Background Image

...

I Love My Country Very Dearly, And I Greatly Resent The Implication That Some Of The Places I Have Sung And Some Of The People That I Have Known, And Some Of My Opinions, Whether They Are Religious Or Philosophical, Or I Might Be A Vegetarian, Make Me Any Less Of An American.

-Pete Seeger

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Love My Country

Pete Seeger

...

I Love My Country Very Dearly, And I Greatly Resent The Implication That Some Of The Places I Have Sung And Some Of The People That I Have Known, And Some Of My Opinions, Whether They Are Religious Or Philosophical, Or I Might Be A Vegetarian, Make Me Any Less Of An American.

Views: 4

Topic

More From Pete Seeger

I Never Intended To Make A Living From Music. That's The Funny Thing. I Wanted To Be A Journalist.

My Dad, The Old Professor, Used To Say, 'never Get Into An Argument About What's Folk Music And What Isn't.'

Shh. Listen To The Sounds That Surround You. Notice The Pitches, The Volume, The Timbre, The Many Lines Of Counterpoint. As Light Taught Monet To Paint, The Earth May Be Teaching You Music.

Be Wary Of Great Leaders.

I Used To Agree With Kurt Vonnegut, Who Said That The Human Race Has A Snowball's Chance In Hell Of Being Around A Hundred Years From Now.

I Was About 16 Years Old Years When My Father Took Me To A Square Dance Festival In North Carolina. For The First Time In My Life, I Found There Was Music In My Country That You Never Heard On The Radio, And You Didn't Hear On The Juke Boxes, And In Theaters. I Fell In Love With It, Especially The Long-necked Banjos.

Again, I Say I Will Be Glad To Tell What Songs I Have Ever Sung, Because Singing Is My Business.

I Feel Most Spiritual When I'm Out In The Woods. I Feel Part Of Nature. Or Looking Up At The Stars. [i Used To Say] I Was An Atheist. Now I Say, It's All According To Your Definition Of God. According To My Definition Of God, I'm Not An Atheist. Because I Think God Is Everything. Whenever I Open My Eyes I'm Looking At God.

Now Somebody Will Ask Me, Pete, How Can You Prove These Songs Really Make A Difference? And I Have To Confess I Can't Prove A Darn Thing, Except That The People In Power Must Think They Do Something, Because They Keep The Songs Off The Air.

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.

Songs Are Funny Things. They Can Slip Across Borders. Proliferate In Prisons. Penetrate Hard Shells. I Always Believed That The Right Song At The Right Moment Could Change History.

Sometimes You Find An Old Tune So Good You Can Use It Several Times For Different Purposes.

I'd Like To Be Remembered As The Sower Of Seeds. That's The Greatest Parable In The Bible As Far As I'm Concerned. Some Seeds Fall In The Pathway, Get Stomped On And Don't Grow. Some Fall On The Stones And Don't Even Sprout, But Others Fall On The Ground And Multiply A Thousand Fold.

Being Generous Of Spirit Is A Wonderful Way To Live.

Generous Spirit

There Is A Big, Beautiful World That Could Be Destroyed By Selfishness And Foolishness. We Musicians Have It Without Power To Save It. In A Small Way, Every Single One Of Us Counts.

I Want To Turn The Clock Back To When People Lived In Small Villages And Took Care Of Each Other.

Music Does Affect Your Opinions. Plato Is Supposed To Have Said "it's Very Dangerous To Allow The Wrong Kind Of Music Into The Republic."

But I Decline To Say Who Has Ever Listened To Them, Who Has Written Them, Or Other People Who Have Sung Them.

The American Indians Were Communists. They Were. Every Anthropologist Will Tell You They Were Communists. No Rich, No Poor. If Somebody Needed Something The Community Chipped In.

Songwriters Can’t Explain. You Get An Idea And You Don’t Know Where It’s Come From. And If You’re Lucky, You Have A Pencil Or Pen And Can Write It Down.

