From the close of the show last Tuesday night in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, here’s a clip of Bob Dylan and his band doing Blowin’ in the Wind.

I really love the arrangement of this song which Dylan has adopted of late. For a song that is often performed by others with a mournful air, or heard as some kind of lamentation or protest, this rendition is strikingly joyous. Exhilaratingly so, in fact. Now, Dylan has done “up” versions of the song before, certainly — such as the live version which ends the film “Masked and Anonymous” — but the joyousness of this version crosses right over into jocularity. The bounciness of the accompaniment — including the guitar and Dylan’s own organ playing — is downright humorous to my ears.

There have always been multiple ways of hearing Blowin’ in the Wind, with its litany of questions, its roll-call of injustice, and its seemingly inscrutable refrain. Some have heard it and have sung it, of-course, as a call to action — to take on an injustice of the day. It can also be heard as a meditation on the persistence and inevitability of injustice in this world, with the singer placing his hope only in the justice of a world to come.

It seems to me that with the way in which Bob Dylan is rendering this song these days, another way of hearing it comes to the fore. When he sings here that “the answer is blowin’ in the wind,” it doesn’t mean that the answer is lost, is out of reach or is unknowable. In this way of hearing it, the refrain is instead a joyful proclamation. The answer is found. “The answer is blowin’ in the wind! The answer is right there, right here, blowin’ in the wind right in front of our faces! Isn’t it hilarious? Isn’t it great?”

Indeed.

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