Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Folk Quotes from famous authors such as Neha Bhasin, Lou Barlow, Justin Chon, Timothy B. Schmit, Ernest Bevin. Let’s look at these pieces of wisdom. We definitely have something to learn from them!
1
I would love to do something with Mohit Chauhan and other folk artists.
2
I’m the Folk Implosion’s biggest fan.
3
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.
4
Even though I grew up playing folk music – and surf music, originally – I was listening to Motown and Stax on the radio as well. That music always resonated with me.
5
There never has been a war yet which, if the facts had been put calmly before the ordinary folk, could not have been prevented. The common man, I think, is the great protection against war.
6
In high school, I got into folk music, and I taught myself guitar. And when The Beatles came out, I got an electric guitar.
7
I feel just as passionately about experimental electronic music as I do about folk music.
8
‘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.
9
The ‘crownd’ is still the unit, the favourite coin of the labourers, especially the elder folk. They use the word something in the same sense as the dollar, and look with regret upon the gradual disappearance of the broad silver disc with the figure of ‘St. Gaarge’ conquering the dragon.
10
I mean, the genuine roots of culture is folk music.
11
I love the U.K. folk scene. In the States, nobody knows what to do with me. There’s still a very narrow definition of Americana.
12
There’s sort of a persistent misperception that talking about race is black folk’s burden. Ultimately, only men can end sexism, and only white people can end racism.
13
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.
14
I live in Harlem, New York City. I am unmarried. I like ‘Tristan,’ goat’s milk, short novels, lyric poems, heat, simple folk, boats and bullfights; I dislike ‘Aida,’ parsnips, long novels, narrative poems, cold, pretentious folk, buses and bridges.
15
It’s fine if folk don’t like my sense of humour. But if somebody misunderstands, then that hurts a bit.
16
Western, jazz, folk, or tribal music, whatever the form, they all have the same sapta swaras as the basis.
17
What’s quite nice about this whole folk movement is that it’s born out of genuine friendship. And nobody’s infringing on anybody’s space.
18
We say Black lives matter, but a lot of white folks don’t know Black folk.
19
I grew up listening to popular music. My father was a Peruvian folk singer. He played the guitar at home. He sang songs with a waltzing rhythm, yet you can still hear the Spanish influences. I accompanied him to his performances.
20
I call myself a singer-songwriter influenced by the gospel and jazz tradition. Naturally, because of my lifestyle and love for nature, there’s a lot of folk and Americana there because that’s just my life.
21
I was looking for some vintage furniture, and I came across this booth where they sold old pictures. This guy didn’t just have things in a box; he had really curated his collection. Each image was like this little folk masterpiece.
22
I would love to be one of those fellows who combine formal and folk music approaches.
23
All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.
24
Many of the short videos on Vine feel as though they belong to an ever-evolving, completely new genre of modern folk art.
25
Classical is a more refined and structured dance form. Folk is made for celebration. That’s not a very competitive dance form. Though you can bring classical on stage, folk becomes limited. Like you would love to do bhangra and garba at parties, but when you see it on stage, it is very limited in terms of movements.
26
I’m a folk singer-songwriter. I am pretty poppy though.
27
I work because I have issues and questions and feelings and thoughts that I want to have a look at. I’m not in need of, or wanting, particularly, to know what other folk are up to.
28
We detested folk music because it was cerebral and sedate and we had no time for that. But the Byrds were OK because they electrified it and they had English hairstyles.
29
I’m an old-fashioned folk singer. I stand in front of an audience with a guitar and a barstool.
30
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.
31
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.
32
When Kenny first came to me, I think he was thinking of making a nice little folk record, but in my opinion, folk music had come to an end and I felt he needed to go to the next step, the next generation.
33
Conspiracies, since they cannot be engaged in without the fellowship of others, are for that reason most perilous; for as most men are either fools or knaves, we run excessive risk in making such folk our companions.
34
New Orleans is gumbo. You get so man types of things… jazz, folk, Zydeco.
35
As a white queer person of a certain degree of economic privilege, I think that my ability to pass as straight is a privilege that other folk I know don’t have. It’s important to keep in mind who really is in the most trouble and to direct our attention to assisting those people.
36
I try to make my music have the quiet spaces of folk, the intimacy, and the energy of rock.
