Bob Dylan has accepted an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music, marking the first time he’s received such an honor from an American college or university since 1970.
“Thank you, Berklee College of Music, for bestowing on me this prestigious honor. What a pleasant surprise,” Dylan says in a statement. “Who knows what path my career might have taken if I’d been fortunate enough to learn from some of the great musicians who taught at Berklee. It’s something to think about.”
The school says that they are recognizing Dylan’s “extraordinary influence on modern music” and “lifelong commitment to creative exploration.” “This is an incredible moment for this institution,” said Berklee President Jim Lucchese. “Bob Dylan’s music has shaped how the world hears itself. He’s an artist who has never stopped evolving, who keeps chasing truth through sound and language. That’s the spirit we try to cultivate here every day. Honoring him feels like a reaffirmation of the creative impulse that built this place.”
Adds Berklee’s American Roots Music Program artistic director Matt Glaser: “Bob Dylan has spent a lifetime learning, absorbing, and transforming every American song tradition, and Berklee strives to teach all the music that Dylan loves. His deep immersion in African American blues parallels much of Berklee’s curriculum, which is rooted in the distinctly American variants of the music of the African diaspora.”
“As anyone who has read his books or listened to his hundred-plus radio programs can attest, Dylan is also a great teacher and learner,” Glaser continues. “He shows us how to keep learning about music and the arts our whole lives through, and to embrace it all as one thing. I love the anecdote Dylan himself tells: he once went up to Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot in Greenwich Village, introduced himself, and said, ‘I play folk music down the street.’ Monk replied, ‘We all play folk music.’”
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Dylan dropped out of the University of Minnesota in 1959 after spending just one semester on campus, where he barely attended any classes. He accepted an honorary degree from Scotland’s University of St. Andrews in 2004, but hasn’t received one from an American education institution since Princeton awarded him one in 1970. Dylan attended the ceremony in person alongside David Crosby, inspiring his 1970 New Morning song “Day of the Locusts.” (The event took place while cicadas were swarming the campus.)
“Oh, the benches were stained with tears and perspiration,” Dylan wrote in the song. “The birdies were flying from tree to tree/There was little to say, there was no conversation/As I stepped to the stage to pick up my degree/And the locusts sang off in the distance/Yeah, the locusts sang such a sweet melody/Oh, the locusts sang off in the distance/Yeah, the locusts sang and they were singing for me.”
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In his 2004 memoir Chronicles, Dylan looked back on the day. “I was glad to get the degree, though,” he wrote. “I could use it. The very look and touch and scent of it spelled respectability and had something of the spirit of the universe in it. After whispering and mumbling my way through the ceremony, I was handed the scroll. We piled back into the big Buick and drove away.”
This time around, there are no plans for Dylan to appear at any event commemorating the honorary degree from Berklee. But the school is staging a concert on Wednesday evening entitled Watching the River Flow: A Roots Salute to Bob Dylan. It will features students, faculty, alumni, and visiting artists performing Dylan classics like “Blowin’ in the Wind, “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” and “Chimes of Freedom.” It will culminate in a unique rendition of “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” where a hand-selected group of students will take turns singing each of the 20 verses.
