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Protest Songs
Blowing in the wind (1) by Bon Dylan
From “ A Song-book of Folk and Pop Music”
by Mario Papa & Giuliano Iantorno,
Zanichelli Editore, Bologna, 1977
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you can call him a man?
Yes, `n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ‘n’ how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind,
The answer is blowing in the wind.
Yes, `n’ how many years can a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
Yes, ‘n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, `n’ how many times can a man turn bis head
And pretend that he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind,
The answer is blowing in the wind.
Yes, `n’ how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, `n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ‘n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind,
The answer is blowing in the wind.
(1) Blowing in the wind ‘ rep resents a forceful demand for social justice and probably is the best known of all Dylan’s songs. In 1964 it became an enormous hit all over the world.
Bob Dylan
Before Dylan it was not so usual that musicians made comments on politics in their songs. Bob Dylan changed this singing about Vietnam and racial prejudice, and young people came to express their feelings through Dylan’s songs. For Dylan words were impor¬tant, and he wrote songs at¬tacking war, discrimination, exploitation, violence between negroes and white people, and even an angry song, `A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall ‘, about the dangerous quarrel between America and Russia about Cu¬ba in 1962. ‘Blowing in the wind ‘, like most of Dylan’s songs, contains political and social ideas, and these ideas are expressed in a simple and direct way, so that they ap¬peal strongly to young people everywhere. And in all the 1960s this was especially true in America where many people, especially the young, were beginning to disagree with the American part in the Vietnam war and wanted to make the world a better place to live in, so Dylan became the symbol of protest by young people against what they considered the wrongs of the establishment.
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