Folk Music Quotes

I love all those great 'f' words - feminism, folk music.. ~ Ani DiFranco

There's always something in most world folk musics that always seems connected; whether it's a bagpipe or a tambura, there's always some sort of drone instrument, and there's always percussion. ~ Paul Weller

He [Alan Lomax] started right off trying to find people who could introduce folk songs to city people. He found a young actor named Burl Ives and said, "Burl, you know a lot of great country songs learned from your grandmother, don't you know people would love to hear them?" He put on radio programs. He persuaded CBS to dedicate "The School of the Air" for one year to American folk music. He'd get some old sailor to sing an old sea shanty with a cracked voice. Then he'd get me to sing it with my banjo. ~ Pete Seeger

That's one of the things I like best about folk music is the beautiful melodies - and the harmonies - that exist in it. And of course, some of the stories, the story songs. ~ Roger McGuinn

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow. ~ Bob Dylan

Songwriters I've always been drawn to are people who deal with something of depth in the lyric writing ... I've always been influenced by the folk song, the storytelling tradition in folk music. And so for years I wrote mostly story songs. I still do that, but as I've gone on, it's gotten a little more personal. I used to write mostly in the third person. I write a little more in the first person now. ~ Bruce Hornsby

All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song. ~ Louis Armstrong

I went to school for folk music back when I was a teenager and learned hundreds of songs. ~ Roger McGuinn

Jazz is the folk music of the machine age. ~ Paul Whiteman

I don't know about folk music. I play guitar, so there's a feeling I make folk music. ~ James Vincent McMorrow

Folk music is a bunch of fat people. ~ Bob Dylan

But our land is still troubled by men who have to hate. They twist away our freedom, and they twist away our fate. Fear is their weapon, and treason is their cry. We can stop them if we try. ~ Phil Ochs

The 1960s were big for folk music, and the Kingston Trio led the way. They were the ones who started it all. The music was fresh and alive. College kids loved it and their parents did, too. ~ George Grove

I lived in New York City back in the 1980s, which is when the Bordertown series was created. New York was a different place then -- dirtier, edgier, more dangerous, but also in some ways more exciting. The downtown music scene was exploding -- punk and folk music were everywhere -- and it wasn't as expensive to live there then, so a lot of young artists, musicians, writers, etc. etc. were all living and doing crazy things in scruffy neighborhoods like the East Village.

I was a Fantasy Editor for a publishing company back then -- but in those days, "fantasy" to most people meant "imaginary world" books, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. A number of the younger writers in the field, however, wanted to create a branch of fantasy that was rooted in contemporary, urban North America, rather than medieval or pastoral Europe. I'd already been working with some of these folks (Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, etc.), who were writing novels that would become the foundations for the current Urban Fantasy field. At the time, these kinds of stories were considered so strange and different, it was actually hard to get them into print.

When I was asked by a publishing company to create a shared-world anthology for Young Adult readers, I wanted to create an Urban Fantasy setting that was something like a magical version of New York...but I didn't want it to actually be New York. I want it to be any city and every city -- a place that anyone from anywhere could go to or rela ~ Terri Windling

This machine kills fascists. ~ Woody Guthrie

Country is based on folk music, which has been around for centuries - "
"So has the plague. ~ Karen Chance

They love their bodies. We neglected ours. They love to travel. We stayed put. They love adventure. We spent all our time at meetings. They love jazz. We were satisfied with pale imitations of folk music. They're interested in themselves. We wanted to save the world and with our messianic vision nearly destroyed it. Maybe they with their egotism will be the ones to save it. ~ Milan Kundera

I picked up the guitar very late, in a very pagan way - I didn't know how to play, but I knew I had to. I drew and I had a diary, but it wasn't enough; I needed to express more. As soon as I learned two notes, I started to tell a story, which is why, I guess, my music resembles blues or folk. ~ Lou Doillon

I find a difference between what gets called world music - a fusion of western music and music from different cultures in more of a modernized version - and Explorer Series stuff, which is completely undiluted indigenous folk music. That's a lot more powerful than a lot of the super-processed stuff that comes out now. ~ Glenn Kotche

I think that anything is a form of folk music. That's just me being glib, but the thing I like the best about humans, and there are not many other things besides this, is that humans make culture. If you're an artist, a big part of folk is noticing what other people are doing and incorporating it and changing it - the way that songs warp and change over time. ~ Will Sheff