37
Of the music that we’ve done over the years, the things that are the most requested are the hymns. And folk music is also high on the list.
38
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.
39
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.
40
The Marathi film ‘Natrang’ has amazing songs. I also like and have sufi and folk music.
41
In ‘Spinal Tap,’ there’s the fake historical quality of ‘Stonehenge.’ It’s something the musicians look at with a mystical reverence. In folk music, it’s the seriousness with which these people approach their ‘art.’
42
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.
43
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.
44
Jazz is the folk music of the machine age.
45
My father being in the movie business, I thought being an actor would be great. But when I started singing to people in coffeehouses, you know, singing folk music and then, later, singing songs that I started to write myself, I felt more than an affinity for it. I felt a calling.
46
I don’t really listen to pop-country, but I like really, really old country that’s closer to folk. Like Johnny Cash, who is considered country.
47
As I was born and brought up in Himachal Pradesh, I used to listen to a lot of Hindi songs over radio apart from ghazals, western music, and ‘Himachali’ folk songs.
48
Folk music is very honest, it’s very humble, it’s very organic, and the voice is exactly that. And so I’m very excited to put the two together.
49
Folk tales are my favourite form of story telling. They not only just adjust the reader according to the world it is introducing the reader to, but also enchant the reader with its mysterious and magical characters.
50
Trans folk are so often pushed to the margins and not afforded the resources and opportunities that some nontrans people are.
51
I didn’t grow up with classical music. My father was a folk music singer.
52
My dad worked all sorts of jobs when I was growing up and finally ended up as a surveyor; my mum delivers meals to old folk around where we live. We didn’t have much money when I was growing up, but I had a very happy childhood.
53
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.
54
I absolutely love American folk art, can’t get enough of it.
55
Folk musicians have a lot of the same self-importance, but they’re way more cruel and jealous than rock musicians – I know this for a fact because I used to be a folk musician.
56
The early influences, in many ways, were in Baltimore. I was passing open windows where there might be a radio playing something funky. In the summertime, sometimes there’d be a man sitting on a step, playing an acoustic guitar, playing some kind of folk blues. The seed had been planted.
57
I wanted to write songs which I think is a different thing. I wanted to write music that is informed by folk music. The chord progressions are obvious references.
58
I’m not a go-out-with-a-band artist. I’m an intimate, storytelling folk artist. It guides the writing and makes for a concert that I’m proud of.
59
I really like working. I can’t think of a job I didn’t like. I was in an Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, which is not my idea of folk art; but I really enjoyed making it, and everyone was really nice.
60
I can go from doing an electronic track to hip-hop to even folk songs. I think people like that variety in me.
61
My father was obsessed with folk music from around the world, and I think the countless artists who performed them are my biggest influences.
62
We were like psychedelic folk combined with Sonic Youth’s noise.
63
My father being in the movie business, I thought being an actor would be great. But when I started singing to people in coffeehouses, you know, singing folk music and then, later, singing songs that I started to write myself, I felt more than an affinity for it.
64
I am basically a folk singer because I’m coming from a part of the earth where folklore means a lot. The Mediterranean is a very old part of the world, and the more a place is old, the more there is folklore.
65
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.
66
My dad was very influential with the music he exposed me to. He was really into blues and folk, so he’d play me guys like Muddy Waters and T-Bone Walker and Richie Havens – a lot of very emotional players.
67
A folk melody can exist uniquely but also still be somewhat familiar to you.
68
Like all right-listening folk, I am an implacable enemy of all muzak.
69
I can’t stand folk who are all snobby about reality TV.
70
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.
71
I love the sound of voices singing together, congregational singing, anything like gospel, or folk, or sea shanties.
72
Folk music was out there. Clubs were springing up and they were hot with the college kids.
73
Fairy tales and folk tales are part of the DNA of all stories and great fun to write.
74
Do you know what a soldier is, young man? He’s the chap who makes it possible for civilised folk to despise war.
75
Black folk who don’t realize I’m mixed will treat me like I’m some racist person, or when white people find out I’m black, they treat me with racism, and I don’t feel like I belong or fit in anywhere.
76
What I like about pop music, and why I’m still attracted to it, is that in the end it becomes our folk music.
