Folk music is the original melody of man; it is the musical mirror of the world. — Friedrich Nietzsche
All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song. — Louis Armstrong
If it was never new and it never gets old, then it's a folk song — Oscar Isaac
In Hungary all native music, in its origin, is divided naturally into melody destined for song or melody for the dance. — Franz Liszt
The chief contribution made by white men of the Americas to the folk songs of the world ——- the cowboy songs of Texas and the West ——- are rhythmed to the walk, the trot, and the gallop of horses. — J. Frank Dobie
There're songs to make you smile, there're songs to make you sad. But with a happy song to sing it never seems as bad. — Stevie Wonder
Those in power write the history while those who suffer write the songs. — Frank Harte
Music just ain't what it used to;
We used to have songs that you could shoplift or boost to. — Jadakiss
It's a folk singer's job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people — Woody Guthrie
Funk, gospel, blues is all out of slavery times, out of depression, out of sorrow. — Nina Simone
Gospel songs are the songs of hope. When you sing gospel you have the feeling there is a cure for what's wrong, but when you are through with the blues, you've got nothing to rest on. — Mahalia Jackson
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. — Percy Bysshe Shelley
Every sorrow suggests a thousand songs and every song recalls a thousand sorrows and so they are infinite in number and all the same. — Marilynne Robinson
Short Folk Songs Quotes
A protest song is a song that's so specific that you cannot mistake it for bullshit. — Phil Ochs
You know, all my songs are relatives, brothers, sisters, cousins. — David Coverdale
I like duos with percussionists. I like the songs that percussionists sing. — Derek Bailey
Those who wish to sing always find a song. — Swedish Proverbs
Hymns are companions for life travelers. — Andy Griffith
In the songs all knights are gallant, all maids are beautiful, and the sun is always shining. — George R. R. Martin
When songs fall from the sky, all I can do is catch them before they hit the ground. — Willie Nelson
I prefer to make common cause with those whose weapons are guitars, banjos, fiddles and words. — Theodore Bikel
My favorite type of music to sing is a crossover between country and pop. — Lauren Alaina
Folk Songs Image Quotes
A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.
Western Song Quotes
I love researching, whether it's old Western documentaries or old Western country singers or John Ford Westerns, which are heavily influenced by family values, which so many of these country songs are related to. — Clifton Collins, Jr.
Ian and Sylvia, who, when you got right down to it, were essentially country and western singers. I just recorded his Four Strong Winds. It's a wonderful song. — Dave Van Ronk
I'm just trying to unite the western crowd and the bluegrass crowd a little more. ... I get to do that again on my new album, Tall Grass and Cool Water.... This is the first time I've had every song on an album be a Bluegrass and Cowboy Song at the same time. — Michael Martin Murphey
Behind every girl's favorite song there is an untold story.
So I learnt a few country western songs, I bought a chord book, and right away I started writing my own stuff, which nobody else did that, I don't know why. — John Fahey
Whenever you play a song, you're basically playing with a lot of zeros and ones. These are Western compositional models that other cultures have explored in so many ways. — DJ Spooky
I tend to score with songs from Western pop music. — Danny Boyle
Find the tribe that knows your song.
While listening, to things like western swing, for instance, I'd work something out in my head, then play it on my National; not the same song, but one that captured the feeling of the original tune. — Mark Knopfler
Traditional Song Quotes
To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To you, respect. — Oren Arnold
When you're doing the traditional musicals, singing songs that are 40 and 50 years old, you realize there's a reason why those musicals are hits. These are amazing songs! — Tom Wopat
We have a tradition of passing our history orally and singing a lot of it and writing songs about it and there's kind of a calling in Irish voices when they're singing in their Irish accent. — Sinead O'Connor
Every heart sings a song incomplete, until another heart whispers back.
Christmas is a day of meaning and traditions, a special day spent in the warm circle of family and friends." ~ (1925- ), English political leader. — Margaret Thatcher
I am a product of Indian cinema; I've grown up watching Indian films ever since I can remember. And song and dance is part of our lives, it's part of our culture we wake up to songs, we sleep to lullabies, you know, we celebrate every religious and traditional function with music. — Karan Johar
The invention of Bob Dylan with his guitar belongs in its way to the same kind of tradition of something meant to be heard, as the songs of Homer. — Robert Fitzgerald
The things that seem insignificant to most people such as note, song, or walk become invaluable trasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever.