I was only a folk singer for about two years ... . By that time, it wasn't really folk music anymore. It was some new American phenomenon. Later, they called it singer/songwriters. Or art songs, which I liked best. Some people get nervous about that word. Art. They think it's a pretentious word from the giddyap. To me, ... the word art has never lost its vitality. ~ Joni Mitchell

Folk music is the original melody of man; it is the musical mirror of the world. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

In folk music, I've always been fond of the fragment. The song that has one verse. And you don't know anything about the characters, you don't know what they're doing, but they're doing something important. I love that. I'm really a sucker for that kind of song. ~ Jerry Garcia

I grew up listening to a lot of soul music, and a lot of folk music. ~ Katey Sagal

Folks out in the country couldn't afford to pay for anybody else to make music. They had to make their own. So the peasantry had their music, and it was about a hundred years ago given the name "Folk music". ~ Pete Seeger

I've spent hours and hours doing research into Appalachian folk music. My grandfather was a fiddler. There is something very immediate, very simple and emotional, about that music. ~ Renee Fleming

I grew up with the Blind Boys' music. My family owns a music store in Claremont, California, called The Claremont Folk Music Center. I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel, folk, and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music. ~ Ben Harper

I think folk music helps reinforce your sense of history. An old song makes you think of times gone by. ~ Pete Seeger

You better get it while you can
You better get it while you can
If you wait too long, it'll all be gone
And you'll be sorry then
It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor
And it's the same for a woman or a man
From the cradle to the crypt
Is a mighty short trip
So you better get it while you can ~ Steve Goodman

It seems to me that the American popular song, growing out of American folk music, is the basis of the American musical theater ... it is quite legitimate to use the form of the popular song and gradually fill it out with new musical content. ~ Kurt Weill

My family owns a music store in Claremont, California, called The Claremont Folk Music Center. ~ Ben Harper

My dad is a huge folk music fan, so growing up, there were always records playing in my house. Carole King, James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles - I grew up with this music, and I was aware of how special this music was to a lot of people. ~ Jake Epstein

And she tried the high heels but she couldn't bring herself to prance. ~ Ani DiFranco

I don't purchase records. I do enjoy listening to things like Japanese folk music or Indian music. ~ John Lennon

When we moved back to the US, folk music was all the rage. So I traded in my banjo for a guitar. ~ Michael Storm

I was raised with opera and very white-bread folk music like The Kingston Trio. That was about as daring as it got. So when I discovered hip-hop as a teenager, at first it made no sense to me at all. ~ Jess Row

I love commercial music! I can dissect it and criticize it with any critic in the business. But without any thought, I just enjoy it. It's folk music. That's what I'm doing, folk music. I'm not intellectualizing it ... and making it into a phoney art form. I'm just doing the music I enjoy. ~ John Lennon

Folk music has a sort of a bubbling-under quality. The stream runs through the cultural consciousness, and whether or not it's on the radio is not the issue. Folk music is always there. ~ Mary Travers

My main influences are pop and folk music - Bob Lind, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, the Motown collection, The Zombies, Elliott Smith, and a ton of 70's AM radio hits. I love powerpop too. ~ Greta Salpeter

Punk is just as much a form of folk music as anything is! ~ Michelle Shocked

Back in the "leather and lace" eighties, I was the fantasy editor for a publishing company in New York City. It was a great time to be young and footloose on the streets of Manhattan - punk rock and folk music were everywhere; Blondie, the Eurythmics, Cyndi Lauper, and Prince were all strutting their stuff on the newly created MTV; and the eighties' sense of style meant I could wear my scruffy black leather into the office without turning too many heads. The fantasy field was growing by leaps and bounds, and I was right in the middle of it, working with authors I'd worshiped as a teen, and finding new ones to encourage and publish. ~ Terri Windling

Our peasant music, naturally, is invariably tonal, if not always in the sense that the inflexible major and minor system is tonal. (An "atonal" folk-music, in my opinion, is unthinkable.) Since we depend upon a tonal basis of this kind in our creative work, it is quite self-evident that our works are quite pronouncedly tonal in type. I must admit, however, that there was a time when I thought I was approaching a species of twelve-tone music. Yet even in works of that period the absolute tonal foundation is unmistakable. ~ Bela Bartok

I would say I grew up listening a lot to Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland and Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. I grew up listening to those because my parents were kind of into folk music. ~ Melora Hardin

My idea of heaven is a place where the Tyne meets the Delta, where folk music meets the blues. ~ Mark Knopfler

I didn't grow up on the porch of a cabin looking out over the 90 acres that the mule was plowing with Paw-Paw playing the banjo. But I was always interested in folk music. ~ Ketch Secor

