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"English folk balladry, and particularly folk-carol singing,
suffered an enormous setback from
the period of Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth."John Jacob Niles, song collector ("The Ballad Book", 1961)
"The freedom songs are playing a strong and vital role in our struggle.
These songs give the people new courage and a sense of unity.
I think they keep alive a faith, a radiant hope in the future,
particularly in our most trying hours."Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, leader of the freedom movement (1962)
"The first white men to settle Australia were London pickpockets,
Irish rick-burners, and poachers from the Midlands,
already the inheritors of a long tradition of folk-music."J.S. Manifold, ("The Penguin Australian Song Book", 1962)
"Possibly the magazine market is bigger these days
for political ideas than it is for folk music."Peter Gentling, (Letter to the editor "Sing Out!", May 1962)
"Every newspaper headline is a potential song,
and it is the role of an effective songwriter,
to pick out the material that has the interest, significance
and sometimes humor adaptable to music."Phil Ochs, American singer, songwriter ("Broadside", 1962)
"Of the stylistic peculiarities of the folksong perhaps the most striking
are those connected with its oral tradition.
The folksong is known by heart and is spread by word of mouth."Eva Ruff, University of Melbourne (1962)
"Much genuine folk expression of our time
has come through the medium of rock and roll,
and we venture the thought that
Chuck Berry, B.B. King, and Tommy Tucker
have created an identification with this generation
that new folk singers can duplicate."Irwin Silber, Editor "Sing Out!" (1964)
"In origin the folk hero (whether Lord Ellender or John Henry,
Matty Groves or Jesse James, Mary Hamilton or Omie Wise)
was equally an "outsider", "loner" or pattern-breaker.
If he is now familiair, this is the result of his ascent
into our popular mythology, that firmament of uncommon
people which enshrines the atypical hero."Maynard Solomon, (Liner notes to: Buffy Sainte-Marie: "it's my way", 1964)
"I should again like to express my debt en masse
to the people who create it; to my brothers,
Mike and Pete, who proved to me that city singers really can
contribute to folk music; most of all, to Ewan MacColl,
who helped me to crystallize a singing style
and, most important, showed me who 'the folk' really are."Peggy Seeger, singer, songwriter and instrumentalist (1964)
"The folk song clubs that now cover Britain like a rash -
there are up to 300 of them with thousands of members -
have been hotbeds of new songs."Stephen Sedley, judge ("The Observer",1964)
"Changing conditions destroy the 'folk memory'
far more surely and decisively than time itself."A. Calwell, Leader of the Australian Labor Party (1965)
"The Folk Song Revival at the turn of the century
was mainly the work of Musicians and Educationalists and,
of course, at the time the piano was the instrument of the day."Peter Kennedy, folksong collector ("Marrow Bones", 1965)
"[Céili bands make] a rhytmic but meaningless noise
with as much relation to music
as the buzzing of a bluebottle in an upturned jamjar."Seán Ó Riada, Irish musician (about 1965)
"Irish ballad writing enshrines a whole history within itself."James N. Healy, ballad collector ("Old Irish street Ballads", 1966)
"Folk song researchers and revivalists
frequently do not seem to make the same effort to find
early printed versions as they do to find later oral variants;[...]."James J. Fuld ("The Book of World-Famous Music", 1966)
"To sing is to love and to affirm, to fly and soar,
to coast into the hearts of the people who listen,
to tell them that life is to live, that love is there,
that nothing is a promise, but that beauty exists,
and must be hunted for and found."Joan Baez, folk singer ("Daybreak",1966)
"To the purist, an important feature of the folk ballad is
that it should be transmitted oraly,
and from one generation to another.
[...]
In the present context, [...], it must be recognised that 'folk ballad'
is only the most general indication of what follows:
sets of versions in the ballad tradition,
and in an immediately identifiable 'popular' manner."Charles Causley ("Modern Folk Ballads",1966)
"The folk boom has come and gone like a plague.
As the scene came to its inevitable shift,
some resigned and officially became salesman
others became ethnic defenders of Mother Earth tradition
even though there were no attackers."Phil Ochs, American folk singer (1966)
"Negro folk music in the United States
has both general and special characteristics
which distinguish it from the folk music of
pure Eropean or Anglo-American origin."Harold Courlander ("Negro folk music",1966)
"Donkey and horse both have four legs
and may pull carts but they are not the same beast;
nor are the compositions of a Dylan
or a Donovan folk songs by any workable definition."Albert Lancaster (Bert) Lloyd, ethnomusicologist and writer
("Folk Song in England", 1967)
"We sing ballads and folk songs - we have no real interest in pop music.
We just want to sing the songs we like."Ronnie Drew, Dubliner (1967)
"[...] the rugby song does have a crude sort
of folk-culture all of its own.
At its worst it is simply a bawdy chorus,
a Chaucerian obsession with the basic functions of a human body
being the essential linking theme
of good old rugby songs."Michael Green (Preface to "Rugby Songs", 1967)
"In the folk songs of any period,
behind the recitals of lost love and violent death,
of hanged robbers and sweethearts pressed to sea,
of the beauty of a country spring and the hardness of country labour,
of transported poachers and colliers on strike,
something more is to be heard: the longing for a better life."Albert Lancaster (Bert) Lloyd, ethnomusicologist and writer
("Folk Song in England", 1967)
"All the songs recorded for this album have in common
the theme of sexual encounter and desire,
a theme which is shared by the overwhelming majority of English and Scots folksongs."Ewan MacColl, (sleeve notes to "Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger: The Wanton Muse", 1968)
"[We sang] the most obscure folksongs we could find.
The more obscure they were, the more people liked them."David Ackles, singer-songwriter ("Beat Instrumental", November 1968)
"... real folk cannot be commercialised,
and it, therefore, can't be killed."Luke Kelly, Dubliner (1969)
"Some of those nonce-associations in the body of ribald songlore,
no less than in folk song generally, are happy incidents:
an occasional doggerel lyric and a pedestranian tune
will unite in that particular alchemy of folk song
to create a folk song so appealing that
it may persist in popularity literally for centuries."Ed Cray (introduction to "Bawdy Ballads, March 1969)
"Folk songs have always been composed
to commemorate real life situations."John Cohen, (liner notes, New Lost City Ramblers: "Modern Times", 1969)
"The folk boom, as we knew it, has long since passed its peak."Mick Quinn, Manager Dubliners (1969)
"All the folk songs have reached a very pure form by now
- a kind of sorting the wheat from the chaff."Simon Nicol of Fairport Convention (interview "Disc & Music Echo", 1969)
"If the guitar is to be a weapon in our struggle,
if it is to shoot like a gun in our fight,
then the man behind it must be an authentic revolutionary."Victor Jara, Chilean singer and songwriter (about 1970)
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