Ruston Kelly Quotes

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.

White rhythm is waltzes, marches, and the polka. In Africa, rhythm is used for a celebratory groove, but white rhythm doesn't have such an enormous vocabulary of spirits. It's basically militant.

Mine is not a traditional music, but it comes from a tradition.

I really haven't strayed too far, musically, from my roots.

Somalis really are very musically sophisticated, and they're about their own thing.

It's not that I don't like American pop; I'm a huge admirer of it, but I think my roots came from a very English and Irish base. Is it all sort of totally non-American sounding, do you think?

The music we're playing now is based on my heritage, which is Russian, Romanian and Hungarian.

I've been hearing fiddle music since I was in the womb, I'm sure.

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 mean, the genuine roots of culture is folk music.

Bluegrass is really a big part of my background.

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.

The music that I play and that I like is traditional music, maybe it's because of my age.

The music of the Gypsies belongs in the sphere of improvisation rather than in any other, without which it would have no power to exist.

I grew up listening to dappan koothu songs and loved the fun party vibes they gave.

People seem ready for a more in-depth idea of folk music, culture and history.

Some people's parents listened to the Beatles... but my family is Alquimia, Celia Cruz, and Carlos Vives - this old, rich Colombian music. I loved hearing that while I was growing up.

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.

Alan Lomax is the person who I think should be given major credit for what has been called the "Folk Song Revival." My father participated with him because my father was a musicologist and urged trained musicians to learn about "the vernacular."

Mostly folk music is people with fruity voices trying to keep alive something old and dead. It's all a bit boring, like ballet: a minority thing kept going by a minority group.

My father urged Alan [Lomax] not to repeat the mistakes of the European folklorists who, a century ago, had collected these peasant songs and then arranged them for part choir and accompanied them on piano, and then told the young people of their country, "Don't change a note, this is our sacred heritage." Father said, whether it's a fiddle tune or a gospel song, learn it right off the record from the people who grew up with it. Don't just learn it from a piece of paper.

For me, there's a lot of intrinsic mystery and power in folk music, but a lot of people don't perceive that music from around the world as something that fits into their lives or their psyche in any way. So I tried to present it in a different way to give it more of a chance to sink into people's heads.

Celtic music is part of the language in Scotland and Ireland, where every kid and grandparent knows those songs, music by the likes of Woody Guthrie and Hank Snow is getting entrenched here. They are part of our cultural language. It's part of a living treasure. It doesn't just belong to a museum.

I don't know what folk music means anymore, because the meaning of that just keeps changing.

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.