Quotes About Folk

Occasions are rare when the best literature becomes, as it were, the folk literature, and generally speaking literature has always been carried on within small limits and under great difficulties.

What's funny in 'The Mayor of MacDougal Street' is how Dave Van Ronk talks a lot about the time and how exciting it was and how electric it was.

Dave Van Ronk is not an obscure figure. He's the biggest figure on an obscure scene, playing a kind of niche music that we knew and liked.

I wanted to paint in a folk-artist-y way. My heroes were Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Rembrandt. I think Picasso is about as a modern as I got. But I incorporated things that they rejected as well as movements that happened later.

I was into punk rock back when I was in high school. I used to go around to dive venues and take photographs. But now it's been just much more about the country stuff and soulful folk.

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.'

home arts and folk arts revealed more about a culture than the isolated, esoteric pieces preserved in museums for the benefit of the elite. She was sick and tired of having her work dismissed as frivolous because it centered on a largely female occupation. If most quilts had been made by men, no one would question her interest in exploring the role of quiltmaking in American history.

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.

In my introductory course, Anthropology 160, the Forms of Folklore, I try to show the students what the major and minor genres of folklore are, and how they can be analyzed.

When I met Bob Dylan, I was definitely impressed. This guy had come from the American folk world, but he was very schooled in poetry, too. He'd studied the Beat poets, of course. I grew up in the British bohemian scene. Dylan grew up in the American bohemian scene. So I was very pleased to meet such a guy.

I do notice that I spend a lot of all my time steeped in different forms of myth, such as English folk music, for example, not really studying it necessarily, but just trying to experience it so I can recall it later.

I even played bass for a while. Besides playing electric guitar, I'd also get asked to play some acoustic stuff. But, since I didn't have an acoustic guitar at the time, I used to borrow one from a friend so I could play folk joints.

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 rock was my real roots. I did a few gigs as a folk artist, in the style of Fairport Convention.

The folk music definition has changed in this fast music world and musical styles are blending really quickly.

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.

How can I be a folk? I'm from the suburbs you know.

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

One of the first Roman leaders of the north, Coelius or Coel Hen, became in English folk rhyme 'Old King Cole'.

Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I have found that it is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.

The mediocre have no importance except through appointment. They feel invaded and defeated by the presence of creative folk among them.

I write alternative, folkie pop. It's very acoustic.

Recordings of Georgian folk polyphonic songs makes a great musical impression. They are recorded in a tradition of active reproduction of Georgian folk music the origin of which begins from ancient time. It is a wonderful finding and can give to the performance much more than all the modem music can... Yodel or "Krimanchuli" as it is called in Georgia is the best song which I have ever heard. ["America" magazine, No 23 1967]

Georgian folk music has more new musical ideas than all the contemporary music. [Los Angeles Times. 26.02.1990]