Quotes & Sayings About Folk Songs

She was heading for the piano, and something told me that it was her intention to sing old folk songs, a pastime to which, as I have indicated, she devoted not a little of her leisure. She was particularly given to indulgence in this nuisance when her soul had been undergoing an upheaval and required soothing, as of course it probably did at this juncture.
My fears were realized. She sang two in rapid succession, and the thought that this sort of thing would be a permanent feature of our married life chilled me to the core. — P.G. Wodehouse

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. — Dan Auerbach

When I sang my American folk melodies in Budapest, Prague, Tiflis, Moscow, Oslo, or the Hebrides or on the Spanish front, the people understood and wept or rejoiced with the spirit of the songs. I found that where forces have been the same, whether people weave, build, pick cotton, or dig in the mine, they understand each other in the common language of work, suffering, and protest. — Paul Robeson

Gershwin's melodic gift was phenomenal. His songs contain the essence of New York in the 1920s and have deservedly become classics of their kind, part of the 20th-century folk-song tradition in the sense that they are popular music which has been spread by oral tradition (for many must have sung a Gershwin song without having any idea who wrote it). — George Gershwin

From chain gangs to folk songs to intelligent soul, America has created musicians dedicated to truth, justice, and a better American Way. — Shawn Amos

It was really fun. Well, Bobby was just basically a folk singer. He didn't play with any bands or anything, like all the rest of us. Just played his guitar and sang his songs. — Barry McGuire

I like folk songs, but ten horses couldn't bring me to a concert or an opera. — Fritz Lang

When I started out playing guitar and singing, I was about twelve, going on thirteen. The role models for me back then were the folk singers. They all had these high, really nice voices and ranges, like Judy Collins and Joan Baez, and then later, of course, Joni Mitchell and Linda Ronstadt. I decided early on that I was going to learn how to write songs really, really well, because I didn't want to have to compete as a singer. I didn't feel that it was my strong point. — Lucinda Williams

There were very few real folk singers you know, though I liked Dominic Behan a bit and there was some good stuff to be heard in Liverpool. Just occasionally you hear very old records on the radio or TV of real workers in Ireland or somewhere singing these songs and the power of them is fantastic. — John Lennon

Ralph Stanley is like an uncle to us and now that all my uncles are gone, Ralph's singing is even more precious. This album of classic folk songs is one of his best. — Garrison Keillor

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. — Tom Lehrer

I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing 'em. — Big Bill Broonzy

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

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

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. — Brownie McGhee

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

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] — Igor Stravinsky

When I was 19 I went to art school. I had six months of teaching myself to play baritone ukulele under my belt, so was sort of a novice folkie ... I was singing folk songs at that time. — Joni Mitchell

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

Bare Foot Folk and is full of really interesting songs, Ange Hardy takes folk tales and creates new folk songs that sound traditional around the story. This is one she's called mother willow tree, it's beautiful — Mike Harding

There is a folk-tale about a shoemaker and his wife who were so poor that they had to send their many children out into the world to make a living. The lads went through many a perilous adventure but came home in the end, unscathed, to help their mother. They had always remembered their mother's advice and wise words; they often quoted them when they were in trouble, and in fact they recognized one another by them in foreign lands.
The countless peoples of the world may be looked upon as so many children sent out into the world. They have gone through many adventures and hardships. They have drifted apart and fallen out with one another, on many occasions. They have failed to realize soon enough that they are brothers.
But now it seems that they are beginning to realize this
at least to the extent that they are able to get acquainted with each other's fundamental natures
through their stories and songs. — Gyula Illyes

There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them. — Eugene Chadbourne

From a young age, I was encouraged to sing, dance and learn folk and popular songs in Spanish. — Ailyn Perez

I am deeply sensitive to the spell of nationalism. I can play about thirty Bohemian folk songs ... on my mouth-organ. My oldest friend, who is Czech and a patriot, cannot bear to hear me play them because he says I do it in such a schmalzy way, 'crying into the mouth organ'. I do not think I could have written the book on nationalism which I did write, were I not capable of crying, with the help of a little alcohol, over folk songs, which happen to be my favourite form of music. — Ernest Gellner

