Both ‘The Wire’ and ‘Queer as Folk’ had a big scope. They were panoramas, telling ambitious stories about two cities, Baltimore and Manchester, for the first time.
I picked up the guitar very late, in a very pagan way – I didn’t know how to play, but I knew I had to. I drew and I had a diary, but it wasn’t enough; I needed to express more. As soon as I learned two notes, I started to tell a story, which is why, I guess, my music resembles blues or folk.
I meet people from really grand backgrounds who had horrible parents who took no interest in them, whereas I’m a working-class boy from Deptford who was worshipped by all my rellies. Everybody in my extended family helped to raise me, and I realise now how lucky I was to grow up among kind folk.
Seabear’s love of soft folk sounds is unquestionable, but that doesn’t stop the Icelandic band from infusing its music with layers of instrumentation.
New Orleans is just so full of culture in the music content – blues, folk. I was introduced to a lot of things. My mother didn’t keep me away from other music. She only kept me away from rap. The closest I got to rap was D’Angelo.
Trans folk, especially of color, should not be obligated to help cis folk play catch-up on our experiences. The effort can detract from our work to protect and liberate ourselves.
The soundtrack for ‘Hemlock Grove’ got me into all this goth folk gypsy music like the Dead Brothers.
I’ve always considered myself a folk singer, even though we strapped on Rickenbacker guitars and played pretty loud.
Cornwall has lots of folk and Celtic music and has that kind of surfer vibe as well. That was my kind of upbringing.
A lot of what I listened to growing up was blues, but also folk and indie music. So there’s this marriage of songs that structurally are quite bluesy. Sound-wise, there’s a lot of indie as well. But you can’t really say I’m pop-blues, because that’s insulting to blues. It just can’t exist.
India is full of varied cultures that have introduced different kinds of folk tunes to us.
I grew up listening to popular music. My father was a Peruvian folk singer. He played the guitar at home. He sang songs with a waltzing rhythm, yet you can still hear the Spanish influences. I accompanied him to his performances.
My grandmother valued her Southern roots, folk culture, and healing.
Folk tales are my favourite form of story telling. They not only just adjust the reader according to the world it is introducing the reader to, but also enchant the reader with its mysterious and magical characters.
I have very eclectic tastes. I love soul and Motown; I listen to some rap – Stormzy, Tinie Tempah, Drake. I also love classical music, American country and the folk tradition. I often start the day with gospel on my way to work. The only thing I have never got into is punk.
I’m an old-fashioned folk singer. I stand in front of an audience with a guitar and a barstool.
Whether you like modern incarnations of what country radio hits are, or you like what I’m doing, or you like something really off in folk, poetry Americana land, it’s all just music, man. If you like one of them, great – go buy it.
The ‘Rule of St. Benedict’ makes it possible for ordinary folk to live lives of quite extraordinary value. The weak have a place to do their best.
At the same time all this was happening, there was a folk song revival movement goingon, so the commercial music industry was actually changed by the Civil Rights Movement.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.
What I discovered all over Ireland is that people living simple lives by the sea or in the remote countryside seem a lot calmer than city folk with their iPads and their Android phones.
I have never denied my background or my culture. I have taught my child to embrace her Mexican heritage, to love my first language, Spanish, to learn about Mexican history, music, folk art, food, and even the Mexican candy I grew up with.
In ‘Ta Chuma,’ we used folk language so that the honesty reflected in it can live in people’s hearts forever.
I think cool originates with the jazz culture in the ’40s. There was probably cool before that, but that’s when people started talking about cool – Miles Davis and Charlie Parker and a bunch of other early, cool jazz folk.
I love vocals and what they can do, and the different layers they can create, and I really want to bring that into folk music in terms of arrangements and stuff.
The music that I first fell in love with was American music, really. Nothing against British acts – I love them and will forever – but on the whole, it was the art of American storytelling in the kind of folk and blues lyrics that, if you scratch a little bit, there’s a heartbreaking story there.
Folk music was out there. Clubs were springing up and they were hot with the college kids.
Limbaugh has taught millions of Americans about conservative ideology, emphasizing the Constitution and the country’s founding ideals, and suffered attacks from the left as a result. He is a folk hero who is beloved in part because he defends tens of millions of Americans against attacks.
I usually don’t go into record stores to buy folk music.
If you go back to early folk, it’s all storytelling; that’s exactly what it is: some guy telling a story in a pub to 50 people with a guitar, you know.
I knew before going into the studio that I wanted to make a Western record, featuring a combination of traditional Western folk and cowboy songs and some tunes that I had written that were heavily influenced by that kind of music.
‘Queer as Folk’ is gay gay gay gay gay.
Harout Pamboukjian is one of the biggest Armenian folk singers in the world. In the ’70s, he was making these records that were really Zeppelin-influenced.
I love the sound of voices singing together, congregational singing, anything like gospel, or folk, or sea shanties.
There is a black folk music audience. They’re just very small.
I like folk songs, but ten horses couldn’t bring me to a concert or an opera.
If I were to make an uneducated guess about L.A.’s relationship with folk and psychedelia, I would say it must be the weather.
My dad’s side of the family were calm folk from England, but the other side just loved to party. Somewhere between those two factions is me.
When I was a kid, I was interested in folk music. But rock represented power, and I became the best rock guitarist in my school.
In ‘Spinal Tap,’ there’s the fake historical quality of ‘Stonehenge.’ It’s something the musicians look at with a mystical reverence. In folk music, it’s the seriousness with which these people approach their ‘art.’
The folk that you get on Radio 1 isn’t the sort of thing that I’m into: it’s kind of too uptempo and jaunty for me. I prefer a bit of atmosphere and a bit of darkness.
The 1960s were big for folk music, and the Kingston Trio led the way. They were the ones who started it all. The music was fresh and alive. College kids loved it and their parents did, too.
I have no idea what will become of my work in the future, the future folk will not be aware of our influence over them, as we are unaware of how our dead influence us.
I guess what I find interesting is city folk are the least capable of survival of any human being.
I’m kind of like a folk singer mixed with soul, but I feel like if you really are a lover of hip-hop music, make the beat banging as possible and then put the message in so that people get the honey with the medicine.
When I first moved to London, there was talk of a folk revival, with annoying names like nu-folk that made me feel slightly ill.
We have harmonies, folk songs, and compositions attached to each occasion – ranging from birth, harvest, to our festivals. Our country thrives on culture, music, and arts. Musically, ours is a very rich country.
Black folk have been ‘the other’ in shows and movies and in life for quite a long time. Not from our perspective, we’re not ‘the other,’ but from other people’s perspective we have been ‘the other.’
In ‘Queer as Folk,’ we had three or four sex scenes in every episode, so I got used to doing that very early on. Those kinds of scenes can be challenging. They take a bit of time, and everyone’s a bit nervous.
My father being in the movie business, I thought being an actor would be great. But when I started singing to people in coffeehouses, you know, singing folk music and then, later, singing songs that I started to write myself, I felt more than an affinity for it.
Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, American folk music with a beat.
After touring the first album, we went into the studio and started making music that was influenced by all the freaky folk music we’d been listening to. Lots of Canterbury scene stuff from the 1960s and ’70s. Robert Wyatt, Soft Machine, Caravan, Gong.
Lizz Wright, we call her lovingly ‘Amazing Grace.’ She has a folk and gospel kind of approach to the music, and she writes beautiful lyrics and songs. She’s like this balm that is really full and very rich and deep.
Logically, when you talkin’ about folk music and blues, you find out it’s music of just plain people.
