ArtistInfo

A.J. Weberman

*1945 US
Spoken Word, Folk and World
A.k.a. Alan Jules Weberman

American writer and political activist/gadfly who popularized the terms "Garbology" and "Dylanology." (born May 26, 1945). He is best known for his controversial personal confrontations with the musician Bob Dylan and for his 30-year involvement with the Yippies, a counterculture movement of the 1960s. He was also an activist in the Jewish Defense Organization, said by the Anti-Defamation League to be a militant Revisionist Zionist organization regarded as a branch of Kahanism, but which professes to be a Jabotinskyite organization. A.J. Weberman has written on the life and works of Bob Dylan, leaving college to focus on creating what he calls a word concordance of Dylan's lyrics. Although a strong advocate of Dylan's importance as an artist, he is less supportive of Dylan the man. Weberman's literary analysis of Dylan's work, which he has termed "Dylanology," is centered around Weberman's assertion that, to Dylan, many words have lesser-used meanings, differing - sometimes greatly, from their common definitions. According to Weberman, "Rain", for instance, often means "hatred" in a Dylan song. Dylan wrote, "Father of love / Father of rain" in a song where opposites are contrasted.

Genres

• Spoken Word
• Folk
• World

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