John Adams And Thomas Jefferson Corresponded For 13 Years Before They Died On The Same Day. They Asked, "how Can One Have Prosperity Without Commerce? How Can One Have Commerce Without Luxury? How Can One Have Luxury Without Corruption? How Can You Have Corruption Without The End Of The Republic?" And They Really Didn't Know The Answer.

I Think These Are Very Improper Questions For Any American To Be Asked, Especially Under Such Compulsion As This. I Would Be Very Glad To Tell You My Life If You Want To Hear Of It.

This World Is So Full Of Hypocrisy, The Only Way You Can Be Honest Is To Be A Hermit.

Down Through The Centuries, This Trick Has Been Tried By Various Establishments Throughout The World. They Force People To Get Involved In The Kind Of Examination That Has Only One Aim And That Is To Stamp Out Dissent.

I Still Call Myself A Communist, Because Communism Is No More What Russia Made Of It Than Christianity Is What The Churches Make Of It.

I Decline To Discuss, Under Compulsion, Where I Have Sung, And Who Has Sung My Songs, And Who Else Has Sung With Me, And The People I Have Known.

Just As With Other Great Words, The Word Environment Means Different Things. You Might Say That A Cave Woman Twenty Thousand Years Ago Sweeping Out The Cave Was Improving The Environment. Many People Improving The Environment Think Only In Terms Of The Air They Breathe In Their Hometown And The Water In The Aquifer Under Their Hometown. My Guess Is Very Few Are Thinking Centuries Ahead Or Thousand Of Years Ahead, But That's What We Have To Do.

At The Audition, Your Assignment Is To Find Something New In The Song. Something You've Never Noticed Before. A Breath Carried Over, A Thought That Ties The Whole Thing Together. Then Take The Risk And Do It.

There's A Story Behind Every Old Ballad Or Work Song Or Nonsense Song That I Ever Knew. Sometimes It's A Fascinating Story. A Story Of People Struggling For Freedom, Struggling To Get Along In This Old World.

All Songwriters Are Links In A Chain.

I Was Working For Alan Lomax In The Library Of Congress Folk Song Archive, And Starting To Realize What A Wealth Of Different Kinds Of Music There Was In This Country That You Never Heard On The Radio.

You'd Be Surprised How Many Stupid Mistakes I've Made. I Make Stupid Mistakes All The Time, And Some Of Them Have Been Very Big Stupid Mistakes.

People Are Combining Traditions Like Never Before And Finding Somehow A Fundamental Unity For This Human Race Of Ours. I Think Working With Each Other As Jeff Haynes Has Done Here-we May Be Surprised To Find What Deeper Unity All Human Beings Have.

I Came From An Intellectual Family. Most Were Doctors, Preachers, Teachers, Businessmen. My Grandfather Was A Small Businessman. His Father Was An Abolitionist Doctor, And His Father Was An Immigrant From Germany.

I Write A Song Because I Want To. I Think The Moment You Start Writing It To Make Money, You're Starting To Kill Yourself Artistically.

The Easiest Way To Avoid Wrong Notes Is To Never Open Your Mouth And Sing. What A Mistake That Would Be.

The World Would Never Amount To A Hill Of Beans If People Didn't Use Their Imaginations To Think Of The Impossible.

In The Largest Sense, Every Work Of Art Is Protest... A Lullaby Is A Propaganda Song And Any Three-year-old Knows It... A Hymn Is A Controversial Song - Sing One In The Wrong Church: You'll Find Out...

In A World Of Private Property, If Something Isn't Owned By Somebody, It's Going To Be Misused By Somebody Else.

I Believe That All Technological Societies Tend To Self-destruct. The Reason Is That The Very Things That Make Us A Successful Technological Society, Such As Our Curiosity, Our Ambition And Determination, Will Also Cause Us To Fall.

According To My Definition Of God, I'm Not An Atheist. Because I Think God Is Everything. Whenever I Open My Eyes I'm Looking At God. Whenever I'm Listening To Something I'm Listening To God.

When I Got Out Of School, I Spent Two Years Just Hitchhiking Around. Every Time I Met Some Old Farmer Who Could Play Banjo, I Got Him To Teach Me A Lick Or Two. Little By Little, I Put It Together.

