Musician Bob Dylan said in a rare interview published Friday June 12 by the New york times have been "Sick" seeing the video of the death of George Floyd, asphyxiated on May 25 by a white police officer in his native state of Minnesota. "It made me sick to see him tortured like this", he said in his first real interview since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016.
"It goes beyond horror. Hopefully justice will soon be done for the Floyd family and the country. "
At 79, the folk legend, including some songs, like Hurricane (1976), denounced police violence against the black minority, is preparing to release next Friday its first album of original songs since 2012, Rough and Rowdy Days.
By the end of March, as the pandemic began to hit the United States, Bob Dylan had released his first song in eight years, Murder Most Foul, a seventeen minute ballad devoted to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Consequences of the pandemic
In a telephone interview from Friday at his home in Malibu, California, he was pessimistic about the future of the world and the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Extreme arrogance can lead to disastrous sanctions. Maybe we are on the eve of annihilation "he said, sweeping away any notion of warning "Biblical".
"I am thinking of the death of the human race. The long and strange journey of the naked monkey (…) Every human being, as strong and powerful as it is, is fragile in the face of death. I think about it in general, not personal terms. "
Before the pandemic Bob Dylan regularly performed in concert. He had notably planned a series of concerts in April in Japan and in June in the United States, all canceled.
