Recommendations of the Editorial team
Bob Dylan has accepted an honorary doctorate in music from Berklee College of Music. This is the first time since 1970 that an American university has bestowed such an honor on him.
“Thank you, Berklee College of Music, for awarding me this prestigious award. What a pleasant surprise,” Dylan said.
“Who knows what path my career would have taken if I had been able to learn from some of the great musicians who teach at Berklee. A thought worth pondering.”
Dylan’s influence on music history
The school recognizes Dylan’s “extraordinary influence on modern music” and his “lifelong dedication to creative exploration.” “This is an incredible moment for our institution,” said Berklee President Jim Lucchese. “Bob Dylan’s music shaped how the world hears itself. He is an artist who never stopped evolving – pursuing truth through sound and language. That is the spirit we strive to foster here every day. Honoring him feels like an affirmation of the creative impulse that built this college.”
Matt Glaser, artistic director of the American Roots Music Program at Berklee, also added: “Bob Dylan spent a lifetime learning, absorbing and transforming every American musical tradition. Berklee teaches all the music that Dylan loves. His deep engagement with African-American blues is reflected in much of our curriculum, which is based on American variations of the music of the African diaspora.”
“We all play folk music”
“As anyone who has read his books or listened to his hundred-plus radio shows knows, Dylan is also a great teacher and learner,” Glaser continued. “He shows us how to learn about music and art throughout your life – and understand it all as one. I love the anecdote that Dylan himself tells: He once went to see Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot in Greenwich Village, introduced himself and said, ‘I play folk music down the street.’ Monk replied: ‘We all play folk music.'”
Dylan dropped out of the University of Minnesota in 1959 after just one semester, where he hardly attended any lectures. He most recently received an honorary doctorate in 2004 from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He had previously accepted an award from Princeton University in 1970 – in the presence of David Crosby. This event inspired his song “Day of the Locusts” from the album “New Morning”.
The locusts sang for him
“Oh, the benches were stained with tears and sweat,” Dylan wrote at the time. “The birds flew from tree to tree / There was little to say, no conversation / As I stepped up to the stage to collect my diploma / And the grasshoppers sang in the distance / Yes, the grasshoppers sang a sweet melody / Oh, the grasshoppers sang in the distance / Yes, the grasshoppers sang, and they sang to me.”
In his memoir Chronicles (2004), Dylan recalled that day: “I was glad to get the diploma. I could use it. The very sight and feel of it represented respectability and had something of the spirit of the universe in it. After I had made it through the ceremony half-whispering, half-mumbling, I was presented with the certificate. We got back in the big Buick and drove away.”
Concert in Dylan’s honor
Dylan himself will not appear at Berklee’s new award. However, the college is hosting a concert on Wednesday evening called “Watching the River Flow: A Roots Salute to Bob Dylan.” Students, faculty, alumni and guest musicians will perform classics such as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are A-Changin'” and “Chimes of Freedom.”
The finale is a special version of “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” in which selected students take turns singing the twenty verses.