A History of Dylan Day

by Bill Martin

I think Dylan Day started in 1986. I say that because I found a journal page I wrote in 1996 referring to Dylan Day #10. So that seems factual. The rest of this may be a combination of factual memory and mythologized recollection.

The first Dylan Day (I have pictures of this one) was in my classroom (corner of the 2nd floor commons NE). I remember singing Blowing in the Wind as a sing along and the sound of the students singing following the singing of me and Nowland by a second or so. To me that was magical: it didn’t feel like performance, it felt like community. I know that people make jokes about singing Kumbaya, but I actually did sing Kumbaya when I went to college and I thought it was wonderful to do that, to sing with a bunch of other people like that, and it wasn’t church but it felt religious or as they say “spiritual.” Now you can’t sing Kumbaya except with irony, but back then I sang it with total sincerity. And that first Dylan Day I sang Blowing in the Wind with total sincerity. And it seemed to me (probably not true) that all the students were singing it with total sincerity too. (By total sincerity I don’t mean any particular connection with the lyrics; I don’t mean that everyone was believing what they were singing. All I mean is that everyone was wanting to sing as a group, and that everyone was wanting (therefore) to be a group. That doesn’t seem like much but to me it is totally overwhelmingly important.)

Probably sincerity was at the core of what I wanted Dylan Day to be. That’s why it was so important to me to have people sing or play who were unsure of themselves. I wanted to create a context where sincerity would carry the day, where sincerity would excuse any imperfections. I wanted to have this be a time when people would look beyond a judgment about whether it was a good performance and applaud for a good person being sincere.

Why Dylan? Who else would it be? Dylan never wrote an ironic song (not verified). No irony but never (or seldom) sappy: that’s pretty good. And beyond my own hangup about sincerity, there is no one who is more frequently covered or who is more fun to cover than Dylan. When he performs, he “covers” his own songs, making them new by singing them differently. And I had two good friends who got me to love Dylan so it’s also personal.

A lot of it is personal. Emotional connections motivate most of what we do. And there is a longing in me for that connection with other people around a common voice, singing. Of course it didn’t always work out. There were some real bad memories for me: the time some students hijacked the stage and did a song about drinking that was not Dylan and was completely ironic and totally about getting everyone to laugh at them. Not what I wanted. I was furious. I don’t have much sense of humor about such stuff. Another time a group of students started off with a Dylan song and then did a medley of other current songs to prove that they weren’t going to be limited by the Dylan Day rules. I hated that. I hated them. Then there was a student who just wanted to show off his virtuosity on guitar by playing a 20 minute version of Hurricane. I remember that Nowland stepped in at a pause and just started clapping so the student would leave the stage. And there were lots of general audience violations of respect for the mood of the event: like talking during performances or (one year) looking at yearbooks during performances.

But there were also moments that stick in my memory as magical. When a teacher (Kathy Judge) sang a capella the song "Farewell” and then next year did it with her daughter. When a student with severe disabilities sang (or recited) "It’s all right Ma" and sang the line “It’s all right Ma, I can make it.” To him it probably meant nothing special but to me as a father of two children it was about struggle and will and hope. And Jane Ann Craig would do her thing with the jocks, and when Nowland’s class did "God Gave Names to All the Animals," and when we sang sing-alongs like "Maggie's Farm" and "Subterranean Homesick Blues," or when it was all over and students would very willingly stay and help rearrange furniture and clean up. I would fantasize that they appreciated the spirit of the event enough to want to do that and I don’t think that was too wild a fantasy, I think it was pretty close to true. That was pretty nice.

It was nice the way people helped out in other ways too. Teachers would sing and practice class songs and help with T-shirt sales and help out in other ways. Even the administrators would be supportive. Well, not always: on the third or fourth Dylan Day I was told that I could have it in my garage but not at school. I guess I said something to change that because we went ahead and had it. And we had it year after year in spite of bomb threats and location changes and conflicts with AP exams or complaints from teachers who thought Dylan was encouraging students to use drugs. For the record: "Everyone Must Get Stoned" is not about drugs; "Queen Jane Approximately" is about drugs but not "Everyone Must Get Stoned."

The second year when it was still in my classroom, I overheard a student talking about it, asking if we were going to do it again. And the student he was talking to said, "Of course we’re going to do it. It’s a tradition.” So I guess it became a tradition. And I think especially for Westlake where so much importance is put on being the best, on excellence of performance, on individual accomplishment it’s a very healthy tradition: a corrective to a culture of competitiveness.

If I had kept records of each of the Dylan Days, I could really write something that was a history of the event. But I have no records and only impressionistic memories. I guess it must mean something; it’s lasted a long time.