Folk Quotations

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.

There was a time that I was only known for being a plagiarist. It used to hurt at times because there was so much effort I was putting into music. And instead of that, it was a couple tunes that I had reproduced from folk songs to remake as film songs, which were being written about.

I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing 'em.

For me, let's keep jazz as folk music. Let's not make jazz classical music. Let's keep it as street music, as people's everyday-life music. Let's see jazz musicians continue to use the materials, the tools, the spirit of the actual time that they're living in, as what they build their lives as musicians around.

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.

After a summer trip to Switzerland, which was rich in experiences, I started writing. In the beginning, I aimed at descriptions of nature and folk life until, as the years passed, the description of man became my chief interest.

I didn't have a manifesto. I had some discontent. It seemed to me that midcentury mainstream American science fiction had often been triumphalist and militaristic, a sort of folk propaganda for American exceptionalism.

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.

The keynote of simple folk is bad manners, familiarity. They intrude on one's private soul.

From a young age, I was encouraged to sing, dance and learn folk and popular songs in Spanish.

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.

My dad took me for an audition once, to show me, 'OK, you want to be a child actor, this is what it's like.' I sang a folk song about donkeys on this West End stage with this big director, and there was a queue of 200 girls all singing 'Memory.' I was terrible. Terrible.

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.

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.

I think one of the reasons Stephen King's stories work so well is that he places his stories in spooky old New England, where a lot of American folk legends came from.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a moody folk singer, sitting on stools and being very depressing.

I'm not a folk or jazz singer, more a hard-edged pop singer - with some rock, and song hooks.

When I was six, I entered a talent contest. I dyed my hair blond, had a chainsaw and pretended I was Eminem. The old folk weren't expecting that.

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.

I was in a rock band; I was my own folk singer; I was in a death metal band for a very short time; I was in a cover band, a jazz band, a blues band. I was in a gospel choir.

From chain gangs to folk songs to intelligent soul, America has created musicians dedicated to truth, justice, and a better American Way.

At the same time the folk boom was happening, the civil rights movement was happening, the anti-war movement was happening, the ban the bomb movement was happening, the environmental movement was happening. There was suddenly a generation ready to change the course of history.

All along, I did what I was comfortable doing, which was to play the music I enjoyed and try to stretch the parameters a bit. Country and bluegrass and folk were my foundation.

My Portuguese uncle had a Portuguese version of a ukulele. The family would pull it out after dinner and play Portuguese folk songs on it. I couldn't wait for him to finish so I could get my hands on it. I was seven or eight years old. And he used to have a Fender amp in his house and an electric guitar. I would spend hours making sounds.

Technically a memoir, 'The Woman Warrior' becomes almost magical through its inclusion of folk tales, dreams, and revisions.

When I first started working on 'Staying Dead,' I got some well-meaning but negative feedback from industry folk because - back in 2001 - epic fantasy was still the big thing, alternate history a tight runner-up.

Angels, demons, spirits, wizards, gods and witches have peppered folk religions since mankind first started telling stories.

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.

I think what makes the Byrds stand up all these years is the basis in folk music. Folk music, being a timeless art form, is the foundation of the Byrds. We were all from a folk background. We considered ourselves folk singers even when we strapped on electric instruments and dabbled in different things.

Certain songs are almost like folk songs, which I love. I love folk music, and if you listen to 'Live Bullet,' there's 'Jody Girl,' which is almost a folk song, and I've always loved folk music. Quiet music, I don't try to do that with - I try to set a mood. But most of the stuff I do enjoy recording is up-tempo, and yes, I try to recreate that.

The theatre has always been voraciously omnivorous. Dramatists have always raided every medium to find grist to their mill: myths, folk tales, newspapers, novels, films, works of art of all kinds.

While there are many experts in the psychoanalysis of individuals, there seems to be little active authority or understanding in the matter of the persistent shared madness in everyday life. It's as if collective mental illness doesn't exist except in the vernacular and in contemporary folk myth, where it remains trapped and politically useless.

'Filk' is the folk music of the science fiction and fantasy community - you get parodies, you get traditional music that's had the words slightly modified, and you'll also get just original works that have been written about science fiction and fantasy works, or with science fiction and fantasy themes.

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.

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.

