“Folk music is always considered a good thing. There is a catch, however: it has to be "real" folk music, anonymous, evoking not an individual but a communal personality, expressive of the soil.”

— Charles Rosen

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 7 : Chopin: From the Miniature Genre to the Sublime Style

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Folk music is always considered a good thing. There is a catch, however: it has to be "real" folk music, anonymous, evo…" by Charles Rosen?

Charles Rosen 69

American pianist and writer on music 1927–2012

Related quotes

“Jewish folk music has made a most powerful impression on me. I never tire of delighting in it, it's multifaceted, it can appear to be happy while it is tragic. It's almost always laughter through tears. This quality of Jewish folk music is close to my ideas of what music should be. There should always be two layers in music. Jews were tormented for so long that they learned to hide their despair. They express despair in dance music.”

Dmitri Shostakovich book Testimony

Page 156
Testimony (1979)

“… 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.”

Pete Seeger (1919–2014) American folk singer

Pop Chronicles, Show 1 - Play A Simple Melody: Pete Seeger on the origins of pop music http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19745/m1/, interview recorded 2.14.1968 http://web.archive.org/web/20110615153027/http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/john-gilliland/o-s.

“All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.”

Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) American jazz trumpeter, composer and singer

Variant: All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

“Jazz I regard as an American folk music; not the only one, but a very powerful one which is probably in the blood and feeling of the American people more than any other style of folk music.”

George Gershwin (1898–1937) American composer and pianist

"The Relation of Jazz to American Music", in Henry Cowell (ed.) American Composers on American Music (1933); reprinted in Gregory R. Suriano (ed.) Gershwin in His Time (New York: Gramercy, 1998) p. 97.

“Hymn tunes are the nearest we've got to English folk music.”

John Betjeman (1906–1984) English poet, writer and broadcaster

citation needed

“The trend in the north is more Punjabi folk and simple music. But, in the past, people like Naushad experimented with Hindustani classical music which I think has been completely forgotten. People don't experiment anymore and think that Hindustani classical music won't work. For me, coming from the south, it was just a little step to learn Punjabi music. The nuances are louder in Punjabi music. Songs like Mukkala muqqabla or Humma humma had more of the Tamil folk music in it.”

A. R. Rahman (1966) Indian singer and composer

The A R Rahman Chat

“If Music is a Place -- then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, Classical is a Temple.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

“I love all those great 'f' words - feminism, folk music..”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

from a 2003 interview with MuchMusic

“The main plank in the National Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute therefore the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

On National Socialism and World Relations http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/hitler1.htm, speech in the German Reichstag (January 30, 1937). German translation published by H. Müller & Sohn in Berlin.
1930s

“The distance between folk society and literate society is ever decreasing, and Teresa Brewer will yet shake hands with Mrs. Texas Gladden. But until that happens—until my own culture, and Teresa Brewer's, develops a folk tradition of its own—If I want to learn something about real folk music, I'll stick with Mrs. Gladden.”

Sam Hinton (1917–2009) folk singer, artist, marine biologist

"Last Words", Journal of American Folklore 71, (Jan–Mar 1958), p. 75

“Folk music is always considered a good thing. There is a catch, however: it has to be "real" folk music, anonymous, evoking not an individual but a communal personality, expressive of the soil.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Charles Rosen 69

Related quotes

Related topics