A Quote by Pete Seeger

I think folk music helps reinforce your sense of history. An old song makes you think of times gone by. — © Pete Seeger
I think folk music helps reinforce your sense of history. An old song makes you think of times gone by.
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.
I think there's a difference between the type of folk music that people put into the box of "folk music" and then there's the kind of folk music that I aspire to and am in awe of, and that is the kind of folk music where it's very limited tools - in most cases a guitar, in a self-taught style that is idiosyncratic and particular to that musician.
Culture dictated from above is the enemy of folk music. Whether it's stuffy classical music or pre-engineered pop where somebody's paid tons of money to make sure that everyone hears this song a certain number of times a day - that feels like the opposite of folk music.
A lot of times I have the song inside of me and I have to fight to get it out. I'm a very visual person, so I can see the song but I can't hear it. But I think that if your music becomes a war for it to happen, in the end there's a certain kind of aggression in the music. And I think that's a lot more interesting.
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.
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.
A song stylist is, like, to take an old folk song like "Delia's Gone" and do a modern white man's version of it.
Thinking about making a love story without music was really frightening, Sciamma admitted. Because every love story we know, we think about 'Titanic' we think about the music, we think about 'Gone with the Wind' we think about the music, we think about 'E.T.' we think about the music, and every love story has its own tune, 'That's our song.'
The best way to write a song is to think of something else and then the song kind of creeps in. The beginning makes no sense whatsoever. It just, like, rhymes. And then all of a sudden I'll go into, I am an old woman named after my mother.
You listen to a song by Nicky Jam, and you don't think about reggaeton; you just think, 'I like that song.' I got old people listening to my music, young people listening to my music.
Now any person who plays an acoustic guitar standing up on stage with a microphone is a folk singer. Some grandmother with a baby in her arms singing a 500-year-old song, well, she's not a folk singer, she's not on stage with a guitar and a microphone. No, she's just an old grandmother singing an old song. The term "folk singer" has gotten warped.
I think the emotion that song carries makes it good. Because you have to produce around something - an emotional attachment and a feeling. The melody itself has a feeling in it. The keys, the tones, frequency, sonics, all of those have feelings in it. Like, it's the ghost within, the music itself. That's what makes the song even have a possibility of being great. The emotional connection. Because if you don't have that, I don't think you really have a song.
I think the music that's part of your heritage is what you spend a lot of your early life rejecting. The very idea of folk music would break me out in hives until I was about 28. But I think it's nice when you eventually do come back to it. It's like coming home, and you realize it wasn't so bad after all.
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.
I don't think my music really provokes that kind of energy that makes people want to grab AKs and rally through the streets. I don't think my music is gangsta in that sense.
You might pick up some influences from another type of music that you wouldn't normally think of, but, you know, maybe as a guitar player, it will come out in your improvisational style, maybe as a song writer it might come out in your note choices, or in your melodic choices, and it just helps to making your music that much more original and unique.
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