Top 100 Quotes About Folk Music
#1. Folk-punk artists like This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb or Paul Baribeau were popular in the Florida punk community. I saw people early on combine roots music with more aggressive music.
Benjamin Booker
#2. I find this kind of folk with guys in Wellington boots and washboards not good to listen to. That music is one step away from barn dancing as far as I'm concerned. Anyone under the age of 60 should not be wearing Wellington boots on stage.
Johnny Marr
#3. People sing each other's songs and they cultivate standards. That's the reason why we have folk music and folk stories. History is told through song.
Brandi Carlile
#4. In Montreal, there is a friend of mine at school who is a jazz pianist with an amazing voice, and we sort of have this fusion/soul/R&B/folk music kind of thing. We've been keeping it low-key and opening for some friends.
Jake Epstein
#5. Country music is the combination of African and European folk songs coming together and doing a little waltz right here in the American south. They came together at some cotillion, and somebody snuck a black person into the room, and he danced with a white lady, and music was born.
Ketch Secor
#6. 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
#7. I enjoy bluegrass, folk, gospel, and classical. I don't listen to music when I write. I sometimes listen to music just before I sit down to write.
Kent Haruf
#8. I think the Flecktones are a mixture of acoustic and electronic music with a lot of roots in folk and bluegrass as well as funk and jazz.
Bela Fleck
#9. I mean, the genuine roots of culture is folk music.
John Lydon
#10. 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
#11. I went to school in Gainesville because it was a huge punk and folk town. So I went to class twice a week, and then I went to shows and wrote. I did a lot of music writing before I actually started playing music.
Benjamin Booker
#13. He helped make Living Things even more crazy than I wanted it to be. He added old-fashioned piano and classical folk music - that weird otherworldly vibe - all these elements got onto the record.
Matthew Sweet
#14. What I'm doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music's always done. I'm not going to sing about ploughing, but I'll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.
Justin Townes Earle
#15. Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, American folk music with a beat.
Van Morrison
#16. Folk music is the original melody of man; it is the musical mirror of the world.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#17. Cornwall has lots of folk and Celtic music and has that kind of surfer vibe as well. That was my kind of upbringing.
Sam Palladio
#18. I got hooked into folk music by accident, because that's what white college kids liked when I was a child.
Stephen Stills
#19. You've got to go down the road you naturally go down, and for me it was pop, folk country, just feel-good music. I suppose most of my songs are very up-tempo.
Shane Filan
#20. My family owns a music store in Claremont, California, called The Claremont Folk Music Center.
Ben Harper
#21. The greatest thing about doing this movie was that Chris and I both were involved in folk music in the '60s. I had a group, but I don't think it was at the same level as Chris, because he's an amazing musician.
Eugene Levy
#22. It was Rick's Rubin idea to have the 'Brooklyn' verse repeat. It already was a story, but having that made it a folk song. Instead of this rambling march of verses, Rick understands that music needs hooks. You need that repeated chorus, that everyone can sing along to.
Scott Avett
#24. Irish folk is probably the biggest influence musically that I've ever had. My mother's Irish. And when I was very young, both my brothers were very into traditional music, English and Irish. They were always playing music, so I was always brought up with it.
Kate Bush
#25. And this is the origin of pop music: it's a professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music as well.
Pete Seeger
#26. I grew up listening to spiritual music, Blind Willie Johnson and folk.
Ben Harper
#27. Folk music isn't owned by anybody. It is owned by everybody, like the national parks, the postal system, and the school system. It's our common property. There is nobody's name on it. Nobody can make money on it. It's not copywritten.
Utah Phillips
#28. I don't think of myself as a folk singer per se, but I really like blues and string-band music. When I started listening to records when I was a teenager, the folk boom was going on.
Loudon Wainwright III
#29. In Jewish folk music, despair is disguised as the dance. And so, truth's disguise was irony.
Julian Barnes
#30. My mom was a folk singer and Celtic harpist. My dad was in a barbershop quartet and my great grandma was an opera singer. As I grew up, I discovered pop music and Top 40 radio, but it was in the '90s, so music was very different then - it was really lyrical.
