New to the Y’s roster of music appreciation classes (besides that Elvis Costello class) is a 10-session course on Bob Dylan, His “Children” and a New American Song.

The music of Hibbing, Minnesota’s finest has already generated a pretty substantial literary canon—just look at all the books Greil Marcus wrote about him. Between the folk era, the string of classic albums in the ‘60s, his work with The Band, the conversion to born-again Christianity in the ‘70s and his reinvention as an elder statesman in the ‘90s, Dylan can easily fill ten classes. Then there’s the other musicians, the “children” discussed: Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen and others who took their first influences and career cues from Bob.

And on the Bob Dylan-and-Judaism tip, there’s the excellent and ridiculously comprehensive Bob Dylan: Tangled Up in Jews.

[Bob Dylan, His “Children” and a New American Song: 02/08/06]