Protest singer, poetic genius and man of song and dance; Bob Dylan has influenced both popular music and popular culture for more than fifty years. Although often reduced to a nasally-voiced guitarist who can't play a tune, Dylan has enchanted a nation with his musical genius since the early 1960s. His artistry has provided opportunities for creativity in the music industry and has proven that a singer does not need a beautiful voice to sing. The lyrics make up the song. The voice of a generation, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan not only influenced the popular culture of the 1960s, but opened artistic avenues that go far beyond popular music and into our hearts. Deep in the frozen outback lies a tiny town called Hibbing, Minnesota. Once a barren mining town in the 1940s, a young misanthrope named Robert Allen Zimmerman, emerged from the frozen state (Kristen and Young). There the weather equalized everyone. Temperatures often dropped so below freezing that no one could rebel against the countless layers of clothing that hid their identity (Shea). Armed with only a guitar case and ambition in his heart, Zimmerman headed to famed New York City. He writes, “No one knows me here, but everything is about to change (Shea).” There, he changed his identity to Bob Dylan in honor of his favorite poet, Dylan Thomas. Playing for coffeehouses and small protests in the early 1960s, he made his mark in New York's Greenwich Village, the epicenter of the folk music revival (Shea). Dylan's immense talent was widely recognized in collaboration with Columbia Records, catapulting him onto the stages of prestigious folk music festivals, at crucial protests, and into the history books. The way Dylan plays his music and sings his songs, it seems as if the words simply flow out of him, as if he were telling the