Top 100 Quotes About Folk Music
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. I mean, the genuine roots of culture is folk music.
John Lydon
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, American folk music with a beat.
Van Morrison
#9. Folk music is the original melody of man; it is the musical mirror of the world.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#10. I got hooked into folk music by accident, because that's what white college kids liked when I was a child.
Stephen Stills
#11. My family owns a music store in Claremont, California, called The Claremont Folk Music Center.
Ben Harper
#12. 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
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. In Jewish folk music, despair is disguised as the dance. And so, truth's disguise was irony.
Julian Barnes
#17. I don't purchase records. I do enjoy listening to things like Japanese folk music or Indian music.
John Lennon
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. There's not that much English folk music that is really that appealing.
Alison Goldfrapp
#21. 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
#22. Gujarat is truly vibrant. Be it handicrafts, folk music, art, costumes or food - the state offers the best of everything.
Shreya Ghoshal
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. I fell in love with folk music at Surprise Lake Camp. It was the songs of Woody Guthrie and the Weavers.
Neil Diamond
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. Logically, when you talkin' about folk music and blues, you find out it's music of just plain people.
Brownie McGhee
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. I grew up listening to everything. You know, from Argentinean folk music, tango, jazz, rock, just everything.
Gustavo Santaolalla
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. Georgian folk music has more new musical ideas than all the contemporary music.
[Los Angeles Times. 26.02.1990]
Igor Stravinsky
#40. 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
#41. When I think of folk music, I think of topical songs. And I don't write topical songs.
Ray Lamontagne
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. I love all those great 'f' words - feminism, folk music..
Ani DiFranco
#45. 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
#46. I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.
Bob Dylan
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. Real folk music long ago went to Nashville and left no known survivors.
Donal Henahan
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.
Louis Armstrong
#54. 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
#55. I went to school for folk music back when I was a teenager and learned hundreds of songs.
Roger McGuinn
#56. 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
#57. I don't have very sophisticated taste in music. I listen to a lot of folk music. I like reggae.
Anne Lamott
#58. Well, I don't think it ever did, but in the early '60s I got interested in folk music.
Warren Zevon
#59. I came late to the genre of folk music.
Tom Morello
#60. I was involved in the Great Folk Music scare back in the sixties, when it almost caught on.
Martin Mull
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. Folk music was out there. Clubs were springing up and they were hot with the college kids.
Dick Smothers
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. Turn a mountain upside down, you have a woman. Turn a woman upside down, you have a valley. Turn a valley upside down, you get folk music.
Tom Robbins
#68. When I really started liking music was when I could play some of it myself, and after a couple of years of playing folk music, I kinda rediscovered those hits that were on the radio all the time when I was a kid.
Jackson Browne
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. Hip hop is at its essence a folk music, because it speaks the language that people are still speaking at ground zero, it speaks the language that people speak on the streets.
Talib Kweli
#72. I do notice that I spend a lot of all my time steeped in different forms of myth, such as English folk music, for example, not really studying it necessarily, but just trying to experience it so I can recall it later.
Jez Butterworth
#73. I sing a mixture of everything from opera, folk music, Broadway. It's a mix of things.
Katherine Jenkins
#74. Country is based on folk music, which has been around for centuries - "
"So has the plague.
Karen Chance
#75. 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
#76. My dad, the old professor, used to say, 'Never get into an argument about what's folk music and what isn't.'
Pete Seeger
#77. Folk music is not so much a body of art as it is a process, an attitude, and a way of life; its distinguishing features lie not within the songs themselves, but in the relations of those songs to a folk culture.
Sam Hinton
#78. The Band is probably the ultimate example of people taking all kinds of music, from gospel to blues to mountain music to folk music to on and on and on and on and putting them all in this big pot and mixing up a new gumbo.
Robbie Robertson
#79. 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
#80. I always thought I was singing American folk music.
Lonnie Donegan
#81. My idea of heaven is a place where the Tyne meets the Delta, where folk music meets the blues.
Mark Knopfler
#82. 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
#83. Folk music is music that everyday people can play, and it inspired a lot of people to make their own music. That trailed into making your own pop music, and that's why garage bands started springing up everywhere.
Arlo Guthrie
#84. There are two types of folk music: quiet folk music and loud folk music. I play both.
Dave Alvin
#85. Alan [Lomax] and his father started off changing the definition of folk music from something ancient and anonymous to something very contemporary.
Pete Seeger
#86. If you like someone's work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to. Anyone who wants to be a songwriter should listen to as much folk music as they can, study the form and structure of stuff that has been around for 100 years.
Bob Dylan
#87. 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
#88. I came through folk music simply because it was easy to get into it.
Joni Mitchell
#89. 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
#90. Folk music is a bunch of fat people.
Bob Dylan
#91. I grew up listening to a lot of soul music, and a lot of folk music.
Katey Sagal
#92. 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
#93. When we moved back to the US, folk music was all the rage. So I traded in my banjo for a guitar.
Michael Storm
#94. I don't really know what 'folk music' means anymore.
Amos Lee
#95. The way I approach things is from an experimental folk music standpoint.
Sxip Shirey
#96. 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
#97. Jazz I regard as an American folk music; not the only one, but a very powerful one which is probably in the blood and feeling of the American people more than any other style of folk music.
George Gershwin
#98. 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
#99. The first music I was ever exposed to was Irish folk music, like the Clancy Brothers. My father plays that and Christmas songs.
Matt Dillon
#100. 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
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