Folk Music Quotes

• All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

  Louis Armstrong

  Funny, Music, Song

  Quoted in N.Y. Times, 7 July 1971

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• Folk music is the original melody of man; it is the musical mirror of the world.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Mirrors, Musical

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• Folk music has pretty powerful medicine for changing your heart.

  Paul Stookey

  Powerful, Heart, Medicine

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Folk music was to strengthen and unify people, whether it was through an uprising and rebellion or whether is was through hard work, bringing in crops. But it was to strengthen each other and that's still what music is about today.

  PJ Harvey

  Hard Work, Uprising, People

  Source: www.wfuv.org

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• I mean, the genuine roots of culture is folk music.

  John Lydon

  Mean, Roots, Culture

  "Johnny Rotten Praises Battling Bands, Trashes Internet Liars". Interview With Liot Van Buskirk, www.wired.com. September 3, 2007.

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• It's a folk singer's job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people

  Woody Guthrie

  Jobs, People, Comforting

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• Folk Music Has Always Contained a Concern for the Human Condition.

  Mary Travers

  Human Condition, Concern, Folks

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• 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

  Song, People, Stories

  "Brandi Carlile on Her New Live Album, Admiration for Elton John and Thoughts on Lady Gaga". Interview with Lesley Goldberg, www.hollywoodreporter.com. May 2, 2011.

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• 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

  Humanity, Mind, Culture

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• Folk Music is the map of singing.

  Alan Lomax

  Singing, Maps, Music Is

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• 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

  Song, Art, Attitude

  "The Singer of Folk Songs and His Conscience". Western Folklore, p. 170 - 173, July 1955.

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• Folk music is a bunch of fat people.

  Bob Dylan

  Music, People, Fats

  Quoted in David Pickering Brewer's Twentieth Century Music (1994).

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• I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

  Bob Dylan

  Music, Folks

  Bob Dylan (2007). “Dylan on Dylan: The Essential Interviews”, Hodder & Stoughton

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• 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

  Moving, Unique, Play

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• The way I see it, rock n' roll is folk music.

  Robert Plant

  Rocks, Way, Rock N Roll

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• I grew up listening to a lot of soul music, and a lot of folk music.

  Katey Sagal

  Soul, Listening, Grew Up

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

  Mark Knopfler

  Ideas, Heaven, Delta Blues

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• 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

  Voice, People, Ballet

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• If songs were lines in a conversation, the situation would be fine . . .

  Nick Drake

  Music, Song, Would Be

  Song: Hazey Jane II, Album: Bryter Layter

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• 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

  Stars, Rocks, Fans

  Interview with Stephen Thompson, www.avclub.com. March 13, 2002.

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• Logically, when you talkin' about folk music and blues, you find out it's music of just plain people.

  Brownie McGhee

  People, Folks, Blues Music

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• I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.

  Pete Seeger

  People, Simple Life, Small Villages

  "The Old Left". New York Times Magazine Interview, www.nytimes.com. January 22, 1995.

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• Action is the antidote to despair.

  Joan Baez

  Inspirational, Motivational, Happiness

  "The Joan Baez 75th Birthday Concert: Four Days Before The Iowa Voting, A Double Shot Of Espresso" by Jesse Kornbluth, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 28, 2016.

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• Rock ’n roll is really swing with a modern name. It began on the levees and plantations, took in folk songs, and features blues and rhythm. It's the rhythm that gets to the kids – they're starved of music they can dance to, after all those years of crooners.

  Alan Freed

  Music, Dance, Song

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• 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

  School, Names, National Parks

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