I've always loved the songs of the sea. I was first introduced to them back in 1957, at the Old Town School of Folk Music. I used to go to Pete Seeger concerts, and he would do songs like 'Ruben Ranzo' and talk about how the sailors sang songs to do their work - to raise the anchors, pull up the sails and that sort of thing. — 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

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. — Arlo Guthrie

I went to school for folk music back when I was a teenager and learned hundreds of songs. — Roger McGuinn

I used to go to the school folk club with my songs when I was only 13 or so and say "this is a traditional folk song" and sing it with a bad Irish accent to disguise the real source. — Mark Knopfler

But here Nature fulfilled her want of speech and spoke for her. The murmur of the brook, the voice of the village folk, the songs of the boatmen, the crying of the birds and rustle of trees mingled and were one with the trembling of her heart. They became one vast wave of sound which beat upon her restless soul. — Rabindranath Tagore

I really was never any more than what I was -a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze. — Bob Dylan

Some genius of the South
With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,
Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds. — Jean Toomer

One of the songs that stayed in my head that I really considered a lot was an old folk song called 'John Brown' - not the abolitionist John Brown, but the one that Bob Dylan has covered and sung before. It's about a boy coming home from the Civil War, or maybe World War I even, and about his Mother seeing him all destroyed. — Quentin Tarantino

Yes, I heard my people singing!-in the glow of parlor coal-stove and on summer porches sweet with lilac air, from choir loft and Sunday morning pews-and my soul was filled with their harmonies. Then, too, I heard these songs in the very sermons of my father, for in the Negro's speech there is much of the phrasing and rhythms of folk-song. The great, soaring gospels we love are merely sermons that are sung; and as we thrill to such gifted gospel singers as Mahalia Jackson, we hear the rhythmic eloquence of our preachers, so many of whom, like my father, are masters of poetic speech. — Paul Robeson

It was dusk when Rick led Amelia and Sam toward the Old Town plaza. "Come with me. You're going to love this."
Amelia could hear music in the distance. She recognized the delicate strumming of a few guitars and the faint sound of singing. As they approached the plaza, Amelia could see four men playing and singing folk songs. It was beautiful. The music was coming straight from their soul and it held her spellbound. She stood in awe and watched, loving every note that drifted toward her.
"Come here," said Rick as he motioned toward some benches. "Let's sit down."
After the three of them got comfortable, Rick put his arm around Amelia's shoulders. "If you think this is beautiful, wait until Christmas. They have Luminarias and sing Christmas songs in both English and Spanish. — Linda Weaver Clarke

It's one of those songs that everybody knows, but you are not supposed to do, because everyone does it, only no-one does it, because you're not supposed to do it, because everyone does it....if you follow that.... — Gloria Jackson

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

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

You can't trust folk songs. They always sneak up on you. — Terry Pratchett

There have always been people making music. On their porches, playing folk songs. Playing piano in quiet salons. You don't have to listen to every MySpace page, so what's the difference? It's just noise that you filter out. — Tim Hecker

I enjoy writing songs that could have been written before [my time]. When I feel like I'm tapping into a deep vein in the body of American music, it gives me strength as a writer, like I'm dipping my pen into a deep ink well. That's the folk music tradition. Like Pete Seeger said, 'Everyone's a link in the chain.' It's a strong chain, so rely on it ... I believe it takes all those great songs in the past to make your song even a little bit good. — Ketch Secor

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

When I think of folk music, I think of topical songs. And I don't write topical songs. — Ray Lamontagne

You are trying to do a more difficult thing than record folk songs; you are trying to record life. — H.G.Wells

My Portuguese uncle had a Portuguese version of a ukulele. The family would pull it out after dinner and play Portuguese folk songs on it. I couldn't wait for him to finish so I could get my hands on it. I was seven or eight years old. And he used to have a Fender amp in his house and an electric guitar. I would spend hours making sounds. — Joe Perry