I don't have very sophisticated taste in music. I listen to a lot of folk music. I like reggae. ~ Anne Lamott

There are two types of folk music: quiet folk music and loud folk music. I play both. ~ Dave Alvin

What bothers me is when music becomes entertainment. Of course, music is supposed to be entertaining, but go back to any period of time - music had a cultural significance on different levels, whether it was folk music, it was the news of the village, or it had to do with the rites of passage. ~ Billy Corgan

Alan [Lomax] and his father started off changing the definition of folk music from something ancient and anonymous to something very contemporary. ~ Pete Seeger

I fell in love with folk music at Surprise Lake Camp. It was the songs of Woody Guthrie and the Weavers. ~ Neil Diamond

My music doesn't really sound like punk music, it's acoustic. And it doesn't really sound like folk music 'cause I'm thrashing too hard and emoting a little too much for the sort of introspective, respectful, sort-of folk genre thing. I'm really into punk and folk as music that comes out of communities and is very genuine and very immediate and not commercial. ~ Ani DiFranco

There's a similarity between European and North African folk musics. ~ Robert Plant

The Swedish folk music - I can't hear any connection between my music and fiddle tunes, but I guess since I grew up with that, kind of, Swedish tone or harmony. ~ Gustav Ejstes

This is something I think that blues music, or folk music, and all those particular genres that have a perspective about life deal with - where the difficulties of life are seen as something that are very natural and nothing to be embarrassed about, and something that we all go through; something that's part of our share of humanity. And it accepts those difficulties and pain as such. I think there's a wonderful forgiveness that can come over you, if you have that perspective on it. ~ Joan Osborne

Folk music has always contained a concern for the human condition. And since it brings people into it from different points of view, that can help illuminate what a consensus might be to important issues. ~ Mary Travers

The big turning point, really, was the Beatles' influence on American folk music, and then Roger took it to the next step, and then along came the Lovin' Spoonful and everybody else. ~ Barry McGuire

To play Swedish folk music is a lifetime achievement, but I'm well on my way. ~ Gustav Ejstes

I gained a sense of why Grieg was so touched by the wistful, elegiac folk music of Norway, and what he meant when he said self-effacingly that his music had a 'taste of cod' about it. ~ Anthony Tommasini

You have to open your mind. I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It's the closest music to our humanity - it's like a folk music that rises up out of a culture. ~ Sonny Terry

You can see it on the Internet: There's an argument going on continually about, 'What is folk music?' And I don't really want to get involved in that. It's an endless argument, a 'How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' kind of argument. ~ Roger McGuinn

My dad, the old professor, used to say, 'Never get into an argument about what's folk music and what isn't.' ~ Pete Seeger

I don't really know what 'folk music' means anymore. ~ Amos Lee

So, you know, there are a lot of the biggest records of the year. There's great music in hip-hop and jazz and, you know, and folk music. ~ Stephen W. Thompson

Then about 12 years ago it dawned on me that folk music - the music of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, early Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger - could be as heavy as anything that comes through a Marshall stack. The combination of three chords and the right lyrical couplet can be as heavy as anything in the Metallica catalogue. ~ Tom Morello

Martin Carthy on English folk music: "I'm not interested in heritage - this stuff is alive. ~ Martin Carthy

Have you ever listened to folk music? Let's face it, a lot of folk music is all about dead sailors, mad witches, rape and fratricide. ~ Marie Browne

I always thought I was singing American folk music. ~ Lonnie Donegan

Pop stardom is not very compelling. I'm much more interested in a relationship between performer and audience that is of equals. I came up through folk music, and there's no pomp and circumstance to the performance. There's no, like, 'I'll be the rock star, you be the adulating fan.' ~ Ani DiFranco

Artists are taught to be humble about their impact, especially in folk music. It's so ingrained that I have a hard time even thinking I had any impact other than what a normal hit song would have. ~ Janis Ian

In Jewish folk music, despair is disguised as the dance. And so, truth's disguise was irony. ~ Julian Barnes

If Music is a Place
then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, Classical is a Temple. ~ Vera Nazarian

I'm obsessed - not just interested, obsessed - with folk music, street music, the parallels between a country's street music and its so-called classical and intellectual music, the way certain scales have travelled right across the globe. All this ethnological and musical interaction fascinates me. Have you heard any trance music? That's the thing. ~ Jimmy Page

