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Originally Posted by Krazykiwi
That was my actual point, William.
The Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded by a Swedish committee. Not an American one. Not even an international one. They are fulfilling their task as provided by the (Swedish) benefactor of the awards, and as they understand it.
It occurs to me there are plenty of American based literary awards, and sometimes the winners of those are quite mystifying to us foreigners. I don't think I'd go around saying the winners of those are not worthy though.
That said, I think the tradition of blending song and poetry is much stronger in much of the world than you might think. Such a tradition is fairly strong across at least much of Europe and Asia (Japanese Noh, Chinese Opera, for instance, are widely considered dramatic poetry, although they are sung.) The US is, relative to the rest of the world, only a small piece after all, and while globalisation might make it seem like US culture is taking over the world, it isn't that simple.
And sure, a lot of lyrics, particularly of pop music, are not really written in the form of poetry and you would have a hard time claiming them any literary merit. They depend on rhythm and intonation and other things that are only available when they are actually sung. But it's a spectrum, people like Dylan and Vreeswijk are a million miles away from the current top 10.
In the end, to me your argument so seems to be "I don't like it and that's not how we do it here, therefore, it is bad."
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Oh, come now. There are all kinds of awards for all kinds of things, and many "prestigious" awards for literature and music handed out every year in many countries. The recipients of those awards are selected by a relatively small number of people, they are hardly representative of the majority of people who read books or listen to music. Some of them are deserved and some are probably not. There is no end of good authors, singers and songwriters who probably deserved an award and were never even considered for one.
There are no awards for authors whose books sold the most copies, or for singers who sold the most records because the people who award prizes deem anything that appeals to "the masses" apparently not worthy of consideration, too lowbrow.
Recently the country of Venezuela created something called "Chavez Peace Prize" and gave it to Vladimar Putin. Some years ago The People's Republic of China, feeling snubbed by the Nobel Prize Committee established "The Confusious Prizes" that nobody outside of China pays any attention to.
"That said, I think the tradition of blending song and poetry is much stronger in much of the world than you might think. Such a tradition is fairly strong across at least much of Europe and Asia (Japanese Noh, Chinese Opera, for instance, are widely considered dramatic poetry, although they are sung.)"
You forgot grand opera, operettas, musical plays and Hollywood "musicals". Japanese Noh are plays combining dance, drama, music, and poetry and are only semi-popular in Japan and Chinese Opera is only popular in China. None of those things are poetry as such. People watch and listen to them, they do not read them. Songs are a combination of words (which may or may not be poetry) and music and are meant to be sung and listened to. Poetry is words meant to be read.
"... people like Dylan and Vreeswijk are a million miles away from the current top 10." And probably even further away than that to most readers of literature.