Anything that anybody wants to give me is great! I've had folk songs, heavy metal songs, jewellery... I would never call anything any fan gives me weird, as it's how people express what they like about the books, what it means to them, and that's a wonderful thing.

As a teenager, my blackness was also questioned by some of the life choices I made that weren't considered to be 'black' choices. For example, joining the swim team when it is a known fact that 'black folk don't swim'; or choosing to become a vegetarian when blacks clearly love chicken.

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.

It's occurred to me I need to laugh at myself more, and that I don't need to be some sad folk singer all the time. I don't want to be the queen of pain.

I tend to be freer on the piano. I never took guitar lessons, so my reach exceeds my grasp - what I hear in my head I don't always know how to play. But I love to play over something else. I'm not a self-starter. I get kind of bored with the same three folk chords that I know.

The novel is the first art form that is an honest-to-god commodity. That's what makes it different from both high art and folk art.

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

I can remember back as far as age 8, performing with the Boston Folk Song Society. It was a Woody Guthrie song.

Give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people.

I was immersed in popular songs of the time, of the '30s and '40s. I was writing songs, making fun of the attitudes of those songs, in the musical style of the songs themselves; love songs, folk songs, marches, football.

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.

As artists, we must not go down to the level of the masa; we should bring them up, intellectualize our languages, create classics out of our folk arts. We can do this if we are true to our roots and strive for excellence.

My father was a painter. There was a lot of singing. We hung around with a lot of folk musicians. My family knew a lot of great folk musicians of the time, like Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Leadbelly. They were all people we knew.

Japan is very cosmopolitan - it values its origins, but a world view hovers above this narrow perspective. The interest of the Japanese in their folk culture is transcendental.

Yeah, it can be a make-or-break thing. Absolutely. A performing songwriter can come to the Folk Alliance and play in front of a room full of people and have 60 or 70 gigs booked out of this thing.

What we're making isn't folk music, but savage intellectualism. We speak a language of a new world community that understands cultures can relate. So people who still speak of nationalism and racism or what separates us, they are inadequate for this time. Evolution goes on.

We had 135,000 people last year. We are putting infrastructure into place for a similar crowd. The word is, anecdotally, that people are as excited about The American Folk Festival as they were about the National Folk Festival.

Unless the ordinary Kashmiri folk are taken into confidence and also roped into the decision making process, what meaning does the dialogue have?

Unless the ordinary Kashmiri folk are taken into confidence and also roped in the decision making process, what meaning does the dialogue have?

We're going to do some old traditional folk songs. We haven't completely set up a list. We'll play some music from modern Celtic rock bands like the Seven Nations. We'll play a couple of more contemporary Irish tunes that I wouldn't call rock; they're more contemporary ballads. We haven't set it all out yet, but they run the gamut.

We want to show people about folk art and inform them.

We also will do some music that is representative of the country that we are visiting. We brought in a native of Croatia who moved here a few years ago and speaks the language. So we were able to teach the boys some words and pronunciation and she was nice enough to bring us folk songs and the national anthem of Croatia. We learned those things and are hoping to do them while we are on tour. It is nice to show people you are making an attempt to learn a little bit about their language and culture.

We ran into him later that night at the convention and he listened to us again. We just kept running into him at shows. We also ran into him at the National Folk Festival in Richmond.

What I discovered all over Ireland is that people living simple lives by the sea or in the remote countryside seem a lot calmer than city folk with their iPads and their Android phones.

She was one of my heroes. She was the matriarch of the Washington folk community.

On an international tour that usually means American music ? folk music, jazz music, traditional music ? from the people that melted into our communal pot here in the Fox Valley.

Old ladies think we're cute. People our age think we're interesting and we have something new to say. People in their middle ages remember the folk revival of the '60s.

She incorporates comedy and funny songs - it's not the kind of thing you'd typically see at a folk concert, but it's really unique and fun.

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.

My aunt Geraldine was the unofficial historian and storyteller. She had all the information about family members and the gossip that came out of the church because we were very much part of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. At family gatherings, the older folk had the floor, had pride of place, and it was their stories I remember.

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.

No, I don't think we'll have any surprises or anything. Obviously, we regret if there were any surprises a year ago. They certainly were not intended. In this moment in history where security of everyone, not just the players and coaches but the fans and trainers and doctors and everyone who is there, media folk or whoever, that's part of the world we live in and we expect it.