77
Seabear’s love of soft folk sounds is unquestionable, but that doesn’t stop the Icelandic band from infusing its music with layers of instrumentation.
78
Common folk didn’t have last names in the 8th and 9th centuries.
79
Meghdhanush has brought the newer generation close to folk music with their personal touch of rock and they definitely rock at it.
80
I grew up listening to everything. You know, from Argentinean folk music, tango, jazz, rock, just everything.
81
I have never denied my background or my culture. I have taught my child to embrace her Mexican heritage, to love my first language, Spanish, to learn about Mexican history, music, folk art, food, and even the Mexican candy I grew up with.
82
Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, American folk music with a beat.
83
I’m a touring musician. I don’t watch the charts. I had the kind of success I’d hoped for. I won Grammys for a folk record, and that was magic.
84
Folk tales, which are usually written for children, become a bigger lesson for adults.
85
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.
86
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.
87
I think that Shakespeare himself raided fairy tales and chronicle writers, and he always looked to people who worked in the mythic genres, whether it was folk tales or popular novels.
88
Our appreciation of folk art will strengthen our identities, our pride in belonging to a community. People trained in the creative use of their hands soon acquire skills, excellent craftsmanship which will be the most important measure of how well we can industrialize.
89
I grew up listening to spiritual music, Blind Willie Johnson and folk.
90
My grandmother valued her Southern roots, folk culture, and healing.
91
I was reared on folk music.
92
Listening to all these different musical genres from all over the world and listening to my father’s record collection, the Irish folk influences from home. Of course they’re all in there somewhere hiding within the lyrics and melodies. But rap music was the biggest influence on my way of writing and my performing.
93
I’m really sick of anthems. Every song has to be a very big singalong thing – it feels very Eighties. There are a lot of ‘whoah whoa whoahs,’ this stadium thing. You’re even getting that from some of the ‘folk’ groups. I can’t stand it.
94
After college, rather than pursue real work, I joined a folk group and sang in coffee houses and nightclubs, an occupation that does little for the intellect and even less for the complexion.
95
Judy Garland, Doris Day, and Gene Kelly were all big influences growing up from all of the films. I’m also a huge folk music fan – Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan have influenced a lot of how music can inspire change in our world.
96
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.
97
I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing ’em.
98
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.
99
I don’t really know what ‘folk music’ means anymore.
100
I’ve always thought about myself as somewhat of a folk musician. I just write words. I don’t think I’m even a musician. I don’t play a lot of instruments, not really a soloist or anything.
101
My mother went to work in the homes of white folk, usually living in and looking after their children. The money was small.
102
I love folk. I love rap.
103
In society at large, nerds are law-abiding, caring, fundamentally good folk who keep the wheels of civilization grinding.
104
My parents knew about the story of Aladdin far before the animation film. It’s a folk tale that is very prevalent in Egypt.
105
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.
106
Early American music and early folk music, before the record became popular and before there were pop stars and before there were venues made to present music where people bought tickets, people played music in the community, and it was much more part of a fabric of everyday life. I call that music ‘root music.’
107
I love the State Fair. It’s an event that really brings the urban and the rural Minnesotans together. Rural people get a chance to mix with the urban folk and see what the cities have to offer, and urban people get to remember where their food comes from and who produces it for them.
108
The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.
109
I’m not a folk or jazz singer, more a hard-edged pop singer – with some rock, and song hooks.
110
I never started out as an R&B singer. I grew up on all types of music – jazz, rock, pop, country, folk – and I wanted to bring that to my stage.
111
Bruce Springsteen’s a rock star. Elton John is a rock star. I’m a folk musician. Honestly, I think that’s true.
112
People used to grow up in small communities where folk wisdom was passed down. But we don’t live there anymore. We can’t go next door to your aunt and ask her for the answers.
113
I love gothic monsters, but I like to root them more firmly in the traditional folklore from which they sprang. Or at least, I like to evoke the feeling of those folk stories.
114
The folk music definition has changed in this fast music world and musical styles are blending really quickly.
115
I got hooked into folk music by accident, because that’s what white college kids liked when I was a child.
116
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.
117
Folk music is the heart of the Indian music scene for several years.
118
From Jesse James to Charles Manson, the media, since their inception, have turned criminals into folk heroes.
