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Quotes About Folk

We ain't nervous folk, as you know well; but when it comes to makin' a weekend visit and finding you've run full butt into the Day of Judgement, it wants a bit of explainin'.
~ Arthur Conan Doyle
The gradual increase in popularity of the Mersey sound forced musicians like me to almost go underground, as if we were anarchists, plotting to overthrow the music establishment. It seemed that the "trad jazz" movement was dying, and was taking folk and blues with it.
~ Eric Clapton
The place is changed now, and many familiar faces are gone, but the greatest change is myself. I was a child then, I had no idea what the world would be like. I wished to trust myself on the waters and the sea. Everything was romantic in my imagination. The woods were peopled by the mysterious good folk. The Lords and Ladies of the last century walked with me along the overgrown paths, and picked the old fashioned flowers among the box and rose hedges of the garden.
~ Beatrix Potter
I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel, folk, and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music.
~ Ben Harper
Praetorius was delighted with his new appointment, although his new position was not one normally associated with the fearsome Nazi war machine, let alone the Teutonic heroes of old. Praetorius had long been convinced of the therapeutic physical and cultural effects of English folk dancing. Somehow he had persuaded the German authorities of this and was duly appointed dance instructor to the Wehrmacht.
~ Ben Macintyre
In 'Ta Chuma,' we used folk language so that the honesty reflected in it can live in people's hearts forever.
~ Jubin Nautiyal
Parajanov's love for the folk culture is quite infectious. The way that he loves everything on screen, I relate.
~ Robert Eggers
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.
~ Luke James
One of my favorite albums is Bob Gibson and Bob Camp, 'At the Gate of Horn.' It was a really dynamic album, almost like The Beatles, and way before its time... around 1960 or so.
~ Roger McGuinn
Whether I'm acting, writing, or directing, I want to tell the truth about human beings, especially my folk.
~ Ruben Santiago-Hudson
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
She was humming something melancholy and familiar. I strained to make it out—a folk song? a lullabye?—and then realized it was the theme to M*A*S*H. Suicide is painless. I went downstairs.
~ Gillian Flynn
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.
~ F. Sionil Jose
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.
~ Eric Church
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.
~ Pat Metheny
Madness has an enormous pavilion Where it receives folk from every region, Especially if they have gold in profusion.
~ Sebastian Brant
When I was 19 I went to art school. I had six months of teaching myself to play baritone ukulele under my belt so I was sort of a novice folkie... I was singing folk songs at that time.
~ Joni Mitchell
I'm bred for farm work, and for such folk, the only A's you get come from effort. Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they temper you into something unbreakable because Lord knows they'll try -- without let up -- to break you.
~ Mary Karr
The Romans gave them Roman names, and let them be; but the Christians refuse to believe in them, and their priests berate the poorer folk for clinging to the old ways—and no doubt for wasting offerings which would do better at some hermit's cell than at some ancient holy place in the forest. But still the simple folk creep out to leave their offerings, and when these vanish by morning, who is to say that a god has not taken them? This
~ Mary Stewart
But epidemics create a kind of history from below: they can be world-changing, but the participants are almost inevitably ordinary folk, following their established routines, not thinking for a second about how their actions will be recorded for posterity
~ Steven Johnson
I came through folk music simply because it was easy to get into it.
~ Joni Mitchell
I was only a folk singer for about two years…. By that time, it wasn't really folk music anymore. It was some new American phenomenon. Later, they called it singer/songwriters. Or art songs, which I liked best. Some people get nervous about that word. Art. They think it's a pretentious word from the giddyap. To me, … the word art has never lost its vitality.
~ Joni Mitchell
The sunset of the forest had given the signal to robin and tanager to begin their vesper song. The sunset of the mount had issued the dew-time call that conjures out of the caves and hollow trees the smallest of the winged Brownie folk, whose kingdom is the twilight and whose dance hall is high above the tree-tops.
~ Ernest Thompson Seton
The greatest thing about doing this movie was that Chris and I both were involved in folk music in the '60s. I had a group, but I don't think it was at the same level as Chris, because he's an amazing musician.
~ Eugene Levy