Long Ago, Far Away

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Long Ago, far Away is a Bob Dylan single recorded in 1962 for the Witmark Studios and a part of The Bootleg Series, Vol 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964. This demo, which Bob Dylan recorded for the Witmark organisation in 1962, helps audience members that malicious deeds from the past are not simply history so we are not vindicated from considering them and agonising over the underhanded deeds of today. It is one of those unexpected little numbers reminiscent of 'With God On Our Side.' However, this is the main tune here that Dylan seems to have never really recorded himself. It's not accessible on any of his official discharges. The verses identify different wrongdoings of humankind before prompting the lines that follow. Dylan’s Long Ago, Far Away is one of his first of many protest songs to be recorded in 1962 and then be covered for the decades to come. The most famous cover out of which is that by Odetta in 1965. Odetta’s cover is a song just short of 3 minutes with elements of blues played on the Langhorne although a serious tone, it amplifies the effect Bob Dylan intended to have on the histories of those undermined and marginalised. The tone of this song is questioning the listener, or rather, sardonic and ironic because of the way it approaches things that had happened in the past. It puts to question whether something so ‘heroic’ might happen again and refuses to believe it will.

Lyrics

To preach of peace and brotherhood

Oh, what might be the cost!

A man he did it long ago

And they hung him on a cross

Long ago, far away

These things don’t happen

No more, nowadays

The chains of slaves they dragged the ground

With heads and hearts hung low

But it was during Lincoln’s time

And it was long ago

Long ago, far away

Things like that don’t happen

No more, nowadays

The war guns they went off wild

The whole world bled its blood

Men’s bodies floated on the edge

Of oceans made of mud

Long ago, far away

Those kind of things don’t happen

No more, nowadays

One man had much money

One man had not enough to eat

One man he lived just like a king

The other man begged on the street

Long ago, far away

Things like that don’t happen

No more, nowadays

One man died of a knife so sharp

One man died from the bullet of a gun

One man died of a broken heart

To see the lynchin’ of his son

Long ago, far away

Things like that don’t happen

No more, nowadays

To preach of peace and brotherhood

Oh, what might be the cost!

A man he did it long ago

And they hung him on a cross

Long ago, far away

These things don’t happen

No more, nowadays

The chains of slaves they dragged the ground

With heads and hearts hung low

But it was during Lincoln’s time

And it was long ago

Long ago, far away

Things like that don’t happen

No more, nowadays

The war guns they went off wild

The whole world bled its blood

Men’s bodies floated on the edge

Of oceans made of mud

Long ago, far away

Those kind of things don’t happen

No more, nowadays

One man had much money

One man had not enough to eat

One man he lived just like a king

The other man begged on the street

Long ago, far away

Things like that don’t happen

No more, nowadays

One man died of a knife so sharp

One man died from the bullet of a gun

One man died of a broken heart

To see the lynchin’ of his son

Long ago, far away

Things like that don’t happen

No more, nowadays

Historical Significance/Themes

• Crucification and Brotherhood

Jesus’s Crucification serves as a precedent for those who do not favour or promote brotherhood; the lyrics clarify that there existed a man who was hung on a cross because he refused to bow to the oppressors for the sake of his community. Dylan goes as far as to say that that cannot and will not happen again because the times are not changing, that people do not learn from their history and continue to repeat mistakes that have already been made. This biblical example sets the tone for the song for all covers to come as well, given that it engulfs the listener with a religious thought and preoccupies the mind in a sort of introspective or historically interpretive trance. Jesus’s crucification is also a theme that runs through the song given that none learned from the loss of his life and no one will learn from the loss of any other life.

• Slavery

Slavery looms at large over this song and continues to be the major theme of inspiration for the covers that were made following Dylan’s release; Odetta, for instant, took young Dylan’s love for the song and recorded it to favour the situation of the country and affairs. The song mentions Lincoln’s revolutionary thought as a sign post or benchmark of progress, whereas still concludes that Lincoln was the only individual to have done something to make a change. That slavery continues to be a reminder of how, even in modern times, those people who were marginalised are racially stratified or profiled for the sake of the ‘safety’ of the nation without acknowledging that they, themselves, form a part of the larger states.

