MUS-Z 404 “The Music of Bob Dylan” is offered every spring semester at IU and open to all students. The course, taught by Gabriel Lubell, a visiting lecturer in music at the Jacobs School of Music, examines “Dylan’s songs and career,” according to the course description.
Bob Dylan is a folk, rock and roll singer-songwriter and 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature award winner. His career started in the 1960s with well-known songs “Like A Rolling Stone” and “Blowin’ In The Wind.”
“It’s amazing how much of what he talked about continues to be relevant,” Lubell said.
Dylan, 83, is seen as a more “private” person recognized for his impactful songwriting. Students come prepared to discuss topics related to his songs, albums, stage performance and media presence. The class gathers at long tables arranged in the shape of a square at Foster Quadrangle’s Gresham building.
This semester, the class has been looking at albums, a larger scale of work, to explore specific times in his life. They also talk about films like “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story,” a mockumentary inspired by Dylan’s 1975 tour. The movie came out in 2019 and was directed by Martin Scorsese.
Lubell grew up with Dylan’s music; he recalls listening to it on the radio and being able to recognize his unique singing voice. He’s taught the course for five years, which was formerly taught by Glenn Gass, who is now retired.
“To teach a class only about one person means that you have to think really hard about how you’re gonna relate to that one person and keep them interesting for a whole semester,” Lubell said.
Lubell also teaches MUS-Z 401 “The Music of the Beatles” during the fall semester. Meredith Barber, a junior, took the Beatles course last semester and is now enrolled in the Dylan course.
“One thing that was really interesting was when we watched the footage of the Newport Folk Festival,” Barber said.
In 1965, Dylan appeared on stage in Newport, Rhode Island, with an electric guitar, which was controversial because it reportedly upset his folk music fans. In a December 2024 post on X, Dylan called it “the fiasco at Newport.” The scene was retold in “A Complete Unknown,” which released in December 2024, starring actors Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, a famous folk singer-songwriter who had a personal and professional relationship with Dylan and helped him become a star.
On March 27, Lubell’s class took a field trip to the McCalla School and saw featured items related to Dylan from the Jim Irsay Collection. The students crowded around guitars associated with Dylan, a Newport Folk Festival poster and song lyrics written by Dylan and talked about each item. University Collections at McCalla School then later hosted “An Evening With Chris Martin: Celebrating Nearly 200 Years of Martin Guitar Excellence.” Martin, the sixth-generation owner of Martin Guitar, showcased his collection of instruments and live music with the special feature of Bob Dyan items.
Nick Rice, a senior who was formerly part of a band and experienced what it was like to write songs, admires Dylan as a musician. He said he believes the class is the “perfect opportunity” for him to learn more about Dylan.
“I can really participate in the class, or I can kind of sit back and just listen, and see where it goes,” Rice said. “Everyone has such unique thoughts, and you can pull so much from the music, and our professor does such a great job of, like, letting everyone’s voices be heard. It really feels like we’re just discussing something.”
