It’s All One Long Funeral Song

Bob Dylan: Heard The Song Of A Poet Who Died In The Gutter

-by Denise Sullivan

Allen Ginsberg claimed he wept when he heard it for the first time.

Folksinger Len Chandler started to play it when the words and music were first published in Sing Out!, the folk song magazine, at the end of 1962. Patti Smith performed the song when Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016.

Among the timeless songs he wrote in his early period, Dylan characterizes “A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall” and others as “all one long funeral song.”

And while it was not specifically written to confront nuclear winter, Kronos Quartet and the Hard Rain Collective released two versions of “Hard Rain” last week, to commemorate 80 years since the first atomic bomb was detonated as a test, in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

A second drop, “Hard Rain (Drone)”— as in the style of music— is a spoken word version. The collective recordings include voicings by Laurie Anderson, Ocean Vuong, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Satomi Matsuzaki, Willie Nelson, Iggy Pop, Asha Boshle and many more. Terry Riley's raga, “Komal Reshab Asavari" is central to the theme (read more about the project and other songs devoted to world health and the biosphere at Redhot).

At last week's Nobel Laureate Assembly for the Prevention of Nuclear War in Chicago, Kronos performed "Hard Rain" with Allison Russell.

“You know, it’s remarkable that a 21-year-old singer-songwriter wrote this song in 1962 and how— when you observe and know the words of this song very clearly, how important it is to our time right now,” Kronos founder David Harrington told Democracy Now.

Harrington was joined on the program by physicist Daniel Holz, chair of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and one of the organizers of the assembly which gathered Nobel laureates and nuclear experts to raise awareness of the growing (yes, growing) risk of nuclear war, particularly against a backdrop of climate change. This piece by Norman Solomon in The Nation is a must-read in case there remains any doubt, "nuclear winter is a climate issue."

“…The likelihood that we’ll sort of stumble into a nuclear war and the end of civilization… has gone way up… We’re bringing together Nobel laureates and nuclear experts and trying to find a way forward, a way to reduce the risk, get the messages out to the public and also to leaders that here are steps that can be taken to reduce this. We need to get the awareness back, and we need to do everything we can to prevent the sort of nuclear annihilation that would impact literally everyone on the planet,” said Holz. 

It's understandable if you missed the 80 year commemoration of the Trinity test, given the week that was. But there is still time to prepare for a suitable remembrance of August 6 and 9: It's been 80 years since bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are very few survivors, or hibakusha, as they are known, left to speak about the horrors of the A-bomb. In 2019, I spoke to one— an American citizen detained at age 14 in Japan while visiting relatives when World War II broke out. 

Today, the planet— not just the region impacted— but the entire planet will simply not survive a nuclear explosion. The sun will not sun. Famine will ensue. The past is our future. War is still unhealthy for children and other living things.  Please contact your representatives and support candidates accordingly.

Denise Sullivan is an occasional contributor to Down With Tyranny! What Have They Done To The Rain? is her work-in-progress on songs in the age of climate crisis. Her latest book is Shadow Dream Chaser of Rainbows, a remembrance of Len Chandler.