119
The first music I was ever exposed to was Irish folk music, like the Clancy Brothers. My father plays that and Christmas songs.
120
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.
121
When I got to NYU, I had applied based on playing folk music, and they said, ‘You’re the banjo girl,’ so I thought ,’OK, I’m the banjo girl.’
122
Malayalis tend to be nostalgic about rustic storylines, pastoral themes and ordinary folk who lead a simple way of life.
123
Pete Seeger is a modest, unassuming, cheerful, and kind-natured man. He’s a good folk singer, if you can stand folk singing. And he’s such an excellent banjo player that you almost don’t wish you had a pair of wire cutters.
124
There’s a similarity between European and North African folk musics.
125
Robert Burns enriched Scottish song with his genius and is mainly responsible for the rich treasure house of song that we enjoy today. He collected folk songs, retained the melodic line, kept what words were usable and rewrote the rest. He didn’t claim ownership.
126
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.
127
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.
128
Music is very subjective. You may or may not like a song, but folk and regional language have a connectivity that binds different people together, who slowly begin to relate to it.
129
I have very eclectic tastes. I love soul and Motown; I listen to some rap – Stormzy, Tinie Tempah, Drake. I also love classical music, American country and the folk tradition. I often start the day with gospel on my way to work. The only thing I have never got into is punk.
130
In ‘Ta Chuma,’ we used folk language so that the honesty reflected in it can live in people’s hearts forever.
131
If I wasn’t an actor, I’d be a moody folk singer, sitting on stools and being very depressing.
132
Endless Jane Austen film adaptations have given us the idea that the Regency was a classy, pretty, palatable period of history. Notable for their muslins, tea parties and flirting, you’d think that most Regency folk lived in highly desirable rectories.
133
The folk that you get on Radio 1 isn’t the sort of thing that I’m into: it’s kind of too uptempo and jaunty for me. I prefer a bit of atmosphere and a bit of darkness.
134
My musical influences growing up were limited to Korean folk songs and hymns as I went to a Christian boarding school where I was not allowed to listen to secular music.
135
What do folk always say about Arsenal? They can pass you to death.
136
The only folk I can judge are people like Woody Allen who I think is a genius, largely because I think he has beaten the system. He has his own company, and his films are all his own ideas. It’s his direction, and so it comes out the way he imagined it.
137
There’s a long history of anthropomorphic animals in Japanese literature. The so-called ‘funny animal scrolls’ were the first narratives in Japanese history, and the heroes of many folk tales have animals as their companions.
138
I think cool originates with the jazz culture in the ’40s. There was probably cool before that, but that’s when people started talking about cool – Miles Davis and Charlie Parker and a bunch of other early, cool jazz folk.
139
Folk music is a bunch of fat people.
140
My family went to a Mennonite Baptist church – they’re pretty conservative Christian folk. We weren’t on a colony or anything like that, but it certainly shaped me throughout the years.
141
I come from a family of fishermen. Fishing is very important to us. We don’t hunt. We’re not gun folk.
142
A lot of what I listened to growing up was blues, but also folk and indie music. So there’s this marriage of songs that structurally are quite bluesy. Sound-wise, there’s a lot of indie as well. But you can’t really say I’m pop-blues, because that’s insulting to blues. It just can’t exist.
143
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.
144
I’m just a very primitive, infantile folk singer.
145
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.
146
From chain gangs to folk songs to intelligent soul, America has created musicians dedicated to truth, justice, and a better American Way.
147
Everything that has ever been called folk art has always reflected domination.
148
I was working with the computer at university and playing jazz in the daytime, buying west-coast psychedelic and early Kraftwerk records in the afternoon, and playing folk at night. I was quite busy!
149
The late sixties and early seventies were kind of a breeding ground for exciting new sounds because easy listening and folk were kind of taking over the airwaves. I think it was a natural next step to take that blissful, easy-going sound and strangle the life out of it.
150
All these years, I have never forgotten what my parents have given me, and that is why I take special pride in composing music based on ragas and used folk music in films like ‘Apne Paraye.’
151
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.
152
I’ve never set out consciously to write American music. I don’t know what that would be unless the obvious Appalachian folk references.
153
My whole life, I’ve always had one foot in the classical world and one foot in the rock, pop, and folk world.
