Week 1: Who is this guy, and what are we going to talk about?

1. AMERICAN
ORPHEUS
THE LIFE & WORK OF
BOB DYLAN

2. WHAT IS THIS CLASS?
★ DeCal: Democratic Education at Cal
★ 2 units, pass/no-pass
★ We’ll talk about enrollment in a few
minutes
★ Format: lecture/presentation, then
discussion

3. BOB DYLAN
★ 47 official albums and
thousands of bootlegs
since 1961
★ 50 years of critical
acclaim and recognition
★ “DONT LOOK BACK”, a three-
word career synopsis

4. WHAT IS THIS CLASS?
Three major things we’ll focus on:
★ The music
★ The context
★ The man
There’s all this great music, an
interesting century, and a guy living it.
They’re all worth exploring.

5. How do we get from this guy...

6. To this guy?

7. SOME RULES
★ Don’t be mean
★ Don’t steal
★ Show up
★ Do your homework

8. THE SYLLABUS

9. WHY ORPHEUS?

10. WHY ORPHEUS?
★ “The Greeks of the Classical age
venerated the legendary figure of
Orpheus as chief among poets and
musicians...” (Wikipedia)

11. WHY ORPHEUS?
★ “Orpheus [is] semantically close to goao,
‘to lament, sing wildly, cast a spell,’
uniting his seemingly disparate roles as
disappointed lover, transgressive
musician and mystery-priest into a single
lexical whole.” (Wikipedia)

12. THE ORPHIC CULTS
★ “Characterized human souls as... doomed to live
in a “grievous circle” of successive bodily lives
through metempsychosis or the transmigration of
souls.” Souls are “bound to the wheel of
rebirth.” (Wikipedia) Eventually you can escape.
★ “Warned of postmortem punishment for certain
transgressions committed during life.” (Wikipedia)

13. WHY ORPHEUS?

14. “There was an Orpheus before me, and there
will be one after me.”
Orfeu Négre (Black Orpheus) - 1959

15. ADMISSIONS
COUNSELING

16. DISMISSED!
See you here next week,
same time.
decal.org/dylan
samryan.net/dylan