• Guns and war

As if a response to the public opinion in the United States on guns and war, this segment of the song concentrates heavily on the human reliance of armaments to resolve issues or conflicts. It paints a bloody picture for the listener to view in his imagination such that rivers of of bodies float atop mud. Current affairs, as it is seen, still finds the use and legality of guns possessed by private individuals as problematic; with recent uproars and riots against and for gun use in the United States, this song becomes so much more relevant given its sarcastic hints; it complains, subtly, about how the times of war have yet to pass and explains how guns and arson are something that cannot be contained. Perhaps Dylan’s most painful remark continues to be the relevance of how an ocean of the dead continues to expand and become larger as the years pass.

• Kings and beggars

Inequality was Dylan’s overarching theme in the Witmark Demos where he believed it to be the root cause of conflict and marginalisation; in the lyrics written and sung, Dylan’s emphasis on the difference on what is ‘needed’ between social classes signifies the unfortunate disparity in the population which society refuses to see.While one man complains about money the other complains about food that he does not have money for; this segment of the song contrasts the apparent social classes and how they continue to be relevant in modern times. The lyrics pose a question to the listener of whether they have observed the society dissolving into stratification rather than becoming more equal; it compares times then (1962) to times to come given that things, as they change, have only become worse and appear, in a facade, to have gotten better.

• Lynching

Death continues to be used without consequence; by employing the word of ‘died’, Dylan emphasises the loss of the sanctity of life where death becomes just another happening or just another event in the days of individuals. In doing so, Dylan lets the listeners grasp the concept of the fatigue of war and conflict and how humans have, essentially, become desensitised to the destruction around them. With evolving concepts of death, such as tangible ones from a gun or knife, to psychological trauma like a broken heart, Dylan poses a question of existence and whether the value of life has become so irrelevant that living has become a menial task or a burden to mankind, therefore, making lynching just another casual happening of the day; both, permissible and applauded.

Genre

A protest tune is a melody that is related with a development for social change and thus part of the more extensive classification of topical tunes (or tunes associated with current occasions). It might be society, traditional, or business in sort. Protesting with soul music; While folk music was growing, soul music was as well. In the 1950s, black artists started making music with establishes in gospel music, blues, and jazz that turned into the spirit development, which was situated in guide reaction to the shameful acts of the social equality period Protest music has a profoundly established history in the United States and reaches back the extent that American history comes to. Each significant development in American history has been joined by its own particular gathering of dissent melodies, from slave liberation to ladies' suffrage, the work development, social equality, the counter war development, the women's activist development, the natural development, and so on.

Protest music is one of the wealthiest customs in American people music. The first folklorists at the turn of the twentieth century frequently differ about regardless of whether to try and record the dissent and political music they found in their exploration. Fortunately for us, some of them did, and we now have those people artists' records of American history from which to learn and be roused. In the case of participating in a chime in of "We Shall Overcome," or sharing your very own dissent melody arrangement at a neighbourhood tune circle or open mic night, challenge music is something that can influence change around you, as well as can enable all of us feel to like we're somewhat less alone in our convictions In spite of the fact that, the challenge music development of the mid-1960s spoke to an expressive spinoff of the society shake sort, its family line can be plainly perceived as far back as the provincial period in American history; the respected "Yankee Doodle" falls inside this class. The yield of original business people craftsmen, for example, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and Peter Seeger in the pre-World War II period, the Weavers in the 1950s, and Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, and Peter, Paul and Mary in the mid 1960s established the framework for later challenge material.

Other than concern with respect to the sudden heightening of the Vietnam struggle, topical issue in mid-1960s challenge tunes varied little from its prompt precursors; e.g., social equality, atomic demobilization, worldwide peace. The music, in any case, had advanced from acoustic-arranged people stylings to shake based rhythms. Milder material- - by and large performed by business society craftsmen or vocalist lyricists - kept on being discharged, yet it now involved a similarly little bit of the aggregate dissent yield. Barry Mcguire's "Eve of Destruction," which entered the singles graphs in August 1965, spoke to a representative breakthrough in the challenge melody development. Albeit a long way from being an early case of the class, it was the main such account to achieve number one and, in the process pulled in an impressive level of discussion. Scrutinized for its extraordinary negativity, the melody was at last prohibited by numerous radio station program chiefs. In spite of endeavors to stifle the tune - or maybe to a great extent due to them- - McGuire's hit motivated a rash of comparable discharges. In any case, while "Eve of Destruction' concentrated on a judgment of war when all is said in done, much challenge material which took after specifically reprimanded America's contribution in Vietnam. By 1966, rising troop duties, setback figures, and draft amounts all added to an expanding hostile to war estimation with respect to American youth. For the following couple of years, the development and notoriety of challenge tunes generally paralleled the acceleration of America's war exertion in Southeast Asia.

