The Song On Darkness On The Edge Of Town By Bruce Springsteen

Popular singer Elton John once said; “music has healing power; it has the ability to take people out of themselves for a few hours”, and for most, music is the portal to an out of body experience. African American lyricists especially have been found to use the art of music to escape the real world, commencing from the slavery era and onward. The blues song titled The Tracks of My Tears does just that; expresses the ability to remove your soul from a treacherous reality. Similarly, the lyrics from popular modern songs, written by black artists, speak volumes about what is presently going on in the country, parallel to the way African American slavery songs did. Music written at an earlier period have been found to correlate to music of the past through providing strong emotion toward present day commentary.

The 1960’s was an era of revolution and social change in the United States. Painters, dancers, actors, musicians and many more artists all wanted to portray societies immoral issues through their art. Musicians played a very prominent role in providing society with an outlet on the importance of this change. Within these musicians was a folk rock singer and songwriter by the name of Robert Allen Zimmerman, or as America knows him, Bob Dylan. He is known and honored around the world for his influence on popular music and culture, however, he is much more than that (Wood 313). The beginning of Bob Dylan’s career as a singer and songwriter was marked by his repetitive emphasis on social change throughout his protest songs which include “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” “Masters of War,” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’”; with each song, Dylan exposes many issues that affected, not one, but many lives as he aimed to spread social and political consciousness to society.

Shellie Lammy is presented by Michael Anthony, Green Days by The River, originally published in 1967 as an adolescent boy aged 15 who lives in Mayaro. Shellie, also referred to as Shell, is caught in the developmental process as he works through the emotional and biological changes that comes with transitioning from childhood to adulthood.

In the memoir A Long Way Gone, author Ishmael Beah describes his survival journey as a lost child in his country, because of the civil war in Sierra Leone, then becoming a child soldier facing war daily, afterward the process that Beah went through during rehabilitation and finally in fear escaping the civil war. Ishmael Beah emotional journey has three stages of development in which Beah utilized music. In the first stage, Beah uses music as a survival mechanism to keep sane and safe. In the second stage, begins when he loses his brother and friends, Beah reaches the lowest point with the loss of his entire family again, some friends, music, and being forced to join the war. In the final stage, is the process of rehabilitation where Beah connects with music once again. Ishmael Beah exposure to music at a young age stayed with him throughout his life. (Beah, 2007, p. 5-218)

At only 22, he was crowned the voice of a generation. His audiences became mesmerized with his expressive lyrics and soulful harmonica. He changed the way the world looks at songwriting and protest, and inspired countless future musicians from the moment he stepped up on the stage in his railroad hat, denim jacket, and harmonica brace. However, it is clear that there is so much more behind Bob Dylan than just a rough voice and a collection of poetic songs. As one man said about Dylan’s early days in Greenwich Village, “There’s a quality of determination and of will that some people have that when they’re doing something, they’re really doing it and you

The short story On The Bridge by Todd Strasser is about two boys, Adam and Seth, who are hanging out after school on a bridge that overlooks the highway. Seth was the character that demonstrated maturity towards the end of the story. He showed some examples of this when Adam got them into some trouble. For example, when Adam flicked his cigarette onto the windshield of a car below the bridge, the drivers came up behind them. “But suddenly he [Seth] noticed that all three guys were staring at him. He quickly looked at Adam and saw why. Adam was pointing at him.” It was this point where Seth started to question his friendship with Adam, because they had gotten into trouble because of Adam, and then he blamed it on Seth. After the men left, Seth

Our Town by Thornton Wilder focuses on the lives of the residents of small town Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire in the early 1900s, more specifically, the lives of young George Gibbs and Emily Webb. Throughout Act I, Thornton describes the daily lives of the people of Grover’s Corners. The milkman delivers the day’s milk, the paperboy brings the morning paper, mothers prepare breakfast, and children get ready for school. The day winds down, everyone has had their supper, homework is finished, and adults arrive home from choir practice. Life in Grover’s Corners is traditional, ordinary, and unremarkable, not much goes on out of the ordinary. Act II focuses on love and marriage in the town. The narrator says “Almost everybody in the world gets married, - you know what I mean? In our town there aren’t hardly any exceptions. Most everybody in the world climbs into their graves married.” and Mrs. Gibbs articulates that “People are meant to go through life two by two. Tain’t natural to be lonesome.”(54) George and Emily get married, much like the other young couples of Grover’s Corners, and proceed to live blithely and contentedly on George’s uncle’s farm. Act III looks into the last act in a person’s life, death. Emily passes away during childbirth, and at the cemetery, she meets the spirits of her mother-in-law and many other deceased townspeople.

Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography and personal memoir, “Born to Run,” covers all of exactly who he is and how he got to be that way. From his family life to the making of his albums, from his mental heath to his concerts, it all coincides with one another, clearly identifying who he is as a person. This book would thrill even the most hardcore Springsteen fanatics and keep them on the edge of their seat. Born to Run adds little that’s new, but its narrative voice proves to be extremely insightful

For example, there was this one time when his father took Cash’s puppies and put them in a box together with rocks then later throwing them into the river making Cash watch as they drowned. Cash further stated that his father also shot the dog that had given birth to the puppies, (Tunnel& Hamm, 2009. Pp. 272). This implies and shows how Johnny Cash used his life experience to create a productive and meaningful life to himself and others who felt an impact through his music. Therefore, in general country music has motivated artists such as Johnny Cash into engaging both in music and politics at the same time and having an influence on other people’s lives and change them for the better. The evidence is how even Johnny Cash was jailed to his political engagement but never quit since he went on to fight for social justice even after he was released from jail, (Tunnel & Hamm, 2009. Pp. 270). This shows that in the music industry and his own personal life, there were cultural biases that affected musicians in some negative manner. Another example is Johnny Cash was jailed due to his expression of politics through country music. They were not allowed to stand against what they did not believe in and express it through

Tunnel of Love is unlike any other album that Bruce Springsteen has written. This was an album full of love songs, songs about the ups, downs, trust and loyalty that come with being in a relationship. The Tunnel of love album is drastically different from the previous Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A.; those two albums both talked about the struggles and hardships of the working class, a motif that does not appear in Tunnel of Love. The beat of this album differs greatly from that of Born in the U.S.A. this album isn’t as up beat and fun, instead the album is more down beat and sounds somewhat sad.

Claude McKay’s 1919 sonnet, “If We Must Die”, came at a time when African-American lives were conditional, and seemingly dependent on the actions of the white community. McKay’s choice to write his poem in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, a form usually reserved for flowery love language, could be attributed to either establishing his worth as a writer to a community not so accepting of black writers and/or to use an easily understood format to convey the strong message of injustice within American society at the time. The times surrounding this poem was an era of hostility and racial tension, where the lives of black men were less valued than their white counterparts. McKay’s “If We Must Die” is reminiscent of a speech which rallies a group of soldiers going into battle. However, rather than soldiers, the audience is the African-American community dealing with their day-to-day lives.

Shortly after the civil war the fourteenth amendment was passed which granted citizenship to all individuals born or naturalized in America; this group included slaves both former and current. However, individuals of African American appearance would be treated like aliens in their own country for years to come. In the eighteen eighties Jim Crow Laws were passed that segregated Black individuals and often subjected them to humiliating conditions. These conditions exasperate and trouble all of the characters in the novel Black No More. In this novel by George Schuyler Blacks are degraded and oppressed because of the color of their skin. This oppression is caused by ignorant prejudices that individuals in the novel hold. Schuyler uses satire, elevated language, and imagery to further support the idea that ignorance can be as great a power or greater than the greed caused for money.

Life is full of loss and you cannot avoid experiencing it and well as sorrow. As people grow up they come to realize that the world is not as it seemed to be when they were younger. They get more independent and their perspective of life changes. They will have to realize that they are not going to live forever. In the short story The Hurt Man, written by Wendell Berry and published in 2003, we meet Mat who learns all of this.

Bob Dylan uses powerful lyrics in his song The Times They Are a-Changin’ to emphasize the need to adjust to change and to try to understand that change is inevitable and timeless. This lyric poem utilizes a rhyme scheme of ABCBDEDEFG and a trochaic meter to emphasize its central meaning. Dylan uses imagery, repetition, symbolism and many other figures of speech to convey his meaning. Dylan points out that every single person needs to be informed that change is coming and that the people need to deal with it. The song has a strong meaning that people must join in this change and stop fighting it.

Duluth Minnesota, May 24th 1941 Robert Allen Zimmerman (Bob Dylan) was born. 69 Years and over 45 albums later Bob Dylan has completely altered the face of popular music since his debut as a fresh faced folk singer in 1962. His early career forged him into an informal chronicler and then he later developed into an apparently reluctant figurehead of social unrest [Gray, 2006] and became a voice for a generation. His songs have been covered by many artists in a wide span of genres and he has remained a prominent and highly influential figure in the history of popular music over the past five decades. [Gates, David, 1997]