People were learning to play traditional music, folk songs, and that's a big field - that's everything from blues to Appalachian music.

Political folk talk a lot these days about 'messaging' - a neologism designed to describe the way in which parties and politicians consciously characterize their efforts. It is only intended to be positive - i.e., 'Our messaging is designed to show we care.'

Personally speaking, I think that being a folk song writer, which I am, comes with a responsibility to reflect on the social times you are living in, ... That's just what I did in my latest release, Hearts in Mind.

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.

I got out of Grade school. I was in the Eighth Grade and I started playing guitar. I was into folk singing - Peter, Paul & Mary - until I heard the Beatles.

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

I don't know that's it's maybe as well known now as it was in past years, but it really has passed into folk culture. The truth is that Rock City's advertising has overshadowed Rock City itself.

Cats are mysterious kind of folk - there is more passing in their minds than we are aware of.

But thats not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have just landed in them, usually - their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didnt. And if they had, we shouldnt know, because theyd have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on - and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end

'Battleship' is not a film that Francois Truffaut would have made. Nor would any of those other namby-pamby European directors. Nope, this picture eschews that Continental obsession with small stories, set in quaint towns filled with pockmarked folk doing their banal things.

I did a TV series for the British History Channel a few years ago and for a few weeks afterwards I was accosted by folk in Britain wanting to talk, which was flattering, but the memory faded and blessed anonymity returned.

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.

I always thought of the waterfront as a quiet area, but the folk festival really changes that. They renovate the waterfront every year. It just keeps getting nicer.

He's considered one of the finest in contemporary folk acoustic guitar. He's been voted in numerous guitar magazines as one of the greats. I'm excited to hear him.

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.

The people people have for friends You common sense appall But the people people marry Are the queerest folk of all.

Gujarat is truly vibrant. Be it handicrafts, folk music, art, costumes or food - the state offers the best of everything.

I think it's a metal version of Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan ... Metal Folk protest?

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.

I was just making a statement about how far people will go to their faith . . . like sleeping on a bed of nails or snake handling. Those kinds of things show how deeply people believe in God. So to me, this record is like religious folk art. It's kind of my statement.

Jeremy personifies the guy singing his own songs, which is very much an outgrowth of the folk tradition.

Last week in all media classes, we read Chinese folk tales and I did a presentation on China.

rock 'n' roll, jazz and traditional folk culture.

Start with familiar fairy tales or Bible stories or old folk tales or ancient myths and legends. You can tell them straight, or you can add your own twists. If it's a story kids already know, they'll try to correct you if you stray, but that's part of the fun. You can make each story your own.

Some folk think it's a dead issue, but sometimes, when issues aren't resolved, they tend to fester. Nothing has come to fruition, and, until it does, there's a sense of dismay in the students and staff.

My stuff was more of a folk coffeehouse thing, with more acoustic guitar, just me doing a single, and then adding on instruments and voices, with emphasis on lyrics and singing and light kind of acoustic jazz.

My parents knew a wider range of people than most, and so we had actors, journalists, politicians, planters, sportsmen and women and business folk all coming in and out of the places we lived in. Although my parents were not wealthy, they lived a legendary and amazingly cosmopolitan life.

My mother read nursery rhymes to me, and my grandmother told me folk stories, but as a child I had no interest in writing whatsoever.

I tell them, 'I think it's quite hot.' They call it a trend, but if it is a trend it's been going for longer than I can remember. It's the music I grew up on as a country boy, and there's nothing else like it. It's nice to see the city folk are catching up.

The Ark is a great community that supports folk music. ...Ann Arbor reminded me of home. It reminded me of Maine.

I was on the dole once. I loved it. It was only for a couple of years, when I was 20 or 21 and playing in a band. Back then, this was something young folk did - you got your rent paid, a little bit of money to live on, and you loafed around, wrote songs, rehearsed and dreamed of playing Wembley Stadium.

I was not a musician at the time. I had an acoustic guitar and I used to sing folk music and Bob Dylan songs. I loved rock and roll though.

Well, I think every now and again, some people deserve to get their butts chewed. Every now and again some people deserve a pat on the back. What I try and do is compliment folk who deserve a compliment, and chew folks out who deserve to be chewed out.