By 1968, be that as it may, the quantity of against war tunes discharged strongly declined and these appeared to need quickness and forcefulness of prior material. H. Ben Auslander, in a 1981 Journal of American Culture article, offered the accompanying clarification for this decay: ...performers and groups of onlookers alike were physically and profoundly depleted by the war against the war and essentially did not have any desire to be helped to remember the contention any more than was fundamental. Another conceivable reason might be that numerous common the feeling of hyper abdication communicated by Phil Ochs in his last hostile to Vietnam tune, "The War is Over." The enthusiasm with which the Nixon organization stifled subversive conduct all in all may well have likewise added to the challenge tune development's loss of imperativeness.

Aftermath/Covers

Dylan’s lyrics and songs became widely popular soon after his first few singles but there were some songs that did not manage to gain the traction in the market that they were meant to; one of those songs was Long ago, Far Away. However, powerful covers like Odetta’s were important for Dylan’s songs because they outlined the imperative situation and replayed it for the public. Odessa’s story with Dylan is particularly important for any listener of Bob Dylan or Protest Music to know,

Odetta and Dylan

Odetta really met pre-acclaim Bob Dylan when he was just 18 years of age, in 1960, when she was going to Minneapolis. Dylan by then had been an Odetta-convert over for two or three years, and he in actuality later attributed her for moving him to take up people music in any case. She clearly said some promising things to the youthful Mr. Zimmerman, which would have normally satisfied him, and in the blink of an eye a short time later he made his unbelievable trek to New York City and his meeting with predetermination.

By 1964, Dylan was never again a people vocalist however a musician of unparalleled quality and productivity (not to overlook a little robbery). Odetta's profession had been going admirably for quite a long while, and, at that point about age 33, she chose to cut a whole LP of Bob Dylan's tunes. This was a significant one of a kind thing, as just a single craftsman (Linda Mason, whose collection was dark even in 1964) had made such a collection before Odetta did it. Inside a couple of years, collections of Dylan tunes would begin to wind up typical, as despite everything they are today.

Odetta Sings Dylan, issued toward the beginning of 1965, highlights Odetta, obviously, on acoustic guitar, the at this point amazing Bruce Langhorne on acoustic guitar (and a little tambourine), and folkie Peter Childs on guitar also. In any case, who is that on bass? On the All Music site, Richie Unterberger surmises that it's Bill Lee (Spike Lee's father), yet the Wiki article records the bass-player as Les Grinage, which appears to probably me as he had been Odetta's incessant bassist for a couple of years before this chronicle was made. The Dylan melodies in intense were to a great degree cloud in 1964… indeed, some of them are as yet darken today (we would today be able to hear Dylan sing the greater part of them on volume 9 of The Bootleg Series: The Witmark Demos 1962-1964; "Infant, I'm in the Mood for You" has been generally accessible since 1985 on Biograph). Odetta and Dylan were both overseen by Albert Grossman, who probably was the expert connection between them, albeit a large portion of these melodies were distributed in New York City in Broadside, and were apparently accessible to anybody. Indeed "Mr. Tambourine Man", as specified above, presently couldn't seem to be issued by Dylan himself before the finish of 1964, however he had composed it the past April and had played it at a few live shows, and additionally experiencing a prematurely ended endeavor at recording it for Another Side of Bob Dylan the past June. Odetta may have heard him sing it and maybe a couple of the more dark melodies, yet I'm speculating they were prescribed to her by Grossman, or maybe she had heard different folkies singing them in clubs. Of course, perhaps Grossman basically gave her the tapes of Dylan's Witmark demos and she picked some she preferred.

Long Ago Far Away

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