Jez Butterworth Quotes

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.

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

I mean, the genuine roots of culture is folk music.

I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing 'em.

I didn't grow up watching film but as a Ukrainian-American, music and stories and dance are crucial.

A lot of young musicians in Stockholm are about keeping tradition alive and moving it forward at the same time.

Stories always seem to get better with age.

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.

We have that storytelling history in country and bluegrass and old time and folk music, blues - all those things that combine to make up the genre. It was probably storytelling before it was songwriting, as far as country music is concerned. It's fun to be a part of that and tip the hat to that. You know, and keep that tradition alive.

Once you're in a particular country, and you're surrounded by musicians who are so adept at traditional music, you suddenly realize how much there is to explore and digest and learn and experience.

I find all folklore challenging, and I never cease to be grateful that I became a professional folklorist.

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."

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.

Alan [Lomax] and his father started off changing the definition of folk music from something ancient and anonymous to something very contemporary.

My thought was I should try to stick with names that people may recognize like Robert Johnson, Son House, and Hoagy Carmichael, so if somebody cared to research, they would find a wealth of material.

My background is deep and set in deep time, and in a narrow space, oral traditions going back a long, long time, which I inherited by osmosis.

Living in Cape Breton, it's really all about fiddle music, so it's not like there were other instruments out there that tempted me and it was like I had to decide which one. It was automatically fiddle, because it's the predominant instrument in Cape Breton Island.

My parents' generation was definitely pre-telly, and they knew how to entertain each other. Everybody knew something that they could do - a song or a poem, or a piece of music. At school, I remember being a cat and then a budgie and then a bumble bee. I obviously thought all that was marvelous.

Legends die hard. They survive as truth rarely does.

A characteristic of older folksongs, in most cases, is that we don't know their composers or authors. Older folksongs were written often with no commercial purpose in mind. They were passed down by word of mouth, from generation to generation.

Each time, storytellers clothed the naked body of the myth in their own traditions, so that listeners could relate more easily to its deeper meaning.

I've spent hours and hours doing research into Appalachian folk music. My grandfather was a fiddler. There is something very immediate, very simple and emotional, about that music.

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.

Their eagerness for the big-band music and their ability to grasp the essence of it made me realize that today's generation has not been properly exposed to the big-band sound.