Essay from the Guardian:

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Silent protest

Why are we still turning to Dylan for the soundtrack to our demonstrations?

Ian Buruma
Saturday November 12, 2005
The Guardian

It already seems so long ago that hundreds of thousands turned out in the streets of London, New York, Rome, and many other cities to protest against the war in Iraq. I was in Manhattan during that cold winter, two years ago, and watched the protests on Washington Square. There were people of all ages, including some venerable greybeards from the 1960s. But most were too young to remember, or perhaps to have even heard of Martin Luther King's long march to Washington or Chicago '68. And yet the curious thing was that the musical accompaniment to the protest in 2003 was almost all at least 30 years old.

I heard no rap, or Eminem, or Oasis, but old songs by John Lennon and Bob Dylan. It was if there had been no culture of protest since those heady days when Vietnam was the focus of popular outrage. Not that politics had stopped, or opposition ceased: the turnout in 2003 belied that. But where were the words and the music to express contemporary feeling? Why did people have to reach back so far?

you can read the whole thing here (you'll have to copy and paste the url in your browswer cos of the commas in the url)

politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1640998,00.html