Top 1200 Folk Music Quotes & Sayings

Even though I grew up playing folk music - and surf music, originally - I was listening to Motown and Stax on the radio as well. That music always resonated with me.

I want to be just a musician and songwriter, and hopefully known as a very good one. I love a lot of music that's considered folk music, but I also love a lot of music that's considered punk or considered rap. I don't mind being called a folk singer. But it seems a bit limiting. I want to be able to write whatever kind of song I want.

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.

Folk music has been our popular music... There is a myth that youngsters only like heavy metal or rock music, but that's not true.

When I was young I wanted to make films and then I got into folk music when I was about 12, and started going to this folk club in Auckland. My dad [Barry Andrews] was in punk and post-punk bands, so I guess it was a side of music I hadn't really listened to before - the really narrative form of songwriting.

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.

For a decade, Emma-Lee Moss has been steadily making weird, moody, melancholic music under the moniker 'Emmy the Great' that has been referred to as nue-folk, anti-folk, synthpop, and, most of all, literary.

My music doesn't really sound like punk music, it's acoustic. And it doesn't really sound like folk music 'cause I'm thrashing too hard and emoting a little too much for the sort of introspective, respectful, sort-of folk genre thing. I'm really into punk and folk as music that comes out of communities and is very genuine and very immediate and not commercial.

All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

I didn't grow up with classical music. My father was a folk music singer.

What bothers me is when music becomes entertainment. Of course, music is supposed to be entertaining, but go back to any period of time - music had a cultural significance on different levels, whether it was folk music, it was the news of the village, or it had to do with the rites of passage.

I'm a folk preacher. A folk therapist. A folk musician. I come from authentically that which is of my experience. Therefore, the music is strictly from the soul, strictly improvisational.

Folk music is music that everyday people can play, and it inspired a lot of people to make their own music. That trailed into making your own pop music, and that's why garage bands started springing up everywhere.

Logically, when you talkin' about folk music and blues, you find out it's music of just plain people.

Folk music is the heart of the Indian music scene for several years.

I love a lot of music that's considered folk music, but I also love a lot of music that's considered punk or considered rap. I don't mind being called a folk singer. But it seems a bit limiting. I want to be able to write whatever kind of song I want.

When I was a teenager, I really didn't like loud rock music. I listened to jazz and blues and folk music. I've always preferred acoustic music. And it was only, I suppose, by the time Jethro Tull was getting underway that we did let the music begin to have a harder edge, in particular with the electric guitar being alongside the flute.

Yeah, I always listen to both classic and newer folk-influenced music. Singer-songwriter, alternative music. I also listen to more experimental dance music.

Of the music that we've done over the years, the things that are the most requested are the hymns. And folk music is also high on the list.

I love commercial music! I can dissect it and criticize it with any critic in the business. But without any thought, I just enjoy it. It's folk music. That's what I'm doing, folk music. I'm not intellectualizing it . . . and making it into a phoney art form. I'm just doing the music I enjoy.

When Kenny first came to me, I think he was thinking of making a nice little folk record, but in my opinion, folk music had come to an end and I felt he needed to go to the next step, the next generation.

I have a great liking for the Chamba folk music, which depicts the beauty of women and the mountains with a touch of Indian classical music.

I don't know about folk music. I play guitar, so there's a feeling I make folk music.

It's weird, in New York, it's like the big theme of everything is folk music and interacting with people. Maryland is where the landscape of our music comes from, it was more like, let's walk around. People are saying that we are part of some sort of folk scene. We don't feel connected with it. We do live in the city, and communicate with people. It's all folk music.

Folk music has a sort of a bubbling-under quality. The stream runs through the cultural consciousness, and whether or not it's on the radio is not the issue. Folk music is always there.

Northeastern folk music influenced me from a very young age. Sachin Dev Burman is one of the inspirational musicians in Indian film music. The way he fused folk music with his signature style is amazing. So, I am aware of the beauty of northeast folk music.

We understand that, in our communities, black trans folk, gender-nonconforming folk, black queer folk, black women, black disabled folk - we have been leading movements for a long time, but we have been erased from the official narrative.

Folk music - and what people are now perceiving as being folk music - is music that's quite close to the ground. The songs sound quite old, even if they're new. They sound like they've been sung by different people for years.

I love all types of music - jazz, great pop music, world music and folk music - but the music I listen to most is piano music from the 18th, 19th and 20th century. Russian music in particular.

I see a lot of connections between folk and punk music just because they're both subcorporate music - I mean, traditionally.

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.

I don't think of myself as a folk singer per se, but I really like blues and string-band music. When I started listening to records when I was a teenager, the folk boom was going on.

Before I begin to write, I listen to music that inspires me. I listen to folk Punjabi music, sufi music.

I like Celtic folk music, Native American music, and any kind of early music. There isn't a lot of music that I don't like... except for Show Tunes.

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.

I started singing Folksongs with my mother when I was 6 years old. We sang at Folk festivals and concerts and schools. There was always music being played either on record, Jazz and Folk, by musician friends of my mother. I took to singing very early, I believe it has been a Gift I was born with.

The Band is probably the ultimate example of people taking all kinds of music, from gospel to blues to mountain music to folk music to on and on and on and on and putting them all in this big pot and mixing up a new gumbo.

I was very engaged by the folk music movement.Bob Dylan; Joan Baez; Peter, Paul and Mary. And then I sort of discovered world music, and fell in love with ethnic music of all sorts.

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.'

I'm obsessed - not just interested, obsessed - with folk music, street music, the parallels between a country's street music and its so-called classical and intellectual music, the way certain scales have travelled right across the globe. All this ethnological and musical interaction fascinates me. Have you heard any trance music? That's the thing.

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

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

The way I see it, rock & roll is folk music. Street music. It isn't taught in school. It has to be picked up.

There are two types of folk music: quiet folk music and loud folk music. I play both.

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.

When I listen to music today, it is about 99 percent classical. I rarely even listen to folk music, the music of my own specialty, because folk music is to me more limited than classical music.

I love a lot of Irish folk music and Irish folk songs.

Most of the music I've become interested in is hybrid in its originsClassical music, of course, is unbelievably hybrid. Jazz is an obvious amalgam. Bluegrass comes from eighteenth-century Scottish and Irish folk music that made contact with the blues. By exploring music, you're exploring everything.

Jazz goes into folk music, into rock music. Jazz is in practically everything except classical music where they're reading the same music all the time, the same way, the same tempo every night.

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.

I don't purchase records. I do enjoy listening to things like Japanese folk music or Indian music.

Banjos are used in Celtic, English folk music and obviously American music. But not that much in pop music. But it's more versatile than people realise it to be. It's a beautiful instrument, very rhythmic and melodic. You can do anything with it.

Sixties folk rock was my original muse and the folk audience-people who listen to music off the beaten track-fostered my career. I definitely don't want to abandon the genre but I also need to make sure I'm Dar Williams first.

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.

New Orleans had a great tradition of celebration. Opera, military marching bands, folk music, the blues, different types of church music, ragtime, echoes of traditional African drumming, and all of the dance styles that went with this music could be heard and seen throughout the city. When all of these kinds of music blended into one, jazz was born.

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.

I grew up with the Blind Boys' music. My family owns a music store in Claremont, California, called The Claremont Folk Music Center. I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel, folk, and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music.

What I like about pop music, and why I'm still attracted to it, is that in the end it becomes our folk music.

And this is the origin of pop music: it's a professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music as well.

I don't have very sophisticated taste in music. I listen to a lot of folk music. I like reggae.