If you asked a cross-section of the public what the greatest song of the 20th century is, Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind may well average out as the favourite. It is one of those originals that sounds like a cover, like it’s been passed down from cornfield to schoolroom to coffeehouse over generations (and in one sense it was, with its melody inspired by a 19th century African American spiritual). Its perfection lies in the way meaning is written into the melody itself: each verse’s couplet turns wistfully upward to suggest a search for wisdom and peace might not be fruitless, but the doleful way the melody turns downward again for the title line leaves the impression we’ll never make it. Humanity’s curse is to know how cursed it is. Blowin’ in the Wind is brutal.
Particular lyrics need to be heeded now more than ever: “How many times must the cannonballs fly / before they’re for ever banned?” hits hard in the wake of a series of mass shootings in the US. Even more so the lines about the wilful ignorance of the legislature in the face of those killings: “How many ears must one man have / before he can hear people cry? / Yes, and how many deaths will it take til he knows / that too many people have died?”
