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Quote by Pete Seeger

“Alan [Lomax] and his father started off changing the definition of folk music from something ancient and anonymous to something very contemporary.”

Quote by Pete Seeger

Author

Pete Seeger was an American folk singer, musician, and social activist, renowned for his pivotal role in popularizing folk music in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. His music often addressed social justice and environmental concerns, and he was a leading figure in the American folk music revival. more

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“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.”

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“Work in nightclubs was interesting. There were interesting people and places, but by and large, the commercial music experience.”

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“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.”

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“Anybody who wants to learn everything is pretty stupid. You learn what you can.”

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“Looking back, I think I tried to be too eclectic. Sometimes I'd sing thirty songs, and fifteen of them were not in English.”

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“Some folklorists just collected dead bones from one graveyard, only to bury them in another, their library.”

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“I still prefer to hear [Bob] Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father's old term.”

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“I guess I've learned more from the Clearwater than anything else. All I did was help to plant a seed, and I didn't know what the hell I was doing.”

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“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.”

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“There are many people writing songs. That is absolutely wonderful. Who knows, there may be some kid in diapers and he or she might succeed in capturing in a few dozen words what great writers have spent years trying to say. Just the right word in the right place with the right melody behind it and the right rhythm. It might get around the world inch by inch, and people realize that this world is in danger, that we're in danger. That's the way "This Land Is Your Land" got to be so well known.”