© AesthetixMS 2016. This Open Access article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For citation use the DOI. For commercial re-use, contact editor@rupkatha.com The Liminal in a Diptych: A Study of Roots and the Ruminant in Bob Dylan and Kabir Suman Amlan Baisya 1 & Dibyakusum Ray 2 1 Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, NIT Silchar. Orcid: 0000-0002-5966-1108. Email: amlanb.1999@gmail.com 2 Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, NIT Silchar. Orcid id: 0000-0002-9537- 3277. Email: dibyakusum776@gmail.com Received March 4, 2017; Revised on June 2, Accepted June 12, 2017; Published June 15, 2017. Abstract: This paper compares two certain sections in the musical career of Bob Dylan and Kabir Suman to look at a possible ideological heredity--1963-65 | 1993-97-- these two timelines had established Dylan and Suman in their iconic status. My argument is that there is a liminal tradition-- in four separate lyrics by the two composers-- that transcends their geo-temporal boundaries. Dylan’s four songs—“Blowin’ in the Wind”, “Tambourine Man”, “Farewell Angelina”, “All I Really Want to Do” have been spiritually translated by Suman in the early to mid 90s, when he was most productive musically. These songs, amongst others, not only established Suman as an avant garde musician but also seamlessly merged with his own vision of anti- establishment and non-belonging. Dylan was writing against the imperialist capital, Suman was writing against the parliamentary Left—they both assert the same bohemianism before proceeding towards iconic stasis. Dylan, after the 60s turns towards safer, politically inert aesthetics; Suman partially removes himself from music in favor of a fledgling political career. The bohemianism or the perennial non-conformity ends for both. What is the significance of this phase? How liminal are the lyrics divided by language, time and society? Keywords: Bob Dylan, Kabir Suman, Liminal, Roots, the Other, Translation 1.0 Introduction Although he has reportedly claimed: “Dylan was never my guru”, Bengali singer and a stage performer Kabir Suman has, in the same reportage i , attributed his meteoric rise and decade- transcending lyrics to Bob Dylan: “Dylan’s simplicity, in fact, sent me back to my folk roots.” My argument of treating Bob Dylan- Kabir Suman as a diptych hinged by the same liminal philosophy finds a distant ringer in the latter’s otherwise cursory tribute to Dylan winning the Nobel. Two words are of significance here-- ‘roots’ and ‘liminal’. If perceived as a return to a sentient, pre- lapsarian cora, the first word has volumes to tell-- from religious to political. For brevity’s sake, let us assume that Suman is talking about an idealized musical heritage-- innocent, transcendental, non-binarized. Dylan himself has been described as a predominantly collage artist ii , and the stylistic and thematic influence of Country, Rock n Roll, Gospel musical traditions are rife in his songs. Dylan was a cultural expatriate from rural Minnesota, and has consciously, continually distanced himself from edifying fons et origo throughout his career-- from Jewish to Christian, protest to introspection, counter culture to establishment. As Jeff Taylor notes in ‘The Political Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Vol. IX, No. 1, 2017 0975-2935 DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v9n1.s05 Full Text: http://rupkatha.com/V9/n1/v9n1s05.pdf