Skylar Grey
#31. I definitely make an effort to work on different styles of music: not working on too many post-rock bands, or too many heavy bands, or too many folk bands, or just whatever. I have no desire to be known as somebody that just works on a single style of music and would rather avoid it, actually.
John Congleton
#32. I don't purchase records. I do enjoy listening to things like Japanese folk music or Indian music.
John Lennon
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. There's not that much English folk music that is really that appealing.
Alison Goldfrapp
#36. To be honest, I'm really into folk music, and I love Big Phony. I like Priscilla Ahn, and yeah, I really support Asian-American artists.
Justin Chon
#37. Gujarat is truly vibrant. Be it handicrafts, folk music, art, costumes or food - the state offers the best of everything.
Shreya Ghoshal
#38. I guess my favorite artists are The White Stripes or Tom Waits. The more theatrical the music is, the more I get into it. I also like the quieter folk music, that kind of old-school rockabilly or country. I'm not really picky when it comes to music, as long as it's honest.
Landon Liboiron
#39. I make up cassettes all the time - to take on the road with me - a song from this album, a song from that album. That's the way I listen to music; it's like one of those K Tel things: it's from all over. I listen to Fred Astaire, I listen to African folk music, I listen to Talking Heads.
Robert Palmer
#40. I fell in love with folk music at Surprise Lake Camp. It was the songs of Woody Guthrie and the Weavers.
Neil Diamond
#41. 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
#42. Most of the music I've become interested in is hybrid in its originsClassical music, of course, is unbelievably hybrid. Jazz is an obvious amalgam. Bluegrass comes from eighteenth-century Scottish and Irish folk music that made contact with the blues. By exploring music, you're exploring everything.
Edgar Meyer
#43. 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
#44. If Music is a Place
then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, Classical is a Temple.
Vera Nazarian
#45. Logically, when you talkin' about folk music and blues, you find out it's music of just plain people.
Brownie McGhee
#46. I listen to music mostly in the evening. I've come to love what is called world music, like the Zimbabwean Oliver Mtukudzi and the Colombian singer Marta Gomez. I also love the Irish folk singer Mary Black. Other favorites include Chet Baker, Eva Cassidy, and Billie Holiday.
Jeannette Walls
#47. 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
#48. I was a folk singer who became totally over the edge with country music. I found my voice and style working with Gram Parsons. I learned how to listen to George Jones records and the Louvin Brothers.
Emmylou Harris
#49. Musicians are often asked to answer for an entire culture, or for an entire movement. It's a process of commodification. It becomes packaged and summarized in a word like 'emo' or 'grunge' ... or 'folk music.' I think that's just language itself, trying to understand the mysteries of the world.
Sufjan Stevens
#50. I'm pretty sure in my older years, I'll be doing old-time flavored folk-mountain music.
Dolly Parton
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. Growing up, I didn't really like folk music - I wasn't a fan of Bob Dylan. I grew up mostly listening to rap and hip-hop; it was this new form of music.
Max Casella
#54. 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
#55. I grew up listening to everything. You know, from Argentinean folk music, tango, jazz, rock, just everything.
Gustavo Santaolalla
#56. 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
#57. I knew Bobby Dylan back in the days when he lived in the village. He used to come and see me and sing songs for me, saying they ought to go into my next collected book on American folk music.
Alan Lomax
#58. 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
#59. Georgian folk music has more new musical ideas than all the contemporary music.
[Los Angeles Times. 26.02.1990]
Igor Stravinsky
#60. I love a lot of music that's considered folk music, but I also love a lot of music that's considered punk or considered rap. I don't mind being called a folk singer. But it seems a bit limiting. I want to be able to write whatever kind of song I want.
Langhorne Slim
#61. When I think of folk music, I think of topical songs. And I don't write topical songs.
Ray Lamontagne
#62. It's taken folk a while to come around, hasn't it? Even the boys in the band weren't too sure about the whole art thing. They just wanted me to concentrate on the music. But they respect it now.
Ron Wood
#63. We weren't straight-A students. We didn't start playing until we were teenagers, and we started playing rock and roll and punk rock - power chords - before we ever thought we would play folk music. So virtuosity was just never in my reach.
