PODCAST: A Headful of Ideas Season 2 11) Upon a Painted Ocean: Caribbean Wind

CARIBBEAN WIND

EXTRACTS

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One of Bob Dylan’s most significant contributions to the art of poetic song writing is his presentation of ‘variant’ versions of his compositions. In live performance, rehearsals and in the studio he has frequently been known to adjust both his lyrics and his musical arrangements. Sometimes audiences at his live shows even fail to recognise particular songs, at least until a familiar chorus appears. Such fluidity is very much a part of the country blues tradition. The work of those artists who originally forged the lyrical and musical features of the blues – usually solo artists accompanying themselves on guitar – has often been misread as ‘primitive’.

Yet innovators such as Charley Patton, Blind Willie McTell, the Rev. Gary Davis and Robert Johnson were all artists who relied mainly on live performance to make a living. At each show they had to judge the type of crowd they were playing to. Thus they learned to modify their songs and adapt the compositions of others in a wide range of locations, such as dance halls, concert halls or street performances. Verses, melodies and musical and lyrical twists were often applied to songs with which the audience were already familiar, but now with the added stylistic inflexions of individual performers. Dylan’s work is thoroughly grounded in this ethos.

Caribbean Wind

The years in which these blues styles were honed – from the 1910s to the 1940s – were also those in which the stylistic tropes of modern art rose to prominence. In Picasso’s paintings a scene often appeared to be viewed from several angles at once, creating a feeling of ambiguity and the sense that each piece could not necessarily be attached to one particular ‘meaning’. In the mid 1970s Dylan’s attendance at the art classes of Norman Raeburn influenced his creation of ‘cubist’ songs like Tangled Up in Blue, Idiot Wind, Black Diamond Bay and Changing of the Guards, with their patterns of scene shifting and use of ‘sliding’ pronouns.

These techniques allowed the listener to experience the stories Dylan was relating from different perspectives simultaneously. Perhaps the most extreme example is Tangled Up in Blue, which has been performed in a plethora of lyrical and musical styles over the years, with whole verses and individual lines being replaced.   

Caribbean Wind is especially popular because of its winning melody, its attractive and memorable chorus and its mysteriously enigmatic lyrics. This was particularly striking because it was composed at a time when Dylan had just released Slow Train Coming and Saved – two albums of gospel songs with direct and unequivocal Christian messages. In his tours of 1979 and 1980 Dylan had played only his religious material, often with fiery intensity, in some of the most powerful performances of his career.

But by the time of his final tour of 1980, older ‘classics’ like Like a Rolling Stone and Girl from the North Country were being reintroduced into his sets; a pattern which continued in his concerts of 1981. Although the shows were preceded by gospel songs performed by his backing singers, Dylan no longer launched into ‘religious rants’ on stage. There was a sense in which the initial fervour of his conversion was dimming.

CARIBBEAN WIND is one of BOB DYLAN’s ‘Great lost songs’. Chris Gregory discusses the 3 different versions.