154
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.
155
I rejected most of the folk I was exposed to in the Seventies. I came around later to Tom Waits, some parts of Jim Croce, and a lot of Cat Stevens.
156
There’s been a time where I was like, I wanna be a folk singer; no, I wanna sing soul. I want to sing classical music. I want to sing R&B. I want to be on Broadway. I just wanna sing. Whatever comes out of my mouth, that’s what I want to do.
157
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.
158
I meet people from really grand backgrounds who had horrible parents who took no interest in them, whereas I’m a working-class boy from Deptford who was worshipped by all my rellies. Everybody in my extended family helped to raise me, and I realise now how lucky I was to grow up among kind folk.
159
I used to have a protest folk band in high school, and I wrote all my own songs. Then, in the B-52s, we would write collectively.
160
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.
161
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.
162
I think ‘Adiye/Yadike’ is unique and fresh and something new for Indian films. It brings together the blues and gospel feel with Tamil folk lyrics.
163
Harout Pamboukjian is one of the biggest Armenian folk singers in the world. In the ’70s, he was making these records that were really Zeppelin-influenced.
164
New Orleans is just so full of culture in the music content – blues, folk. I was introduced to a lot of things. My mother didn’t keep me away from other music. She only kept me away from rap. The closest I got to rap was D’Angelo.
165
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.
166
Cornwall has lots of folk and Celtic music and has that kind of surfer vibe as well. That was my kind of upbringing.
167
Why do we need to wait until somebody sells 10 million records to give people a show like that? What about us smaller, hungry folk? At least gimme a curtain!
168
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.
169
Everybody would grab a guitar and listen to somebody else and call themselves a folk singer. When they didn’t know no more songs, they’d run out of them.
170
Folk tales, fairy tales, religion, the occult – these are the things I’m most passionate about, even more than cinema. And I’m very passionate about cinema.
171
I see a lot of connections between folk and punk music just because they’re both subcorporate music – I mean, traditionally.
172
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.
173
It’s deep in the south of India and next to Goa, but thankfully the folk who like Goa haven’t worked out that Kerala is a lot nicer and just next door. You do feel that you are discovering somewhere entirely new in Kerala. It makes you feel like you are on a totally different planet.
174
Black America has always felt itself divided into two classes: the mucky-mucks and the folk.
175
Let us beware of common folk, of common sense, of sentiment, of inspiration, and of the obvious.
176
I had an amazing experience being on a hit show for Showtime, doing ‘Queer as Folk’, and impacting things socially, like helping change hearts and minds. It’s such a big chapter of my life.
177
Gujarat is truly vibrant. Be it handicrafts, folk music, art, costumes or food – the state offers the best of everything.
178
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.
179
I was a Ukrainian folk dancer in my teens, and I toured the country in 1991, shortly before the break-up of the Soviet Union.
180
Give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people.
181
My idea of heaven is a place where the Tyne meets the Delta, where folk music meets the blues.
182
Only two to three per cent of an audience is interested in words and pays attention to lyrics; most of the rest of it is about image or the beat or the sound, or else it’s a tribal thing – country & western, rap, heavy metal, with historical folk rock off in some kind of cult.
183
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.
184
The music that I first fell in love with was American music, really. Nothing against British acts – I love them and will forever – but on the whole, it was the art of American storytelling in the kind of folk and blues lyrics that, if you scratch a little bit, there’s a heartbreaking story there.
185
We have to preserve folk in its authenticity. Else folk will become fake.
186
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.
187
It is a part of us, film-makers and audiences; what we can’t say with dialogues, we say with a song. We tell stories through songs, look at our folk cultures.
188
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.
189
I suppose my little Martin acoustic guitar is quickly becoming a prize possession. It’s a lovely guitar. I bought it at the Cambridge Folk Festival in 2001 before I had cleaned up.
190
I started learning Bharatnatyam from the age of three. I have also learnt folk dance.
191
When I was applying for a central government scholarship to study an art form, I saw that there was space to write the names of the institution and the guru we wanted to study with. For singing, dancing and folk songs, you could name a guru.
192
Clarinet is often associated with certain genres, like swing or folk music. I combine the old and new, using the clarinet as an expressive tool and not in one genre. I’m just happy that people are drawn to what I do.
