VETERAN MUSICIAN BOB DYLAN has been honored at a ceremony by US President Barack Obama.
Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a ceremony in the White House yesterday.
The president said the 71-year-old folk musician had a “unique gravely power” to his voice which helped redefine “not just what music sounded like, but the message it carried and how it made people feel,” reports Rolling Stone Magazine.
Famous for songs such as “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and “When the Ship Comes In”, Dylan wore blacked-out sunglasses even as the US president put the medal around his neck.
A White House statement said Dylan was being commended for his considerable influence on the civil rights movement of the 1960s and for having a significant impact on American culture over the past five decades.
The New York Times reports that the medal is awarded for “meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States or to world peace or to cultural or other significant endeavors”.
Others to receive the award include included novelist and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison and Madeleine K Albright, the former US Secretary of State, during the Bill Clinton administration.
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