With a Nobel Prize, a Pulitzer, an Academy Award, and 10 Grammy Awards to his name, Bob Dylan is already one of the most decorated musicians in history.
Now, the legendary bard has received an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music in recognition of his “extraordinary influence on modern music” as well as his “lifelong commitment to creative exploration.”
Incredibly, this marks the first time Dylan has been bestowed with such an honor by an American college or university since 1970.
“Bob Dylan has spent a lifetime learning, absorbing, and transforming every American song tradition, and Berklee strives to teach all the music that Dylan loves,” said Matt Glaser, artistic director of Berklee’s American Roots Music Program.
“His deep immersion in African American blues parallels much of Berklee’s curriculum, which is rooted in the distinctly American variants of the music of the African diaspora.”
“Thank you, Berklee College of Music, for bestowing on me this prestigious honor. What a pleasant surprise,” Dylan commented in his own statement. “Who knows what path my career might have taken if I’d been fortunate enough to learn from some of the great musicians who taught at Berklee. It’s something to think about.”
Previous Berklee honorary doctorate recipients include Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin, Quincy Jones, Joni Mitchell, B.B. King, Ringo Starr, Roberta Flack, A. R. Rahman, and Loretta Lynn.