It Was Rachel Carson's Famous Book 'silent Spring' That Got Me Involved With The Environment. I Read It In The New Yorker, In Installments. Up To Then, I'd Thought The Main Job To Do Is Help The Meek Inherit The Earth. And I Still, That's A Job That's Got To Be Done. But I Realized If We Didn't Do Something Soon, What The Meek Would Inherit Would Be A Pretty Poisonous Place To Live.

There Is An Old Arabic Proverb, 'when The King Puts The Poet On His Payroll, He Cuts Off The Tongue Of The Poet', So Throughout The Ages, People In Power Have Liked To Control Music, They Used To Throw Songwriters In Jail Throughout History, And Were Assassinated.

I'm Still A Communist In The Sense That I Don't Believe The World Will Survive With The Rich Getting Richer And The Poor Getting Poorer - I Think That The Pressures Will Get So Tremendous That The Social Contract Will Just Come Apart.

I Like To Say I'm More Conservative Than Goldwater. He Just Wanted To Turn The Clock Back To When There Was No Income Tax.

Food Is One Of The Great Organizing Tools.

It Was Only Through The Years That I Realized What An Absolutely Extraordinarily Thoughtful Person Dr. King Was.

I Always Knew That Sooner Or Later There Would Come Somebody Like Woody Guthrie Who Could Make A Great Song Every Week. Dylan Certainly Had A Social Agenda, But He Was Such A Good Poet That Most Of His Attempts Were Head And Shoulders Above Things That I And Others Were Trying To Do. ... If I Had An Address, I'd Send Him A Birthday Card Saying, 'keep On Going.'

It's A Terrible Thing Being A Patriarch. I Don't Even Have A Gray Beard. But People Keep Calling Me Up For Advice.

I Would Ask, "how Can One Have A Technological Society Without Research? How Can One Have Research Without Researching Dangerous Areas? How Can One Research Dangerous Areas Without Uncovering Dangerous Information? How Can You Uncover Dangerous Information Without It Falling Into The Hands Of Insane People Who Will Sooner Or Later Destroy The Human Race, If Not The Whole Of Life On Earth?" Who Knows? God Only Knows!

The Real Meaning Of Courage Was The Personal Sacrifice Of Rosa Parks And Martin Luther King.

When I Am Chopping Trees Out In The Woods Because I Heat My House With Wood, I Feel Myself Right In The Middle Of God. Mahalia Jackson Said "i Have Seen God. I Have Seen The Sun Rise." So, In A Sense, When Anyone Looks In The Mirror, They Look At An Infinitesimally Small Part Of God.

Many Americans Knew Their Lives And Their Souls Were Being Struggled For, And They Fought For It. And I Felt I Should Carry On.

And There's A Wonderful Parable In The New Testament: The Sower Scatters Seeds. Some Seeds Fall In The Pathway And Get Stamped On, And They Don't Grow. Some Fall On The Rocks, And They Don't Grow. But Some Seeds Fall On Fallow Ground, And They Grow And Multiply A Thousandfold. Who Knows Where Some Good Little Thing That You've Done May Bring Results Years Later That You Never Dreamed Of?

I Get Up Each Morning, Gather My Wits, Pick Up The Paper And Read The Obits. If I'm Not There, I Know I'm Not Dead, So I Eat A Good Breakfast And Go Back To Bed.

All The Arts, Music, The Visual Arts, Acting And Dancing Arts, Cooking Arts, And I Believe Sports, Will Save The Human Race Because They Can Leap Over Barriers, Religions, Leap Over Barriers Of Race, Politics.

In The Sixties, During The Vietnam War, When Anarchists And Pacifists And Socialists, Democrats And Republicans, Decent-hearted Americans, All Recoiled With Horror At The Bloodbath, We Came Together.

One Of The Things I'm Most Proud Of About My Country Is The Fact That We Did Lick Mccarthyism Back In The Fifties.

It's Been My Belief That Learning How To Do Something In Your Hometown Is The Most Important Thing.

