Guy Clark Quotes

Even the most jingoistic person would have to admit that even American cultural music comes from Europe. That's what classical music is, real European music.

So many of the sounds that contemporary composers were trying to create were to be found in the traditional musics of the world. That was encouraging but also little daunting to think that you had to work so hard to be new and yet it was old.

In Hamburg, there are three major orchestras, an opera house, and one of the great concert-hall acoustics in Europe at the Laeiszhalle, in a town a fifth the size of London. And that's not unusual. In Germany, there are dozens of towns with two or three orchestras. The connection with music goes very, very deep.

I have observed, too, that the people of the many countries that I have visited are showing an ever increasing interest in the classical and traditional music of their own cultures.

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

My first instrument was an accordion. Growing up in Louisiana, my grandmother gave me an accordion because of our Cajun heritage.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I'm doin' now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

I'm certain that it was an incredible gift for me to not only be friends with some of the greatest blues people who've ever lived, but to learn how they played, how they sang, how they lived their lives, ran their marriages, and talked to their kids.

I think it's safe to say that if you talk to anybody in Ireland, they'll have a passing knowledge of the guitar. It was something that I couldn't get away from when I was younger: guitars played in shops and parties, just everywhere.

I was always wrapped around music being a tradition, a skill.

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

Mexican music runs through my veins. I loved it. Growing up, my father didn't allow us to listen to English music at home. That's all I heard. I had no choice.

I love traditional music. But in any culture around the world, there is the historic and cultural music and everything that's been passed down and passed down, and hopefully you take that, and then you take it, you know, the next distance, and then somebody else takes it the next distance.

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

I was brought up in an Orthodox Jewish household. I don't think I ever had a single discussion with my parents about faith. It was just something gently imposed.

I don't think what I do is influenced by suffering. I come from a talented people who are prolific in music and dance.

A nation creates music. The composer only arranges it.

The way we do music in Brazil is very different because we are so moved by music; we grow up with that.

Maybe some people may have thought or imagined that Islam drains all creativity. In fact, when you look at history, you discover that the golden age of Spain is what actually produced what we call the guitar.

My first memory of playing music was when I was 3 years old in Puerto Rico. I played percussion on a tin can behind my uncle, who played the cuatro.

I studied the Ghanaian drums and bongo drumming.

Like, back in Albania, all my cousins sing, they play the drums, they play guitar, it's like... a thing!

You literally cannot deny the fact that rock and roll was born because of blues, and blues is black man's music.

Music was something that nobody in my family does.

Now, when I have a four-string that I take on the road with me, it's a regular Martin. I bought a decent Martin with a pickup in it, and then I just take off the strings and have four strings on it.