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Mohabbat · Six Degrees of Dylan - Audio Episodes

0:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm Colin McGady and I have a theory.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone changed what a popular song could be and every rock
0:08
SPEAKER_00: and pop song since can be connected back to it.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: This is a journey through musical evolution, following the influences,
0:15
SPEAKER_00: shared ideas and unexpected encounters that connect one record to another.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: Six songs, five connections, one destination.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Six Degrees of Dylan.
0:26
[music]
0:39
SPEAKER_00: Before we begin, a quick listening note.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: For licensing reasons, the songs themselves aren't included in this episode.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: You'll find today's Spotify playlist linked in the post notes.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: I'll let you know when to pause and listen,
0:52
SPEAKER_00: and point you towards particular moments in each song.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: Take your time, then come back when you're ready to follow the next connection.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: Enjoy! Today, we begin with a voice that makes room around a feeling.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: Aruj Aftab's Mohabbat is our opening song,
1:07
SPEAKER_00: and the journey follows what happens when inherited words pass
1:11
SPEAKER_00: through a new imagination.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: We will move from Aftab to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, then Jeff Buckley, Leonard Cohen,
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Judy Collins and Bob Dylan.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: Some connections are documented, others are my listening comparisons.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: They don't make these musical traditions branches of one western family tree.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: On Vulture Prince, released in 2021, Aftab gives this Urdu poetry a spacious setting.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: Notice the plucked strings around the voice, and how the arrangement lets a phrase linger.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: The recording runs for nearly eight minutes, but its authority comes from patience.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: Pause here for the full album recording of Mohabbat.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: Listen to the relationship between the voice and the space around it, then come back.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: We move next to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's Yejo Halka Halka.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: This is a contrast in how a performance unfolds,
2:05
SPEAKER_00: not a claim that Mohabbat samples or covers this song.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: Aftab's intimate setting leads us into an extended qawali performance.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: The selected recording lasts 18 minutes and 40 seconds.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: Give it that time.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: Repetition can become an event when a singer changes the weight,
2:22
SPEAKER_00: shape or intensity of a returning phrase.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Listen to the exchange between the lead voice and the answering voices,
2:28
SPEAKER_00: and to the way rhythmic insistence supports vocal freedom.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: Our version is from the day, the night, the dawn, the dusk.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: Its catalogue date does not establish when or where it was recorded,
2:40
SPEAKER_00: so I won't invent a session story.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: Pause for Nusrat's Yejo Halka Halka and return when you're ready.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: The next connection is personal and documented.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: Jeff Buckley admired Nusrat, interviewed him, and wrote about his music.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: His Live at Shin'e repertoire even includes Yejo Hoka Hoka Sarurhe.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: But that is not the Buckley recording in today's playlist.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: We're hearing Hallelujah from Grace.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: The bridge is between artists and their repertoire,
3:11
SPEAKER_00: not evidence that Leonard Cohen's composition borrowed Nusrat's music.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: With Buckley, the texture contracts again.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: Listen to the electric guitar's opening figures,
3:21
SPEAKER_00: and to the way the voice moves from intimacy towards release.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: A familiar song can feel newly uncertain when a singer refuses
3:29
SPEAKER_00: to treat its emotional meaning as settled.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: Pause here for Geoff Buckley's original Grace recording of Hallelujah,
3:35
SPEAKER_00: and come back for the songwriter's own voice.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: Leonard Cohen wrote Hallelujah.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: Our fourth song, Suzanne, brings us to his own performance
3:46
SPEAKER_00: of a different composition, from Songs of Leonard Cohen.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: The album appeared in 1967.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: In my listening, the connection is also a change in how a voice carries poetry.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: Buckley's voice can seem to reach beyond the body.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: Cohen's seems to bring each word closer to the speaking voice.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: Neither is a more authentic way to sing.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: Each makes a different relationship with the listener.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: Suzanne allows physical details and spiritual suggestions to coexist
4:15
SPEAKER_00: without explaining them away.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: Listen for the measured delivery, the recurring melodic shape,
4:21
SPEAKER_00: and the atmosphere around the vocal.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: Pause for Leonard Cohen's Suzanne,
4:25
SPEAKER_00: then return for a singer who helped bring his writing to listeners.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: Judy Collins gives us a particularly satisfying connection.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: Her 1966 album In My Life includes both Cohen's Suzanne and Dylan's Tom Thumbs Blues.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: We're choosing the Dylan Song, listed in the Spotify catalogue as Just Like Tom Thumbs Blues.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: The album was produced by Mark Abramson, with arrangements and conducting by Joshua Rifkin.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: Collins is not a footnote between two songwriters.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: Her interpretation is the point.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: An existing text can acquire another emotional scale through the singer who inhabits it.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: Listen to the clarity of her phrasing and to how the arrangement frames the unfolding narrative.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: This is the original In My Life studio recording, not a later live performance.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: Pause for Judy Collins' Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues and come back for our final connection.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: Dylan wrote Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues and his own recording sits
5:27
SPEAKER_00: on Highway 61 Revisited alongside our destination like a rolling stone.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: That is the factual bridge.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: My listening connection is displacement.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: Voices describing a world in which familiar bearings no longer seem dependable.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: Here the sound opens outward into an electric band.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: Listen to the opening drum strike and the organs lift around the vocal.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: My theory is that this record enlarged what a popular song could hold.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: Accusation, ambiguity, social observation and a dramatic voice that does not hurry
6:00
SPEAKER_00: to resolve itself.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: That is an editorial argument, not proof that every tradition we have heard begins with Dylan.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: Pause for the original 1965 studio recording of Like a Rolling Stone,
6:13
SPEAKER_00: then return for one last thought.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: We began with Aruj Aftab making space for inherited poetry.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: We end with Dylan turning uncertainty into an electric public address.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: Between them, Nusrat stretches a performance across time.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: Buckley makes another writer's song his own,
6:33
SPEAKER_00: Cohen brings us close to the spoken word,
6:36
SPEAKER_00: and Collins shows how interpretation can connect two bodies of work.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: The root is not a competition between traditions.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: It is an invitation to hear how much a voice can change without changing
6:48
SPEAKER_00: the words it has been given.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm Colin McGaddy.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to Six Degrees of Dylan.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: Until next time.
6:55
[music]