I Have To Resist The Temptation To Want To Learn Everything. You Know, You Can't. You Have To Restrict Yourself At Some Time, Or Else You Find Yourself Just Being Spread Too Thin. And Already I Think I Try Too Many Things.

Finding Yourself

Any Idiot Can Be Complicated. It Takes A Genius To Be Simple.

Some May Find Them Merely Diverting Melodies. Others May Find Them Incitements To Red Revolution. And Who Will Say If Either Or Both Is Wrong? Not I.

Get People To Sing Together And They'll Act Together Too.

I Have Sung For Americans Of Every Political Persuasion, And I Am Proud That I Never Refuse To Sing To An Audience, No Matter What Religion Or Color Of Their Skin, Or Situation In Life.

Situations In Life

There Is No Such Thing As A Wrong Note ... Just As Long As You're Singing Along.

A Song Is Like A Picture Of A Bird In Flight; The Bird Was Moving Before The Picture Was Taken, And No Doubt Continued After.

I’ve Found That Festivals Are A Relatively Painless Way To Meet People And Make A Few Points That Need Making, Without Having To Hit Them Over The Head With Too Many Speeches.

Well, Normally I’m Against Big Things. I Think The World Is Going To Be Saved By Millions Of Small Things. Too Many Things Can Go Wrong When They Get Big.” — Pete Seeger (on How He Felt About Attending His Big 90th Birthday Bash Last Year)

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’ve Never Sung Anywhere Without Giving The People Listening To Me A Chance To Join In - As A Kid, As A Lefty, As A Man Touring The U.s.a. And The World, As An Oldster. I Guess It’s Kind Of A Religion With Me. Participation. That’s What’s Going To Save The Human Race.

Participation - That's What's Gonna Save The Human Race.

Every Time I'm In The Woods, I Feel Like I'm In Church.

I Keep Reminding People That An Editorial In Rhyme Is Not A Song. A Good Song Makes You Laugh, It Makes You Cry, It Makes You Think.

Rulers Should Be Careful About What Songs Are Allowed To Be Sung.

A Good Song Can Only Do Good, And I Am Proud Of The Songs I Have Sung. I Hope To Be Able To Continue Singing These Songs For All Who Want To Listen, Republicans, Democrats, And Independents.

The Truth Is A Rabbit In A Bramble Patch. All You Can Do Is Circle Around And Say It's Somewhere In There.

Throughout History The Leaders Of The Countries Have Been Very Particular About What Songs Should Be Sung. We Know The Power Of Songs.

When You Play The 12-string Guitar,you Spend Half Your Life Tuning The Instrument And The Other Half Playing It Out Of Tune.

After Visits To Several Communist Countries (ussr, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, East Germany, Vietnam, China, Cuba), I Feel Strongly That Most "revolutionary" Types Around The World Don't Realize The Importance Of Freedom Of The Press And The Air, A Right To Peaceably Assemble And Discuss Anything, Including The Dangers Of Such Discussions.

Well, It's One Of The Things That Will. Words Are Good, And Words Help Us Become The Leading Species On Earth To The Point Where We Are Now Ready To Wipe Ourselves Off The Earth. But I Think That All The Arts Are Needed, And Sports Too, And Cooking, Food, And All These Different Ways Of Communication. Smiles, Looking Into Eyes Directly, All These Different Means Of Communication Are Needed To Save This World. But Certainly A Great Melody

My Mother Wanted Me To Learn How To Read Music. She'd Given Fiddles To My Two Older Brothers, But They'd Rebelled. I Came Along And My Father Said, "oh, Let Peter Enjoy Himself." What She Did Was Leave Musical Instruments All Around The House. Whistles, Marimbas, Squeeze Boxes, A Piano And Organ. By Age Six Or Seven, I Could Bang Out A Simple Tune On Almost Anything. I Developed A Good Ear, So I Didn't Learn To Read Music Until I Taught Myself At Age Eighteen, 'cause I Was Hearing So Many Good Songs I Couldn't Possibly Remember Them All.

Alan [lomax] And His Father Started Off Changing The Definition Of Folk Music From Something Ancient And Anonymous To Something Very Contemporary.

I'd Really Rather Put Songs On People's Lips Than In Their Ears.