193
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.
194
If you call yourself a singer, then you must have the ability to sing anything, whether it’s pop, classical, rock, sufi, or folk.
195
The way popular music is categorized and formatted cuts down on everyone’s options. And although people don’t talk about it, there are a lot of issues of race determining musical categories of what’s rock, R&B, or even folk. It ends up restricting creativity.
196
This administration and these folk who run Washington are no more interested in our welfare and our well being than the man on the moon. And we have got to start taking our destiny into our hands.
197
I would say there’s a lot of similarity between folk and punk. It’s written for the common man.
198
It was darn nigh impossible for women in rock in the ’70s. There wasn’t a mold if you were a woman and you were in the entertainment in the ’70s. You were probably a disco diva or a folk singer, or simply ornamental. Radio would play only one woman per hour.
199
I love all types of music – jazz, great pop music, world music and folk music – but the music I listen to most is piano music from the 18th, 19th and 20th century. Russian music in particular.
200
I find inspiration from a lot of different texts and really old stories and folk tales – things I feel like no one else is reading.
201
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.
202
I guess fusion would be the best way to describe my music. I think it also goes into the spectrum of electronic and dance with inspiration from Indian folk songs.
203
I don’t have very sophisticated taste in music. I listen to a lot of folk music. I like reggae.
204
I’ve had tweets questioning whether I really did go to university because surely I would have lost my accent if I did; a letter suggesting, very politely, that I get correction therapy; and an email saying I should get back to my council estate and leave the serious work to the clever folk.
205
We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.
206
I grew up listening to a lot of soul music, and a lot of folk music.
207
I was always attracted to music that moved people. Whether it be gospel, R&B, folk, hip-hop, pop, alternative rock – whatever moved people, whatever made a crowd just get lost in the moment.
208
I think the perception of audiences that love folk and country is they’re perceived to be more closed-minded than they really are.
209
I guess what I find interesting is city folk are the least capable of survival of any human being.
210
I started off as a mimicry artist, have sung ‘Gaana’ folk music and popularized pop music in the South before I got into acting.
211
We have harmonies, folk songs, and compositions attached to each occasion – ranging from birth, harvest, to our festivals. Our country thrives on culture, music, and arts. Musically, ours is a very rich country.
212
Everybody who I’ve spoken to who was conscious when ‘Queer as Folk’ went out says it was a complete game-changer. It completely changed people’s perception of young, gay men especially.
213
When you set out to carry on a tradition as deep rooted as folk music is, you’ve got to have your story together. You’ve got to study and have a foundation. Jeffrey Foucault has that foundation, and you can hear it in his voice, and feel it in his music. He’s got an understanding that you don’t hear that often.
214
I’ve got an Avalon guitar – that’s the company that used to be Lowden. They come out of Ireland, and they’re like these folk kind of guitars. You can pick ’em, you can strum ’em – they’re quite good.
215
‘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.
216
If something can be proven to work, we should try it… Making sure that our young folk get the best education is the only thing that matters to me, and if something can be shown to work in doing that or if something’s worth trying to do that, then I’ll certainly be in the market for it.
217
I love a lot of Irish folk music and Irish folk songs.
218
Growing up, we had folk records.
219
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.’
220
Well, I didn’t go to Julliard or anything. I’m basically self-taught. When I was younger, I wrote folk songs on a guitar my father gave me.
221
Nobody gets a nervous breakdown or a heart attack from selling kerosene to gentle country folk from the back of a tanker in Somerset.
222
I love folk; that’s a big part of my background.
223
‘Queer as Folk’ is gay gay gay gay gay.
224
There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them.
225
The fact that The Bridge contains folk lore and other material suitable to the epic form need not therefore prove its failure as a long lyric poem, with interrelated sections.
226
My mum’s family would all get together, with guitars, harmonica, mandolins and upright bass and play old blues and folk songs. That was normal to me.
227
There are divers men who make a great show of loyalty, and pretend to such discretion in the hidden things they hear, that at the end folk come to put faith in them.
228
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.
229
Princess Rose should indeed be a TV movie, assuming something doesn’t go wrong. I don’t know how good a movie it will be, because the way movie folk think is different from the way writers think, and I distrust what isn’t done my way. This is what I call a healthy paranoia.
