Bob Dylan receives honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music

Los Angeles, Nov 5 (IANS) Legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan is adding more accolades to arsenal. The veteran singer-songwriter has now received an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music.

The 84-year-old music legend has been recognised as a "great teacher and learner" of music by the prestigious institution for the study of the arts, reports ‘Female First UK’.

The college will celebrate with a concert dedicated to the ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ hitmaker on Wednesday (Pacific Standard Time) though Dylan won't be in attendance. The last time he received such an honour from a US institution was back in 1970 from Princeton University.

As per ‘Female First UK’, Bob Dylan, who dropped out of the University of Minnesota in 1959 to focus on music, said in a statement, “Thank you, Berklee College of Music, for bestowing on me this prestigious honour. What a pleasant surprise. “Who knows what path my career might have taken if I’d been fortunate enough to learn from some of the great musicians who taught at Berklee. It’s something to think about”.

Jim Lucchese, Berklee President, said, “This is an incredible moment for this institution. “Bob Dylan’s music has shaped how the world hears itself. He’s an artist who has never stopped evolving, who keeps chasing truth through sound and language. That’s the spirit we try to cultivate here every day. Honouring him feels like a reaffirmation of the creative impulse that built this place”.

Matt Glaser, Berklee’s American Roots Music Program artistic director, said, “Bob Dylan has spent a lifetime learning, absorbing, and transforming every American song tradition, and Berklee strives to teach all the music that Dylan loves. His deep immersion in African American blues parallels much of Berklee’s curriculum, which is rooted in the distinctly American variants of the music of the African diaspora”.

--IANS

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