I love entertaining Korean people with traditional songs from Ecuador . It has been an exceptional, new experience for me to perform in Korea and I enjoyed so much. — Jose Gonzalez
I intend to keep writing Christmas songs. There's still a lot more about Christmas that can be captured and feel like old-time Christmas. A lot of the traditions haven't been explained in song. — Clint Black
We have oral traditions in Mali, and songs are passed down and around this way. I think in the US you can play all the time in your own room and never see another musician your whole life. We can't understand that in Mali. — Vieux Farka Toure
Sometimes I write songs that just come out in a pop format because I grew up on melody and these amazing artists during the 80s. It's my tradition and it's something that I can't really control. — Robyn
Folk Music Quotes
Once over there [Balkans], I felt extremely patriotic. Here are these people, from 18-year-olds to military veterans, enduring real duress for the cause of peace. I don't ever want to play for a regular audience again, only military folks who are starving for music. — Sheryl Crow
If songs were lines in a conversation, the situation would be fine . . . — Nick Drake
Folk melodies are the embodiment of an artistic perfection of the highest order; in fact, they are models of the way in which a musical idea can be expressed with utmost perfection in terms of brevity of form and simplicity of means. — Bela Bartok
Those who wish to sing... always find a song.
Yeah, I always listen to both classic and newer folk-influenced music. Singer-songwriter, alternative music. I also listen to more experimental dance music. — Brad Delson
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
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
A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
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
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
My idea of heaven is a place where the Tyne meets the Delta, where folk music meets the blues. — Mark Knopfler
Everyone has their own sound, and if you're heard enough, folks will come to recognize it. Style however, is a different thing. Try to express your own ideas. It's much more difficult to do, but the rewards are there if you're good enough to pull it off. — Chet Atkins
Folk Quotes
The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with faith to fight for it — Aneurin Bevan
When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don't really have to do anything, you just let them talk. — Barack Obama
When you've worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity...you do not slam it shut behind you...you reach back, and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed. — Michelle Obama
You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.
On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. — H. L. Mencken
Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay small acts of kindness and love. — Peter Jackson
Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be. — Abraham Lincoln
Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial things like justice, truth and love.
The church of Jesus needs to wake up from the exile of passivity and embrace liminality and adventure or continue to remain a religious ghetto for culturally co-opted, fearful, middle-class folk. — Alan Hirsch
I'll tell you how I'd like to be remembered: As a black man who won the heavyweight title - Who has humorous and who never looked down on those who looked up to him - A man who stood for freedom, justice and equality - And I wouldn't even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was. — Muhammad Ali
I would like to see every single soldier on every single side, just take off your helmet, unbuckle your kit, lay down your rifle, and set down at the side of some shady lane, and say, nope, I aint a gonna kill nobody. Plenty of rich folks wants to fight. Give them the guns. — Woody Guthrie
Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial things like justice, truth and love. — Cornel West
Folklore Quotes
A man from Iowa or Illinois will say 'I'm from the Middle West'..a Georgian or a Mississipian may admit to being merely a Southerner...but no Texan, given the opportunity, ever said otherwise than 'I'm from Texas'. — J. Frank Dobie
If you take myth and folklore, and these things that speak in symbols, they can be interpreted in so many ways that although the actual image is clear enough, the interpretation is infinitely blurred, a sort of enormous rainbow of every possible colour you could imagine. — Diana Wynne Jones
Expedition EVEREST adds a new dimension to our storytelling in Disney's Animal Kingdom. It's a thrilling adventure themed to the folklore of the mysterious yeti. — Joe Rohde
I find pieces of you in every song I listen to .
