2023-07-08 09:44:30
Your path, already ancient, ages quickly». Bob Dylan wrote this line 60 years ago, when he was barely 22, and turned it into a verse sung in his genuine voice, one of many great verses from his classic ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’. Reading it today, it is tempting to wonder what vision that young man would have of his own future, of his old age; to know if he ever saw himself as the eighty-year-old musical interpreter who performed on June 19 and 20 in San Sebastián and, if so, what he would think about the relevance of his art and his figure, about the durability of his its myth and the sunset of life. It doesn’t matter, we will never discover the mystery of it, Dylan himself has cultivated and protected it to the extreme.
What we contemplated on Tuesday, June 20, was a true ritual, the liturgy executed by a great artist, old, sober and adorable, independent, free, masterful and disconcerting in equal parts; a man whose stardom is so enormous that sometimes, just sometimes, the legend of him seems to absorb any glimpse of reality that might take place on stage. And in front of the maestro’s ceremony, we, the congregation of his followers, hundreds of faithful full of respect and admiration, hours of listening and reading, of a life almost always inseparable from that of the myth, we came devoid of any encouragement. critical.
Concessions have not had a place in his repertoire for a long time
road addiction
It may be the last time we’ll have to see him live, we told ourselves on the way out through a storm that seemed to act as an opening act for the star. But who knows. The intense schedule of this latest European tour reveals that addiction to the road remains with Dylan and that performing his music in front of audiences is still an essential form of his art. This was demonstrated in San Sebastián. The concert we saw was not a prefabricated piece, but a live show performed by brilliant musicians who wrapped up, even physically, the voice and the fragile figure of the artist. The acting was excellent.
Punctual and in the dark, Dylan and the group filed out and took up their positions. The dim lighting showed the austerity of the staging, dominated by an immense red curtain on three walls that enveloped the performers dressed in black. Although the stage surface was large, the band occupied minimal space in the center: Dylan at the piano throughout the concert (sometimes sitting, sometimes standing), surrounded in a tight circle by his five musicians, who did not look away of the leader; he gave the impression that the group was playing more for him than for us.
In front of the maestro’s ceremony, hundreds of faithful full of respect and admiration
Concessions have not had a place in his repertoire for a long time. She interpreted nine songs from ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’, her last album, and some versions of classics, not the best known, under formulations that are difficult to recognize. At this point, Bob Dylan in many cases declaims more than he sings. Perhaps he is a loss of age, or not, and in reality it is the consistent expression of the poet (how can we forget his Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016). Be that as it may, his art reinvents itself. This explains why the music of an 82-year-old man transmits so much energy, emotion and sincerity. It is what made us feel, intensely, throughout the concert.
american music
We witness a recital of the best American music, from ‘blues’ to rock, constants in Dylan’s work, going through flashes of ‘country’ and even ‘jazz’. His harmonica, beautiful and evocative, played on ‘When I Paint my Masterpiece’ and, although on ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’ we vibrated with the powerful ‘riff’ at the hands of one of the guitarists, the maestro’s piano prevailed for a good part of it. the topics. The acoustics of the Kursaal provided the perfect sound and the show concluded with the moving gospel song ‘Every Grain of Sand’. Bob Dylan advanced to the beginning of the stage, leaned on the foot of a microphone, greeted with concise courtesy and, once again in the shadows, made his exit.
His art reinvents itself and this explains why at 82 he transmits so much emotion
As we left the auditorium, we wondered if what we had just seen gave us a different perspective on the real Robert Zimmerman, that boy who in the late fifties escaped from a nondescript future to invent a legend. It doesn’t matter, we replied, what we know is that God chose Bob Dylan in Duluth, a remote town in Minnesota, and Dylan became God. 60 years later, his art still lifts our spirits and certainly makes us better.
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