personal freedom. Dylan never gives in to effusiveness. The art of the metaphor for Dylan was to link up distant, fragmented thoughts with logical coherence.
Dylan viewed the female body not with sensuousness but as a work of art. Descriptions like “curls of hair falling down her breast” are a message to his muses.
Dylan paints both men and women as flawed and not free of sin. He can pen a story of a woman smoking in a café with words of complex beauty that add to her mysteriousness.
Dylan’s hallucinatory verses have flourishes of William Blake and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His surrealism is about visitations into dark corners of the mind. At times, we are afraid of madness or death but Dylan penetrates past our ego’s defenses. He sings of death while living and breathing. Death of morality or death of values when everything goes down the drain.
In The Evening Club, Majaw belted out Dylan classics like Do You Mr. Jones, Licence to Kill, She Belongs To Me and Everybody must Get Stoned, among others. Backed by Raphael Myrthong on guitars, Ribor Kharshiing on keyboards, Sam Shullai on drums and Khlain Ryntathiang on bass, Majaw was exuberant and youthful. Myrthong and Kharshiing exchanged solos while Shullai and Ryntathiang played with precision.
Myrthong and Ryntathiang were also part of Andrew Thabah and Friends.
Thabah’s powerful bluesy voice had a fine balance with Amirphor Jyrwa’s acoustic guitar and Valte Chongthu on drums. Thabah sung songs like Gotta’ Serve Somebody, I Shall Be Released etc with energy and vivacity. Jyrwa also sung well Meet Me In the Morning and Livin’ The Blues. Former MLA Paul Lyngdoh sung his beautiful compositions Special Leave Petition and It’s You with the band.
Rahul Guha Roy was exceptional with the acoustic guitar and vocals on songs like I Shall Be Released, Knocking On Heaven’s Door and Blowin’ In the Wind. Jop Wahlang sang with genuineness My Back Pages, Forever Young and Blowin’ In The Wind.
All the musicians had a commonality. They all celebrated Dylan’s iconic poetry and music. Majaw, speaking to Sunday Shillong, said, “Every year is a respect to the bard. I am just inspired by him!”
It was in 1965 in a party in Kolkata (then Calcutta) that Majaw first heard Blowin’ In The Wind. “I was just taken away by its varied and rich commentary,” he said.
When asked what the world is lacking nowadays, Majaw said, “The entire darkness needs just a flicker of hope. Hope is missing in the world.”
Roy, originally from Kolkata, spent his youth in Shillong. “Dylan helps me understand the highs and lows of life. His music is detoxification.” Wahlang too finds direction and encouragement from Dylan’s verses. “In all areas, his lyrics are the most universal.”
Thabah said he is grateful to Majaw for the show. “I also feel it’s high time Dylan came here for a visit.”
Roy praised the great energy from the audience. “I have been performing since 2012 and the audience is getting more diverse.”