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

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

Speaking of people I had to exclude: Hank Williams. which is to say, songs are part of lyric poetry in my book, my thinking. In fact they are the urgent element of poetry in our time, they carry the most emotion for the most people in our culture. everyone LOVES poetry, because we all love (one form or another) of rock and roll (be it folk to emo to rap). It's all rock and roll and all lyric poetry. — Gregory Orr

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

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

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

I once told him that the best way to break up a fight is to step between the two people and start singing ancient folk songs. But I'd never heard of anyone actually doing such a thing. — David Levithan

When I do older folk songs, I'm not doing them because they're old. I have no interest in reviving or continuing a tradition. I'm just doing them because they're great songs. — Sam Amidon

Folk songs are evasive-the truth about life, and life is more or less a lie, but then again that's exactly the way we want it to be. We wouldn't be comfortable with it any other way. A folk song has over a thousand faces and you must meet them all if you want to play this stuff. A folk song might vary in meaning and it might not appear the same from one moment to the next. It depends on who's playing and who's listening. — Bob Dylan

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 think that anything is a form of folk music. That's just me being glib, but the thing I like the best about humans, and there are not many other things besides this, is that humans make culture. If you're an artist, a big part of folk is noticing what other people are doing and incorporating it and changing it - the way that songs warp and change over time. — Will Sheff

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

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

If I like hardcore straight-edge punk music, gentle psychedelic folk music, gangster rap, indie-rock with a lot of guitar pedals, and I find inspiration from all these things in different songs of mine, shouldn't I be allowed to make any of this kind of music that I want? And it's the same for the comic books, why should I only make autobiographical stories? Or only political stories? Or only superhero stories? Or only comedy stories? I am a bit creatively desperate, when I sit with a pen and paper I am desperate for ANY idea that makes me excited, I don't care what kind of idea it is! — Jeffrey Lewis

Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the songs of the dolphins, when pearly-fleshed and jewelled apparitions of Texan herdsmen and houris shimmered in the dusk on Nicaraguan hillsides, when folk in Norway and Tasmania in dead of winter could dream of fresh strawberries, dates, guavas and passion fruits and find them spread next morning on their tables, there was a woman who was largely irrelevant, and therefore happy. — A.S. Byatt

The first music I was ever exposed to was Irish folk music, like the Clancy Brothers. My father plays that and Christmas songs. — Matt Dillon

I fell in love with folk music at Surprise Lake Camp. It was the songs of Woody Guthrie and the Weavers. — Neil Diamond

That reminds me of a song," said Emilia. The women laughed; the men groaned. But the fire was blazing and the night was long, and folk will want entertainment after the tedium of a day's work. Emilia's song detailed the amorous adventures of a water horse who fell in love - if love was the right word - with a series of young women who passed beside the lake in which the creature dwelled and from which he emerged in the form of a good-looking young man of exactly the right sort to catch a young woman's fancy. She had a clear voice and a pleasing timbre, and every local knew the chorus, whose euphemisms about mounting and galloping embarrassed me. We did not sing these sorts of songs in the Barahal house. Rory caught right on and sang the chorus as if born to it. In the laughter and pounding of tables that followed, I said, to no one in particular, "I thought kelpies drowned and then devoured their victims!" The words, innocently spoken, only caused the gathered folk to laugh even — Kate Elliott

Hah!" said Granny Weatherwax. "I should just say it is a folk song! I knows all about folk songs. Hah! You think you're listenin' to a nice song about ... cuckoos and fiddlers and nightingales and whatnot, and then it turns out to be about ... something else entirely," she added darkly. — Terry Pratchett

In the United States, many people said you can't have folk music in the United States because you don't have any peasant class. But the funny thing was, there were literally thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who loved old time fiddling, ballads, banjo tunes, blues played on the guitar, spirituals and gospel hymns. These songs and music didn't fit into any neat category of art music nor popular music nor jazz. So gradually they said well let's call it folk music. — Pete Seeger