Technology Will Save Us If It Doesn't Wipe Us Out First.

Singing With Children In The Schools Has Been The Most Rewarding Experience Of My Life.

I Dreamed I Saw A Mighty Room, The Room Was Filled With Men. And The Paper They Were Signing Said They'd Never Fight Again.

The World Will Be Solved By Millions Of Small Things.

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.

I Fought For Peace In The Fifties.

I Have Sung In Hobo Jungles, And I Have Sung For The Rockefellers, And I Am Proud That I Have Never Refused To Sing For Anybody.

We All Go To Different Churches Or No Churches, We Have Different Favorite Foods, Different Ways Of Making Love, Different Ways Of Doing All Sorts Of Things, But There We're All Singing Together. Gives You Hope.

The First Country Conquered By Any Dictator Is His Own Country.

If I Had An Axe On The Evening At Newport When [dylan] Broke Out The Electric Guitar, I'd Have Cut His Cable.

I Am Not Going To Answer Any Questions As To My Association, My Philosophical Or Religious Beliefs Or My Political Beliefs, Or How I Voted In Any Election, Or Any Of These Private Affairs.

The Danger With The Internet Is That You Don't Need To Think About Music, You Just Search For It And You Find The Answer. Singing Used To Be Part Of Everyday Life. Women Sang While Pounding Corn. Men Sang While Paddling Canoes.

The Good And Bad Are All Tangled Up Together. American Popular Music Is Loved Around The World Because Of Its African Rhythm. But That Wouldn't Have Happened If It Wasn't For Slavery.

Most Conservatives Just Want To Turn Back The Clock To A Time Before The Income Tax - 100 Years Or So. I Would Like To Turn The Clock Back Thousands Of Years To A Time When People Lived In Small Communities And Took Care Of Each Other.

There Is Something About Participating; It Is Almost My Religion. If The World Is Still Here In 100 Years, People Will Know The Importance Of Participating, Not Just Being Spectators. Millions Of Small Groups Around The World, That Don't Necessarily All Agree With One Another, Are Made Up Of People Who Are Not Just Sitting Back Waiting For Someone To Do Things For Them. No One Can Prove Anything, But Of Course If I Didn't Believe It Had Some Kind Of Power, I Wouldn't Be Trying To Do It.

I Love My Country Very Dearly, And I Greatly Resent The Implication That Some Of The Places I Have Sung And Some Of The People That I Have Known, And Some Of My Opinions, Whether They Are Religious Or Philosophical, Or I Might Be A Vegetarian, Make Me Any Less Of An American.

Anybody Who Wants To Learn Everything Is Pretty Stupid. You Learn What You Can.

I Am Saying Voluntarily That I Have Sung For Almost Every Religious Group In The Country, From Jewish And Catholic, And Presbyterian And Holy Rollers And Revival Churches.

To Live You Have To Experiment, To Have The Ability To Experiment You Have To Have Confidence, To Have Confidence You Have To Be Loved, To Be Loved You Have To Love.

Have Confidence

I Was 16 When I Came To New York. I Had Graduated To A Tenor Banjo In The School Jazz Band, And It Was Kind Of Boring - Just Chords, Chords, Chords. Then My Father Took Me To A Mountain Music And Dance Festival In Asheville, North Carolina, And There I Saw Relatively Uneducated People Playing Great Music By Ear.

And The People In The Houses All Went To The University And They Got Put In Boxes Little Boxes All The Same, Little Boxes All The Same, Little Boxes All The Same, Little Boxes All The Same And They All Come Out All The Same.

If You Love This Land Of The Free, Bring Them Home, Bring Them Home, Bring Them Back From Overseas.

Parents Are The Hardest-working Members Of The Population. But They Do It For The Highest Wages. Kisses.

Song, Songs Kept Them Going And Going; They Didn't Realize The Millions Of Seeds They Were Sowing. They Were Singing In Marches, Even Singing In Jail. Songs Gave Them The Courage To Believe They Would Not Fail.