Whether it's your own material or somebody else's material, it's essential that you identify with it thoroughly. It's like you want to archive it; you want to freeze it in time in terms of your perspective on it, then move on, because folk music is that volatile and comments not only on overall human concerns but also on the specifics. ~ Paul Stookey

That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played. ~ Jackson Browne

Georgian folk music has more new musical ideas than all the contemporary music.
[Los Angeles Times. 26.02.1990] ~ Igor Stravinsky

What I like about pop music, and why I'm still attracted to it, is that in the end it becomes our folk music. ~ Bono

Folk music is where I come from originally. The very first thing that introduced me to playing guitars at all was skiffle - my cousin had been in London the summer that skiffle was big. ~ Bjorn Ulvaeus

I like Celtic folk music, Native American music, and any kind of early music. There isn't a lot of music that I don't like ... except for Show Tunes. ~ Terri Windling

Folk Music is the map of singing. ~ Alan Lomax

I've always loved the songs of the sea. I was first introduced to them back in 1957, at the Old Town School of Folk Music. I used to go to Pete Seeger concerts, and he would do songs like 'Ruben Ranzo' and talk about how the sailors sang songs to do their work - to raise the anchors, pull up the sails and that sort of thing. ~ Roger McGuinn

You know when I'm down to my socks it's time for business
That's why they're called business socks
It's business, it's business time ~ Flight Of The Conchords

If I like hardcore straight-edge punk music, gentle psychedelic folk music, gangster rap, indie-rock with a lot of guitar pedals, and I find inspiration from all these things in different songs of mine, shouldn't I be allowed to make any of this kind of music that I want? And it's the same for the comic books, why should I only make autobiographical stories? Or only political stories? Or only superhero stories? Or only comedy stories? I am a bit creatively desperate, when I sit with a pen and paper I am desperate for ANY idea that makes me excited, I don't care what kind of idea it is! ~ Jeffrey Lewis

All of my words, if not well put nor well taken, are well meant. ~ Woody Guthrie

Most boys' first hero is their father. That was definitely true of my dad. He was a proud Irish American and he taught me a lot about ethics and responsibility. He also introduced me to a lot of wonderful folk music. ~ John C. Reilly

When I listen to music today, it is about 99 percent classical. I rarely even listen to folk music, the music of my own specialty, because folk music is to me more limited than classical music. ~ Tom Glazer

Culture dictated from above is the enemy of folk music. Whether it's stuffy classical music or pre-engineered pop where somebody's paid tons of money to make sure that everyone hears this song a certain number of times a day - that feels like the opposite of folk music. ~ Will Sheff

All of my words, if not well put or well taken, are well meant. ~ Woody Guthrie

I don't listen to hard rock or heavy metal. I suppose I've always been influenced by folk music, I'm a big Bob Dylan fan. ~ Roger Glover

There's not that much English folk music that is really that appealing. ~ Alison Goldfrapp

Mostly folk music is people with fruity voices trying to keep alive something old and dead. It's all a bit boring, like ballet: a minority thing kept going by a minority group. ~ John Lennon

I got hooked into folk music by accident, because that's what white college kids liked when I was a child. ~ Stephen Stills

I can be whatever it takes to be a folksinger. Folk music to me, if we had to have a definition, is portable music. A lot of what I do is flash, gesture, athletics, but what it comes down to is getting across a melody that will help it stick to your ribs, and being able to take it from town to town. ~ Vance Gilbert

It's a folk singer's job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people ~ Woody Guthrie

The Urban Literate Southern California Sub-Group of the Early Atomic Period has not yet produced a distinct body of folk music of its own. ~ Sam Hinton

Hymn tunes are the nearest we've got to English folk music.. ~ John Betjeman

This quality of Jewish folk music [- it can appear to be happy when it's tragic-] is close to my idea of what music should be. The should always be two layers in music. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I mean, the genuine roots of culture is folk music. ~ John Lydon

I didn't know folk music growing up, no. It's something I've come to study, really, because I think there's so much to learn from traditional music in the sense of the way music began as a way of communication, the traveling storyteller, the bard, the minstrels. ~ P.J. Harvey

Judy Henske, who was the then reigning queen of folk music, said to me at The Troubadour, 'Honey, in this town there are four sexes. Men, women, homosexuals, and girl singers.' ~ Linda Ronstadt

As I've grown older I've been more influenced by more meandering styles of guitar playing, whether it's Celtic or Ethiopian folk music or some kind of noisier jazz like Sonny Sharrock. In terms of songwriting, I don't know that I could even pin it down. ~ Ted Leo