230
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.
231
I have a deep rooted folk sensibility that I can’t get away from completely.
232
The Rough Riders brought honor to San Antonio by winning battles in Cuba throughout the summer of 1898, and Roosevelt became a Texas folk hero overnight.
233
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.
234
When I was small – I grew up in a village outside of Krakow – my brothers and sisters and I would play folk instruments and make music in our home.
235
At the same time all this was happening, there was a folk song revival movement goingon, so the commercial music industry was actually changed by the Civil Rights Movement.
236
The great folk hymns are a perfect marriage of text and tune. There are those that have nice messages and some with good music, but it is such a bonus when they are both wonderful.
237
Neofascism in the United States takes the form of big money, big banks, big corporations, tied to xenophobic scapegoating of the vulnerable, like Mexicans and Muslims and women and black folk, and militaristic policies abroad, with strongman, charismatic, autocratic personality, and that’s what Donald Trump is.
238
Back in high school, I had this folk protest band, and I used to write all the time. And then, when I got in The B-52s, we began to write collectively, collaboratively – most all of our songs are written by jamming together.
239
My first band was an Argentinian folk group when I was 10. When I was 12 I had my electric guitar, and by the time I was 13, the Beatles came into the scene, and that was over. So I have a mixture of all these traditions, and I think that’s who I am, a mixture of everything.
240
Folk is bare bones music.
241
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.
242
There is a black folk music audience. They’re just very small.
243
I never saw myself as a folk singer.
244
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, Biarritz was a community of whalers. During the Middle Ages, it had grown from a small fishing village into a profitable whaling industry. Whale oil was liquid gold to these sea-faring folk.
245
I usually don’t go into record stores to buy folk music.
246
If you go back to early folk, it’s all storytelling; that’s exactly what it is: some guy telling a story in a pub to 50 people with a guitar, you know.
247
I knew before going into the studio that I wanted to make a Western record, featuring a combination of traditional Western folk and cowboy songs and some tunes that I had written that were heavily influenced by that kind of music.
248
Pat Benatar might need a rock band, but I can just sit with a blues guitar for an hour and a half and do folk songs and great contemporary ballads, and not many people can pull that off.
249
Music is in Mississippi’s DNA, whether it’s the blues, country music, folk, or rock ‘n’ roll. It’s not just a source of cultural pride, but also a strong contributor to our economy.
250
American folk songs were about tragedy, right? They were about suffering and tragedy, and a lot of my songs are about that, even though they were misunderstood.
251
It’s a funny thing that’s happening online. The Middle Easterners want ‘Aladdin’ to be a Middle Eastern story, and the Indians want ‘Aladdin’ to be an Indian story. The truth is, it’s really a folk tale from the 1800s, and Agrabah is a fictional place that’s a culmination of India and Asia and the Middle East.
252
I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.
253
The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
254
Seven’ is this kind of nostalgic, emotional folk song.
255
You know how people always talk about how vision is the key to entrepreneurship and perseverance and really seeing what other people don’t see? We can actually redeem a fair amount of that folk wisdom.
256
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.
257
A significant event for me was learning Hank Williams, reconnecting with his music’s simplicity, which inspired me to inhabit the same territory. It’s different, because I grew up on Led Zeppelin, The Stooges and punk, so in that sense I’m mutating country and folk more than a few degrees.
258
And no book gives a deeper insight into the inner life of the Negro, his struggles and his aspirations, than, The Souls of Black Folk.
259
I sing a mixture of everything from opera, folk music, Broadway. It’s a mix of things.
260
John Edwards comes from working folk, just like me. John Edwards worked hard and excelled to get his education, just like me.
261
Ideally, I’d love to write poems that intrigued humans across the board: literary folk and academics as well as… dog-walkers, doctors, plumbers, chefs, math professors, jugglers, etc.
262
Limbaugh has taught millions of Americans about conservative ideology, emphasizing the Constitution and the country’s founding ideals, and suffered attacks from the left as a result. He is a folk hero who is beloved in part because he defends tens of millions of Americans against attacks.
263
I think my election is one of several indications that gay and lesbian folk are being brought more into the center of things. I’d like to think that my election signals my bringing of gay and lesbian folk into the center of the church.
264
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.