I Try To Sing Many Different Kinds Of Songs. If I Sing A Batch Of Humorous Songs, I'll Throw In A Deadly Serious Song. Or If I'm Singing Too Many Serious Songs, I'll Throw In A Ridiculous Song, To Mix It Up.

If There's Something Wrong, Speak Up!

Make The Kind Of Music You Love Even If You Never Hear It On The Air. This Was The Basic Lesson I'd Gotten From Alan [lomax]. Alan Said, Pete, Look At All This Great Music Around. You Never Hear It On The Radio, But It's Right There, Great Music.

We Will Never Know Everything. But I Think If We Can Learn Within The Next Few Decades To Face The Danger We All Are In, I Believe There Will Be Tens Of Millions, Maybe Hundreds Of Millions, Of Human Beings Working Wherever They Are To Do Something Good.

If There's A World Here In A Hundred Years, It's Going To Be Saved By Tens Of Millions Of Little Things. The Powers-that-be Can Break Up Any Big Thing They Want. They Can Corrupt It Or Co-opt It From The Inside, Or They Can Attack It From The Outside. But What Are They Going To Do About 10 Million Little Things? They Break Up Two Of Them, And Three More Like Them Spring Up!

The Key To The Future Of The World Is Finding The Optimistic Stories And Letting Them Be Known.

If It Can’t Be Reduced, Reused, Repaired, Rebuilt, Refurbished, Refinished, Resold, Recycled Or Composted, Then It Should Be Restricted, Redesigned Or Removed From Production.

Music Has Always Had The Ability To Comfort And Inspire.

Way Back In The Old Days, Say In Europe Of The Middle Ages, You Had An Aristocracy, And They Could Afford To Pay For Musicians. The Kings And Queens Had Musicians In The Castles, And That Developed Into Symphony Orchestras And What We Call "classical Music" Now.

My Father, Charles Seeger, Got Me Into The Communist Movement. He Backed Out Around '38. I Drifted Out In The 50's.

My Job, Is To Show Folks There's A Lot Of Good Music In This World, And If Used Right It May Help To Save The Planet.

Long Live Teachers Of Children, Because They Can Show Children How They Can Save The World.

When Will We Ever Learn? When Will We Ever Learn?

A Good Song Reminds Us What We're Fighting For.

I Live In The Country, So I Get A Fair Amount Of Exercise. We Heat Our House With Wood, So I Split Wood. We Also Live On A Steep Hill, And I Have To Rake And Put In Cross-stitches To Keep The Road From Washing Out When There's A Big Rain.

I'm Not Sure If My Involvement In Causes, Benefits, Marches, And Demonstrations Has Made A Huge Difference, But I Know One Thing: That Involvement Has Connected Me With The Good People: People With The Live Hearts, The Live Eyes, The Live Heads.

Songs Won't Save The Planet, But Neither Will Books Or Speeches.

But If By Some Freak Of History Communism Had Caught Up With This Country, I Would Have Been One Of The First People Thrown In Jail.

I Tell Kids, Don't Trust The Media. The Media With Their Emphasis On Fame Is Helping To Destroy This Country, Helping Destroy The Human Race. It's The Plug-in Drug.

Do You Know The Difference Between Education And Experience? Education Is When You Read The Fine Print; Experience Is What You Get When You Don't.

Do-so Is More Important Than Say-so.

Did You Ever Want Something Really Bad And Then When You Finally Got It All You Could Do Was Stand There And Grin At It?

It's A Very Important Thing To Learn To Talk To People You Disagree With.

I Learned By Transcribing Songs Out Of The Library Of Congress Collection In Washington Where I Was Working. I Got A Job When I Just Turned Twenty In 1939 And Alan [lomax] Needed Some Help. I Listened To Hundreds Of Records Every Week.

Most Scientists Know What Needs To Be Done To Save Our Earth. But The Politicians Don't Listen To Them. They Will Listen To Popular Pressure; The People Got To Supply That.

I Think Folk Music Helps Reinforce Your Sense Of History. An Old Song Makes You Think Of Times Gone By.

I Feel That My Whole Life Is A Contribution.

My Mother Playing The Violin And My Father And Grandfather Playing The Piano, Classical Stuff.

