Music Icon Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Literature Prize

STOCKHOLM, , (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Oct, 2016 ) - US music legend Bob Dylan, whose songs have influenced generations of fans, won the Nobel Literature Prize on Thursday, the first songwriter to win the prestigious award in a decision that stunned prize watchers.

The 75-year-old was honoured "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition," the Swedish academy said. The choice was met by gasps and a long round of applause from journalists attending the prize announcement.

The folk rock singer has been mentioned in Nobel speculation in past years, but was never seen as a serious contender. The Academy's permanent secretary Sara Danius said Dylan's songs were "poetry for the ears." "Bob Dylan is a great poet in the large English-language tradition, from William Blake onwards," Danius told Swedish news agency TT, calling him a "sampler of literature".

Embodying both "the intellectual and popular tradition", he has been influenced by the Delta blues, folk music from the Appalachians and French surrealists like Arthur Rimbaud, she said.

"Dylan has the status of an icon.

His influence on contemporary music is profound," the Academy wrote in biographical notes about the famously private singer. The Nobel is the latest accolade for a singer who has come a long way from his humble beginnings as Robert Allen Zimmerman, born in 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, who taught himself to play the harmonica, guitar and piano.

Captivated by the music of folksinger Woody Guthrie, Zimmerman changed his name to Bob Dylan -- reportedly after the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas -- and began performing in local nightclubs. After dropping out of college he moved to New York in 1960.

His first album contained only two original songs, but the 1963 breakthrough "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" featured a slew of his own work including the classic "Blowin' in the Wind".