LMCS SIG One-Day International Conference Report

Teaching and Enjoying the Words and Music of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell  

On Saturday 1st March, 2008 50 people met together at the Fazekas Gimnazium in central Budapest to attend this SIG event. The nine presenters came from the UK (2), Malta, Turkish Cyprus, Romania, Czech Republic and Hungary (2). The participants were mostly from Hungary, though people also travelled from the UK, Switzerland, Serbia, Croatia and Romania to attend. As well as the Events Coordinator David A. Hill who had set up the Conference, both LMCS SIG Coordinator Amos Paran and Newsletter Editor Stella Smyth attended.

Despite sadly losing one of our two Plenary speakers (Dylan/Cohen scholar, David Boucher) because of an accident on a UK motorway which delayed him and made him miss his flight, we still had enough sessions to make a full and fulfilling day of it. Jim Scrivener moved from Closing Plenary to open the day for us with a practical session on using Dylan songs in class. People could then choose between Gabi Bonner on ways of using Dyland and Mitchell songs in ELT, and Sam Duncan on using Dylan songs in a UK adult literacy context. Next up was an interestingly esoteric session on using mixed media to work on texts with students, including Dylan songs from Carmen Marosi and aworkshop on using Joni Mitchell's song River by Pinar Hudaoglu.

After a sandwich lunch there was a choice of three sessions, on on each of the featured singers: Joe Bussutil working on Dylan's Lay, Lady, Lay,  Emine Ogus on Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi and Mark Andrews on Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah . The final option of the day was a workshop by Jim Scrivener on Dylan and one by David A. Hill on Cohen's Famous Blue Raincoat . After that, as we had an extra hour at our disposal, David A. Hill showed some film extracts of Joni Mitchell playing Big Yellow Taxi at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, and again in 1998 to show how she had changed it, and some early recordings of Dylan singing and being interviewed in 1965.

The Conference then ended at 18.00, but 16 particpants met up for a most enjoyable dinner later in the evening.

We are hoping to get together a number of written versions of the presentations and publish them as a special edition of the LMCS SIG Newsletter later in 2008.

David A. Hill

Events Coordinator.