When fairy tales are written in the west, they're known as folklore. In the east, fairy tales are called religions. — Paul Henderson
What I find interesting about folklore is the dialogue it gives us with storytellers from centuries past. — Terri Windling
I have a better internal and intuitive understanding of folklore and myth than science and technology, so in that way fantasy is easier. — Sarah Zettel
We ought, everyday, to hear a song, read a fine poem, and, if possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
I developed some unique software to public it on the web that I call the Folklore Project. — Andy Hertzfeld
My academic identity is that of a folklorist, and for many years I have taught only folklore courses. — Alan Dundes
I have a great advantage over many of my colleagues inasmuch as my students bring with them to class their own personal knowledge of national, regional, religious, ethnic, occupational, and family folklore traditions. — Alan Dundes
When I was younger, I was in love with everything about the British Isles, from British folklore to Celtic music. That was always where my passions were as a young girl, and so I studied folklore as a college student in England and Ireland. — Terri Windling
Old Folk Quotes
Racism isn't born, folks, it's taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list. — Denis Leary
As for marigolds, poppies, hollyhocks, and valorous sunflowers, we shall never have a garden without them, both for their own sake, and for the sake of old-fashioned folks, who used to love them. — Henry Ward Beecher
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. — Roger McGuinn
I was sixty-six years old. I still had to make a living. I looked at my social security check of 105 dollars and decided to use that to try to franchise my chicken recipe. Folks had always liked my chicken. — Colonel Sanders
The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago. — Louis Armstrong
Today, folks, should be all about love. Unless you're old. — Stephen Colbert
We old folks have to find our cushions and pillows in our tankards. Strong beer is the milk of the old. — Martin Luther
I think folk music helps reinforce your sense of history. An old song makes you think of times gone by. — Pete Seeger
When you get real old, honey, you realize there are certain things that just don't matter anymore. You lay it all on the table. There's a saying, 'Only little children and old folks tell the truth.' — Sarah Louise Delany
Being unprepared makes me nervous. I'm old-fashioned show folk. — John C. Reilly
Poor Folk Quotes
If you ask for good schools, you aren't likely to get them. If you ask for jobs or economic investment, you won't get that either. But what we have learned, is that the one thing that poor folks of color can ask for and get are Police & Prisons. — Michelle Alexander
Lobbyists in Washington are making six figure salaries selling our government out to the corporate interests and we just sit and smile as if nothing is happening while the poor folks are getting poorer and their pharmaceutical bills rise. — Hal Holbrook
They were written on cheap blue notebooks bought by poor women. I'm interested in folk tales in the way that medicine and magic in women's stories are all kind of combined. — Alice Hoffman
Mass incarceration has become normalized in the United States. Poor folks of color are shuttled from decrepit, underfunded schools to brand new, high tech prisons and then relegated to a permanent undercaste - stigmatized as undeserving of any moral care or concern. — Michelle Alexander
The working-class folks and the poor, and those normal people living their lives out in the world without the glitter and the fanfare. There is a lot to learn from them. — Mark Ruffalo
Too often, systems of oppression turn those who are the targets of the oppression against one another. It's happened in the USA between white working class and poor folks on the one hand, and people of color on the other. — Tim Tebow
My folks were English. They were too poor to be British. I still have a bit of British in me. In fact, my blood type is solid marmalade. — Bob Hope
The poor folk gladly came to me, for I did them no unkindness, but helped them as much as I could. — Joan of Arc
As sore places meet most rubs, proud folks meet most affronts. — Benjamin Franklin
The poor folks hate the rich folks, and the rich folks hate the poor folks. All of my folks hate all of your folks, it's American as apple pie. — Tom Lehrer
Folk Art Quotes
In this perilous world, if a black boy wanted to live a halfway normal life and die a natural death he had to learn early the art of how to get along with white folks. — Benjamin E. Mays
An intelligent observation of the facts of human existence will reveal to shallow-minded folk who sneer at the use of coincidence in the arts of fiction and drama that life itself is little more than a series of coincidences. — Rafael Sabatini
One of the reasons I love using LEGO bricks is because it makes the art very relatable and accessible; folks can connect with the art almost on a different level because they have played with it or their kids have played with it. — Nathan Sawaya
I never got a pass mark in math... Just imagine - mathematicians now use my prints to illustrate their books. Funny me consorting with all these learned folks, as though I were their long lost brother. I guess they are unaware of the fact that I am ignorant about the whole thing. — M. C. Escher
Everything that has ever been called folk art has always reflected domination. — Theodor Adorno
I'm trying to inspire as many people as I can. I want the viewer to enjoy the art and I want the whole family to have something to react to. I hope that folks go home and do a bit of doodling and creating on their own. — Nathan Sawaya
Art teaches us to see into things. Folk art and kitsch allow us to see outward from within things. — Walter Benjamin
Folk parapsychology, an art and science designed to enable people to make effective use of their psychic talents — Isaac Bonewits
A game may be as integral to a culture, as true an object of human aesthetic appreciation, as admirable a product of creativity as a folk art or a style of music; and, as such, it is quite as worthy of study. — Michael Dummett
The book the Ziff folks sent me as an example of their art was 'Late Night VRML 2.0 with Java,' 700 pages + CD-ROM, published February 1997. I was personally acquainted with more movie stars than people who might conceivably have wanted to buy this book or any book like it. — Philip Greenspun
