The announcement, in Stockholm, was a surprise: Although Mr. Dylan, 75, has been mentioned often as having an outside shot at the prize, his work does not fit into the literary canons of novels, poetry and short stories that the prize has traditionally recognized.
My grandmother's ancestors had been from Constantinople. As a teenager, I used to sing the Ritchie Valens song "In a Turkish Town" with the lines in it about the"mystery Turks and the stars above,"and it seemed to suit me more than "La Bamba"; the song of Ritchie's that everybody else sang and I never knew why. My mother even had a friend names Nellie Turk and I'd grown up with her always around. There were no Ritchie Valens records up at Ray's place, "Turkish Town" or otherwise. Mostly, it was classical music and jazz bands.
See: Mavi Boncuk |Ritchie Valens In A Turkish Town Lyrics
Mavi Boncuk |
Mavi Boncuk
BOB DYLAN CHRONICLES (Volume One),
Simon & Schuster (Pages 92-93),
2004 (Copyright)
When I wasn't staying at Van Ronk's, I'd usually stay at Ray's place, get back sometime before dawn, mount the dark stairs and carefully close the door behind me. I shoved off into the sofa bed like entering a vault. Ray was not a guy who had nothing on his mind. He knew what he thought and he knew how to express it, didn't make room in his life for mistakes. The mundane things in life didn't register with him. He seemed to have some golden grip on reality, didn't sweat the small stuff, quoted the Psalms and slept with a pistol near his bed. At times he could say things that had way too much edge. Once he said that President Kennedy wouldn't last out his term because he was a Catholic.
When he said it, it made me think about my grandmother, who said to me that the Pope is the king of the Jews. She lived back in Duluth on the top floor of a duplex on 5th Street. From a window in the back room you could see Lake Superior, ominous and foreboding, iron bulk freighters and barges off in the distance, the sound of foghorns to the right and left. My grandmother had only one leg and had been a seamstress. Sometimes on weekends my parents would drive down from Iron Range to Duluth and drop me off at her place for a couple of days. She was a dark lady, smoked a pipe.
The other side of my family was more light-skinned and fair. My grandmother's voice possessed a haunting accent—face always set in a half-despairing expression. Life for her hadn't been easy. She'd come to America from Odessa, a seaport town in southern Russia. It was a town not unlike Duluth, the same kind of temperament, climate and landscape and right on the edge of a big body of water.
Originally, she'd come from Turkey, sailed from Trabzon, a port town, across the Black Sea—the sea that the ancient Greeks called the Euxine—the one that Lord Byron wrote about in Don Juan. Her family was from Kagizman[2], a town in Turkey near the Armenian border, and the family name had been Kirghiz. My grandfather's parents had also come from that same area, where they had been mostly shoemakers and leatherworkers.
My grandmother's ancestors had been from Constantinople. As a teenager, I used to sing the Ritchie Valens song "In a Turkish Town" with the lines in it about the "mystery Turks and the stars above," and it seemed to suit me more than "La Bamba," the song of Ritchie's that everybody else sang and I never knew why. My mother even had a friend names Nellie Turk and I'd grown up with her always around.
There were no Ritchie Valens records up at Ray's place, "Turkish Town" or otherwise. Mostly, it was classical music and jazz bands.
[1] Bob Dylan (b. Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, artist and writer. He has been influential in popular music and culture for more than five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when his songs chronicled social unrest, although Dylan repudiated suggestions from journalists that he was a spokesman for his generation. Nevertheless, early songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" became anthems for the American civil rights and anti-war movements. Leaving behind his initial base in the American folk music revival, his six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone", recorded in 1965, enlarged the range of popular music. Dylan's mid-1960s recordings, backed by rock musicians, reached the top end of the United States music charts while also attracting denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement. Dylan's lyrics have incorporated various political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the performances of Little Richard and the songwriting of Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, Dylan has amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning more than 50 years, has explored the traditions in American song—from folk, blues, and country to gospel, rock and roll, and rockabilly to English, Scottish, and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and the Great American Songbook. Dylan performs with guitar, keyboards, and harmonica. Backed by a changing lineup of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour. His accomplishments as a recording artist and performer have been central to his career, but songwriting is considered his greatest contribution. Since 1994, Dylan has published six books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries.
[2] Kağızman | Ottoman Turkish: قاغزمان, Armenian: Կաղզվան, Kaghzvan[*],is a town and district of Kars Province in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey.
[*] Hakobyan, Tadevos (1987). Պատմական Հայաստանի քաղաքները (Cites of historic Armenia) (in Armenian). Yerevan: "Hayastan" Publishing. p. 149.