Every Time I Read The Paper Those Old Feelings Come On.we Are Waist Deep In The Big Muddy And The Big Fool Says To Push On.

I Don't Think Of God As An Old White Man With No Belly Button, Nor Even An Old Black Woman With No Belly Button. But I Agree That God Is Something Eternal. Something Cannot Come Out Of Nothing. I Believe God Is Everything. And I Believe In Infinity.

My Mother Gave Me A Ukulele At Age Eight, And I Sang The Popular Tunes Of The Day.

He [alan Lomax] Started Right Off Trying To Find People Who Could Introduce Folk Songs To City People. He Found A Young Actor Named Burl Ives And Said, "burl, You Know A Lot Of Great Country Songs Learned From Your Grandmother, Don't You Know People Would Love To Hear Them?" He Put On Radio Programs. He Persuaded Cbs To Dedicate "the School Of The Air" For One Year To American Folk Music. He'd Get Some Old Sailor To Sing An Old Sea Shanty With A Cracked Voice. Then He'd Get Me To Sing It With My Banjo.

Now Any Person Who Plays An Acoustic Guitar Standing Up On Stage With A Microphone Is A Folk Singer. Some Grandmother With A Baby In Her Arms Singing A 500-year-old Song, Well, She's Not A Folk Singer, She's Not On Stage With A Guitar And A Microphone. No, She's Just An Old Grandmother Singing An Old Song. The Term "folk Singer" Has Gotten Warped.

Honest Songs Aren`t Written For Money.

John Mccutcheon Is Not Only One Of The Best Musicians In The Usa, But Also A Great Singer, Songwriter, And Song Leader. And Not Just Incidentally, He Is Committed To Helping Hard-working People Everywhere To Organize And Push This World In A Better Direction.

If There Is A World Here In A Hundred Years, It's Going To Be Saved By Tens Of Millions Of Little Things.

And When One Person Taps Out A Beat, While Another Leads Into The Melody, Or When Three People Discover A Harmony They Never Knew Existed, Or A Crowd Joins In On A Chorus As Though To Raise The Ceiling A Few Feet Higher, Then They Also Know There Is Hope For The World.

Realize That Little Things Lead To Bigger Things.

Town After Town Has But One Newspaper Or One Radio Station. It Is Often Owned By Murdoch. Yes, We Don't Have As Much Freedom Of The Press As We Think We Have - Although The Traditional Freedom Of Speech Is Strongly Rooted In American Culture.

Freedom Of Speech

Hope That There Are Many, Many Small Leaders.

I Think The World Is Going To Be Saved By Millions Of Small Things.

To Everything There Is A Season.

Some Of My Ancestors Were Religious Dissenters Who Came To America Over Three Hundred Years Ago. Others Were Abolitionists In New England In The Eighteen Forties And Fifties.

Some Folklorists Just Collected Dead Bones From One Graveyard, Only To Bury Them In Another, Their Library.

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."

Plagiarism Is Basic To All Culture

You Can't Work On Everything All The Time, So Start Where You Are.

This Banjo Surrounds Hate And Forces It To Surrender.

You Have A Right To Your Opinion And I've Got A Right To Mine. Period.

A Productive Mistake Is: (1) Made In The Service Of Mission And Vision; (2) Acknowledged As A Mistake; (3) Learned From; (4) Considered Valuable; (5) Shared For The Benefit Of All.

I Remember Someone Once Saying, "pete, You Know You Really Should Take Voice Lessons." And I Said, "well, If I Could Find Any Voice Teacher That Could Teach Me To Sing Like Lead Belly I'd Spend Every Cent To Study Under Him." But Every Time You'd Go To A Voice Teacher, He'd Teach You To Warble, As If You'd Want To Be An Opera Singer, And That's Not What I'm Interested In.

The First Step In Solving A Problem Is Admitting There Is A Problem To Be Solved.

But If Two And Two And Fifty Make A Million...

How Can You Save The World You Have Not Seen If You Can't Save The Community You Have Seen?

Trending Author

Yusef Komunyakaa

Category