Folk Heritage Quotes

Every country in the world loved the folklore of the West--the music, the dress, the excitement, everything that was associated with the opening of a new territory. It took everybody out of their own little world. The cowboy lasted a hundred years, created more songs and prose and poetry than any other folk figure. The closest thing was the Japanese samurai. Now, I wonder who'll continue it.

Most people think that I heard Bob Dylan first and got a cap and harmonica. Really, it was Woody Guthrie. He was so influential.

Folk music is the original melody of man; it is the musical mirror of the world.

I am fascinated by the places that music comes from, like fife-and-drum blues from southern Mississippi or Cajun music out of Lafayette, Louisiana, shape-note singing, old harp singing from the mountains - I love that stuff. It's like the beginning of rock and roll: something comes down from the hills, and something comes up from the delta.

I loved the Woody Guthrie tradition of speaking about what's happening to the country.

The poetry of country music will survive.

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'll talk about the banjo all day long and the history of minstrel shows.

I grew up listening to spiritual music, Blind Willie Johnson and folk.

It's interesting to marry American musical traditions with the subtlety of English-style storytelling and folk singer-songwriters like Martin Carthy and Bert Jansch - they're two heritages that are distinct but also cross over on so many levels.

Celtic music will always be around, even if with the mainstream crowds it dies out.

Purcell is a composer who had a formative influence on British music - even The Who now cite him as an influence. There's an intense, dirty harmony, but there's a Louis XIV kind of elan and style, too. He had the melancholy DNA of our national folk heritage.

I love Punjabi Folk.

I grew up in a place where everybody was a storyteller, but nobody wrote. It was that kind of Celtic, storytelling tradition: everybody would have a story at the pub or at parties, even at the clubs and raves.

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.