Ketch Secor
#64. 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
#65. People don't listen to one radio station. On iTunes you can mix different worlds and bring country and pop and folk and live music together with a mass audience. I could have sung 'Easy' in a country way but I just sang it how I sing. I think it's a really nice blend.
Natasha Bedingfield
#66. I love all those great 'f' words - feminism, folk music..
Ani DiFranco
#67. One of my problems is I'm not really sure if I slot into rock or not. I've always tried to combine world music, folk, jazz, blues and rock, and have done since Traffic.
Steve Winwood
#68. Today's folk song is rock and roll. Although it happened to emanate from America, that's not really important in the end because we wrote our own music and that changed everything.
John Lennon
#69. Music was in the air when I was growing up. My siblings Katy, Dave and Phil were musical; my dad worked in inner-city New York where a musical revolution was taking place - folk music, rock n' roll, gospel music. My sister taught me to sing. My brothers taught me to play.
Sam Barry
#70. What I consider to be the barometer for what is a rock artist and what is not, is somebody who has a certain element of blues, even a hint of soul or blues music, derivative of African-American blues, folk, spiritual, or gospel.
Ian Astbury
#71. I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.
Bob Dylan
#72. 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
#73. I'm called a folk singer, and I'm not too sure about that. I went about my life approaching music not from the point of view of a singer, but from the point of view of an actor. That's how I first started to sing.
Harry Belafonte
#74. 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
#75. Real folk music long ago went to Nashville and left no known survivors.
Donal Henahan
#76. If someone asked what kind of music I play, I wouldn't say I'm a folk singer; however, if folk music means music for the people, and playing music to entertain them and share different messages, then sure, I'd like to think that I'm part folk singer.
Langhorne Slim
#77. I'm working on my music a lot, like folk singing, guitar. It's sort of rocky, folky, alty, angsty. I'm putting a lot of energy into that. I write pretty much all the time.
Jamie Campbell Bower
#78. This is a book for every fiddler who has realized halfway through playing an ancient Scottish air that the Ramones "I Wanna Be Sedated" is what folk music is really all about, and gone straight into it.
Neil Gaiman
#79. 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
#80. All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.
Louis Armstrong
#81. 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
#82. Sixties folk rock was my original muse and the folk audience-people who listen to music off the beaten track-fostered my career. I definitely don't want to abandon the genre but I also need to make sure I'm Dar Williams first.
Dar Williams
#83. I see a lot of connections between folk and punk music just because they're both subcorporate music - I mean, traditionally.
Ani DiFranco
#84. I went to school for folk music back when I was a teenager and learned hundreds of songs.
Roger McGuinn
#85. I've never set out consciously to write American music. I don't know what that would be unless the obvious Appalachian folk references.
Carlisle Floyd
#86. 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
#87. I don't have very sophisticated taste in music. I listen to a lot of folk music. I like reggae.
Anne Lamott
#88. It's one of those songs that everybody knows, but you are not supposed to do, because everyone does it, only no-one does it, because you're not supposed to do it, because everyone does it....if you follow that....
Gloria Jackson
#89. (a womanist)
3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.
Alice Walker
#90. In Chapel Hill among a friendly folk, this old university, the first state university to open its doors, stands on a hill set in the midst of beautiful forests under the skies that give their color and their charm to the life of youth gathered here ... there is music in the air of the place.
Frank Porter Graham
#91. Well, I don't think it ever did, but in the early '60s I got interested in folk music.
Warren Zevon
#92. I came late to the genre of folk music.
Tom Morello
#93. 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
#94. I was involved in the Great Folk Music scare back in the sixties, when it almost caught on.
Martin Mull
#95. People can overcome their differences, and when united, move toward a world of greater fairness and justice. As in folk music, each person has a unique role to play.
Peter Yarrow
#96. 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
#97. In the early 60s, folk music seemed to be very popular. In the early 70s, people like James Taylor, John Denver, Jim Croce and Cat Stevens brought back the interest in acoustic music. Today, we don't hear anything.
Paul Stookey
#98. Folk music was out there. Clubs were springing up and they were hot with the college kids.
Dick Smothers
#99. 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
#100. And she tried the high heels but she couldn't bring herself to prance.
Ani DiFranco
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