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Alone onstage, the singer strummed his guitar and sang a song about a woman’s reaction to war: “I have two hands free / I have two lips free / All the men have died / And I forget the human language.”1 In the audience, composed primarily of college students, several young women wept. The singer’s music expressed the sorrows of war and told stories of mothers grieving for their lost children, brothers killing brothers, and the absurdity of combat. The songs were his attempt to make sense of the war that devastated his country. The year was 1967, and the singer’s name was Trinh Cong Son. The twentyeight -year-old musician from South Vietnam had developed a following among students at the University of Saigon, and he had emerged as a musician the New York Times called “the most popular college singer and composer in Saigon.” When asked to name his musical influences, Son named Bob Dylan. “His voice is a cry, a lament,” Son said. “I sing what is on the minds of my listeners,” he continued. “I’m describing their sadness, their grief at the war.2 He believed Dylan did the same thing for his own fans. Legend has it that Joan Baez called Son the Bob Dylan of Vietnam. Trinh Cong Son was just one example of a musician who drew inspiration from Dylan during the cold war. This is the story of musicians trying to make sense of the cold war as it affected them and their parts of the world. At the heart of the tale is Dylan. In a time when decolonization and wars for independence rocked the planet, and the specter of nuclear annihilation haunted citizens of nations all around the globe, Dylan’s music expressed the uncertainty, fear, and hope of an insecure world. American popular culture has claimed Dylan as a distinctly American icon—the voice of a generation, a master of reinvention, a rugged individual who went his own way. But Dylan’s influence transcended the borders of the United States, and his music helped singers and songwriters in other countries come to terms with the ways in which the events of the cold war affected their homelands. His songs about personal freedom, alienation, exile, and social justice resonated throughout the 122 10. Borderless Troubadour: Bob Dylan’s Influence on International Protest during the Cold War Heather Stur Borderless Troubadour / 123 world. Some musicians specifically named Dylan as their inspiration. Others exhibited Dylan’s spirit in their music and their mission. Dylan may not have intended to be a spokesman for a world in transition, but his ability to comprehend and give voice to the deepest of human emotions spoke loudly above the din of cold war–era conflict. Some of Dylan’s cold war songs expressed a specifically American experience, such as the “duck and cover” culture of civil defense in the atomic age. Others articulated broader global concerns about war, corruption, and social change. Dylan was writing in an era in which wars for independence in Africa and Asia tore down colonial empires that in some cases had controlled regions for a century or more. In 1954, Vietnamese nationalists defeated French military forces at Dien Bien Phu, ending nearly one hundred years of colonialism. But combat in Vietnam continued as American political advisers and troops replaced the French. That same year, French imperialism suffered another blow when the Algerian National Liberation Front launched a war for Algeria’s independence. Algeria achieved freedom in 1962 after nearly eight years of fighting. In 1955, newly independent nations in Africa and Asia formed the Conference of Nonaligned States and met at Bandung, Indonesia, to take a stand against neoimperialism. Representatives at the conference announced that their nations would not take sides in the ongoing conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1960 alone, seventeen African nations gained independence. It was in this context that Dylan’s music resonated with musicians whose physical worlds were far from his but whose minds grappled with the same concerns. Some critics have argued that Dylan abandoned social criticism in 1964 with the album Another Side of Bob Dylan, but themes of struggle, alienation , loss, and hope continued to run through his music, and the sentiments are at the heart of politics. The international response to Dylan illustrates that his music remained political and topical throughout the cold war. South Vietnam’s Trinh Cong Son admired Dylan as a singer...

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