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. — Bonnie Raitt

He [Alan Lomax] started right off trying to find people who could introduce folk songs to city people. He found a young actor named Burl Ives and said, "Burl, you know a lot of great country songs learned from your grandmother, don't you know people would love to hear them?" He put on radio programs. He persuaded CBS to dedicate "The School of the Air" for one year to American folk music. He'd get some old sailor to sing an old sea shanty with a cracked voice. Then he'd get me to sing it with my banjo. — Pete Seeger

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

Country music is the combination of African and European folk songs coming together and doing a little waltz right here in the American south. They came together at some cotillion, and somebody snuck a black person into the room, and he danced with a white lady, and music was born. — Ketch Secor

Rick smiled mischievously and said, "I think I'm going to learn 'Kisses sweeter than wine'. It's a fun one."
Amelia laughed. "What it about?"
"It's about a guy who falls in love with this girl who has kisses sweeter than wine. As you know, folk songs have a story to tell. Well, he asked her to marry him. At first she wouldn't accept his proposal, so he had to beg and plead with her."
"Why didn't she want to marry him?"
"I think she was worried about how it would change her life. She'd been on her own for quite some time and she had to get used to the idea."
Amelia bit her lip and glanced down at her lap. With curiosity, she asked, "Did she finally accept his proposal?"
"Yup. It just took her a while to realize he was the best thing that ever happened to her." Rick grinned. "She sort of reminds me of someone else I know. — Linda Weaver Clarke

At last came the golden month of the wild folk-- honey-sweet May, when the birds come back, and the flowers come out, and the air is full of the sunrise scents and songs of the dawning year. — Samuel Scoville Jr.

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

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. — Roger McGuinn

I was on the dole once. I loved it. It was only for a couple of years, when I was 20 or 21 and playing in a band. Back then, this was something young folk did - you got your rent paid, a little bit of money to live on, and you loafed around, wrote songs, rehearsed and dreamed of playing Wembley Stadium. — John Niven

I live in Nashville, and I don't know how many people there would call me country. I really started in punk and anti-folk, but one of the reasons I originally gravitated towards country music is because most of those songs only use three chords. That was the easiest place for me to start, but I'm always trying to expand what I do. — Caitlin Rose

The term 'popular culture' always used to mean what the people do - pop songs, folk songs, music in general used to live because people would sing these songs and tell these stories together. Then all of these new technologies came out and it became the work of professionals. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Large-scale enthusiasm for folk music began in 1958 when the Kingston Trio recorded a song, "Tom Dooley," that sold two million records. This opened the way for less slickly commercial performers. Some, like Pete Seeger, who had been singing since the depression, were veteran performers. Others, like Joan Baez, were newcomers. It was conventional for folk songs to tell a story. Hence the idiom had always lent itself to propaganda. Seeger possessed an enormous repertoire of message songs that had gotten him blacklisted by the mass media years before. Joan Baez cared more for the message than the music, and after a few years devoted herself mainly to peace work. — William L. O'Neill

Real popular culture is folk art - coalminers' songs and so forth. — Noam Chomsky

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

If it was never new and it never gets old, then it's a folk song — Oscar Isaac

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

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. — Patrick Ness

Every country in the world loved the folklore of the West
the music, the dress, the excitement, everything that was associated with the opening of a new territory. It took everybody out of their own little world. The cowboy lasted a hundred years, created more songs and prose and poetry than any other folk figure. The closest thing was the Japanese samurai. Now, I wonder who'll continue it. — John Wayne

Songwriters I've always been drawn to are people who deal with something of depth in the lyric writing ... I've always been influenced by the folk song, the storytelling tradition in folk music. And so for years I wrote mostly story songs. I still do that, but as I've gone on, it's gotten a little more personal. I used to write mostly in the third person. I write a little more in the first person now. — Bruce Hornsby

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. — Pritam Chakraborty

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