Fans around the world are honouring Bob Dylan on his 80th birthday (24.05.21).
The music legend’s home city of Duluth, Minnesota, is holding the 11th annual Duluth Dylan Fest, with fans invited to join the celebration of his life and six-decade spanning career from home and at the festival.
His loyal followers are being invited to join a party outside the ‘Lay Lay Lay’ hitmaker’s childhood home in Duluth, where he lived until he was six, to mark the milestone.
The largely-virtual event – owing to the COVID-19 pandemic – has been running since May 22 and will continue until May 30.
This year, the event’s organisers partnered with Song From the North Country to put on a songwriting contest in Dylan’s honour, along with a poetry contest, lecture, tour, and much more.
Elsewhere, in New York – where Dylan moved to in 1961 to pursue his dream of becoming a music star – the WFUV radio station at the Bronx’s Fordham University is playing 80 Dylan songs throughout the day.
And in Dublin, Ireland – where Dylan has frequented over the years – Other Voices is hosting a live-stream from the US Embassy titled ‘Dignity’ after his 1994 song.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer – who has won numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 10 Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award – released his first original music in eight years in 2020.
The ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’ hitmaker released the gigantic 17-minute track, ‘Murder Most Foul’, about the 1963 assassination of late former US President John F. Kennedy, which also includes references to The Beatles, The Who, Nat King Cole, the famous Woodstock festival, and more.
It became his first song to top any US Billboard chart.
Following the release of two further singles, ‘I Contain Multitudes’ and ‘False Prophet’, the singer-songwriter released his acclaimed LP, ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’.
The seminal singer, poet and musician’s last album of new material was 2012’s ‘Tempest’.
Dylan – who has released 39 albums – was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”