265
I enjoy some nights in the studio. I’m not the greatest person in an enclosed space; I’m a live player by birth – like a gypsy folk player, I just sit in the corner and play.
266
There’s a roots nature to Appalachia – the origins of folk and bluegrass. I know guys there who are some of the best players I’ve ever heard but are playing on their porch tonight because they’ve never chased success. There’s simplicity to how they live and what they care about.
267
I feel like folk music is almost like an old recipe that is passed on from generation to generation.
268
I always felt music to be universal and undifferentiated – Western classical, folk, Carnatic or Hindustani and so on.
269
The thing is, I was more blues-oriented, more of a purist than in the pop world. That led me into a folk rock trio and to Ginger Baker before I started recording on my own.
270
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.
271
I think all old folk’s homes should have striptease. If I ran one I’d have a striptease every week.
272
Some folk want their luck buttered.
273
Most of our American musical heritage is based on European models, but the folk hymns and spirituals are one of the most fertile and unique of our American musical traditions.
274
I started to develop my comedy skills when I became resident singer at the Boggery Folk Club in Solihull. My career blossomed from there, and I became a big draw on the folk-club circuit.
275
I’ve been getting into Nick Drake lately, the folk singer. Sad, gorgeous stuff.
276
Folk music usually has an emphasis on the lyrics and melody. And those lyrics are usually relevant in some way. And it’s populist in scope, which is also true of Bad Religion. So it’s more meant to draw some parallels between the two. And I think even my voice and my delivery can be thought of as a little bit folky.
277
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.
278
Back when I started, you could either be a folk singer, or you could be a disco diva, or you could be a secretary or maybe a disc jockey, but there was no room for anything alternative yet.
279
Lonnie Donegan and the folk movement were responsible for a lot of the spread of the blues in England. The group Them with Van Morrison was a big influence on me, too, as were The Stones; The Yardbirds, John Mayall, and the other British blues pioneers.
280
With ‘Mirzya,’ we went deep into folk music. The film, unfortunately, did not do well because it was not marketed well. But we got freedom to do the music the way we want.
281
Tricks you need to transform something which appears fantastic, unbelievable into something plausible, credible, those I learned from journalism. The key is to tell it straight. It is done by reporters and by country folk.
282
I have tried to show the influence of folk music in Bollywood, in Tamil movies, in Telugu cinema.
283
I was exposed to many kinds of music including rock and disco, classical and folk, Midtown and Miles Davis, Sly Stone and David Bowie.
284
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.
285
Lana Del Rey seems to be bothering everybody because she allegedly ‘remade’ herself from a folk singing, girl-next-door type into an electro-urban kitty cat on the prowl (of course I like her), and they feel she is inauthentic.
286
All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.
287
I read a lot of W.E.B. Du Bois, who wrote ‘The Souls of Black Folk.’
288
Before I begin to write, I listen to music that inspires me. I listen to folk Punjabi music, sufi music.
289
But in my imagination this whole thing developed and I started mixing up old folk songs with the Beatles beat and taking them down to Greenwich Village and playing them for the people there.
290
I love the sound of voices singing together, congregational singing, anything like gospel, or folk, or sea shanties. I spent quite a bit of time in choirs growing up, and in the world-touring music group, Anuna. It’s a sound with very rich texture, voices singing together.
291
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.
292
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the television businesses found it was easier to hire 16- or 18-year-olds and teach them everything from the beginning rather than re-teach the old-school folk.
293
I didn’t know Charlie before doing the movie, but I was a huge fan of the British Queer as Folk.
294
I started out in the folk music world only because of the way my songs were written and performed, with just an acoustic guitar, but I always related to the rock n’ roll lifestyle.
295
I don’t really think of myself as a folk singer.
296
‘Take Her Up to Monto’ is a very satirical song. I don’t really like people calling it a folk song because it kind of isn’t. It’s a bit cheeky calling it ‘Take Her Up to Monto,’ but the whole idea was to be very irreverent.
297
This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.
298
Logically, when you talkin’ about folk music and blues, you find out it’s music of just plain people.
299
If I were to make an uneducated guess about L.A.’s relationship with folk and psychedelia, I would say it must be the weather.
300
I think, in a lot of ways, hip-hop is interesting to me because it’s like the modern-day folk music.
