Bob Dylan has been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature. The 75-year-old rock legend received the prize "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition". The balladeer, artist and occasional actor is the first songwriter to win the prestigious award.
The performer - who took his stage name from the poet Dylan Thomas - is the first American to win the award since novelist Toni Morrison in 1993. Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said Dylan had been chosen because he was "a great poet in the English speaking tradition". "For 54 years now he's been at it reinventing himself, constantly creating a new identity," she told reporters in Stockholm.
He is the first American to win since the novelist Toni Morrison, in 1993. The announcement, in Stockholm, came as something of a surprise. Although Dylan, 75, has been mentioned often as having an outside shot at the prize, his work does not fit into the literary canons of novels, poetry and short stories that the prize has traditionally recognized. Despite that, Dylan had long been tipped as a potential prize recipient, but few experts expected the academy to extend the award to a genre such as folk rock music. The singer has been a hugely influential, and sometimes controversial, figure. Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941 and began his musical career in 1959, playing in coffee houses in Minnesota.
Much of his best-known work dates from the 1960s, when he became an informal historian of America's troubles. Songs like Blowin' in the Wind and The Times They are A-Changin' became anthems of the anti-war and civil rights movements. His move away from traditional folk songwriting, paired with a controversial decision to "go electric" proved equally influential.
Dylan was born on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minn., and grew up in Hibbing. He played in bands as a teenager, influenced by the folk musician Woody Guthrie, the authors of the Beat Generation and modernist poets. He moved to New York in 1961 and began to perform in clubs and cafes in Greenwich Village. The following year, he signed a contract with the record producer John Hammond for his debut album, “Bob Dylan” (1962). His many other albums, which the Swedish Academy described as having “a tremendous impact on popular music,” include “Bringing It All Back Home” and “Highway 61 Revisited” (1965), “Blonde On Blonde” (1966) and “Blood on the Tracks” (1975), “Oh Mercy” (1989), “Time Out Of Mind” (1997) and “Modern Times” (2006).
The award will be presented alongside this year's other five Nobel Prizes on 10 December, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's 1896 death.
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Recent winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature:
2015: Svetlana Alexievich (Belarus)
2014: Patrick Modiano (France)
2013: Alice Munro (Canada)
2012: Mo Yan (China)
2011: Tomas Transtromer (Sweden)