Why are black folks singing Amazing Grace which is a song about a white slaver's conversion? — Dick Gregory
I always knew Gordon Lightfoot was a really great songwriter, but his stuff even sounds better and better all the time. It's just so really good to me. It's just like that's what should be in a dictionary, you know, next to a really good contempory folk song, is a Gordon Lightfoot song. — John Prine
A folk song is what's wrong and how to fix it or it could be
who's hungry and where their mouth is or
who's out of work and where the job is or
who's broke and where the money is or
who's carrying a gun and where the peace is. — Woody Guthrie
You've got to go down the road you naturally go down, and for me it was pop, folk country, just feel-good music. I suppose most of my songs are very up-tempo. — Shane Filan
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
I have no reason to sit home and write songs all day without going out and playing for the folks. And I have no reason to go play for the folks unless I'm writing new songs so they can sort of feed off one another. And I just try to do the best I can. — Guy Clark
People were saying that Southern folk song was dead, that the land that had produced American jazz, the blues, the spirituals, the mountain ballads and the work songs had gone sterile. — Alan Lomax
I grew up around music. My father was a professional musician. We used to have a trailer house that we travelled in. I've always loved music. Started out loving to sing to the standards and songs of the early 50s, then that interest shifted to rock and roll, Motown, folk. — Timothy B. Schmit
If you want to understand a nation, look at its dances and listen to its folk songs - don't pay any attention to its politicians. — Agnes De Mille
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
Every week, Dennis Day sang an old Irish folk song. And next day in the fields, I'd be singing that song if I was working in the fields. — Johnny Cash
I think more people in the mainstream, folks like Nancy Wilson and Luther Vandross, they have openly expressed their love for God, and when mainstream artists start expressing their love for God openly in their concerts and including gospel songs in their concert, and, you know, people started embracing it. — Yolanda Adams
Be serious. Folk songs are serious. That's what Pete Seeger told me. 'Arlo, I only wanna tell you one thing. Folk songs are serious.' And I said, 'Right.' — Sayings
People thought me a bit strange at first; a blond haired, blue-eyed Norwegian who sang Mexican folk songs, but I used it to my advantage and got a job. And so the music became my ticket to education. — David Soul
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
There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them. — Eugene Chadbourne
The only thing contrived is the production - you can over-produce to the point you kill a good idea, you can under-produce so that the song's amazing but you'll have folks at a radio station saying they won't play it, so there's this balance, and it has to be true. — Ryan Tedder
We enjoyed the fact that we were called to the folk festivals and we got to know Joan Baez, Dylan. We were singing strictly gospel, but then after we started hearing songs that they would sing, we saw that those songs were very fitting for us because they were singing the truth, and truth is gospel. — Mavis Staples
If you told the truth, that was all well and good and if you told the un-truth, well, that's still well and good. Folk songs had taught me that. — Bob Dylan
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. — David Crosby
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. — Bernice Johnson Reagon
My older brother was involved in the folk movement. We would gather every weekend in Washington Park. The folk songs were so important to my reality. — Anne Waldman
Coming, as I do, from mountain folk on one side and sea followers on the other, there are few old songs of the hills or the sea with which I am not familiar. — Robert E. Howard
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. — Joanna Newsom
All the folks I play with come from jazz backgrounds or at least appreciate spontaneity within the parameters of a pop song. — Andrew Bird
We had various kinds of tape-recorded concerts and popular music. But by the end of the flight what we listened to most was Russian folk songs. We also had recordings of nature sounds: thunder, rain, the singing of birds. We switched them on most frequently of all, and we never grew tired of them. It was as if they returned us to Earth. — Anatoly Berezovoy
I play a couple basic folks songs and break them down. I did that on a six string. I can't recall all the songs on it. There's some finger picking on it. — Roger McGuinn
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
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. — Jimmy Reid
We are the folk song army, every one of us cares. We all hate poverty, war, and injustice unlike the rest of you squares. — Tom Lehrer
Deaf folk hear the fairies However soft their song; 'Tis we who lose the honey sound Amid the clamor all around That beats the whole day long. — Rose Fyleman
I am a firm believer in playing the type of music that compliments the song the best. If it's a folk song make it sound like one. If it's a rock song make it sound like one, if it's a rap song take it off the record. — William Clark Green
When it's a folk festival, there's more of an intention on the song and connecting with people. — Jenny O.
My dad took me for an audition once, to show me, OK, you want to be a child actor, this is what its 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. — Emilia Clarke
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
A professional entertainer who allows himself to become known as a singer of folk songs is bound to have trouble with his conscience provided, of course, that he possesses one. As a performing artist, he will pride himself on timing and other techniques designed to keep the audience in his control ... his respect for genuine folklore reminds him that these changes, and these techniques, may give the audience a false picture of folk music. — Sam Hinton
It was Rick's Rubin idea to have the 'Brooklyn' verse repeat. It already was a story, but having that made it a folk song. Instead of this rambling march of verses, Rick understands that music needs hooks. You need that repeated chorus, that everyone can sing along to. — Scott Avett
In Conclusion
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