Singing 'Blowin' in the Wind' all the places we've been, it takes on a different meaning everywhere. When you sing the line, 'How many years can a people exist, before they're allowed to be free?' in a prison yard for political prisoners in El Salvador; if you have sung it to a group of union organizers, who have all been in jail, in South Korea; if you've sung to Jews in the Soviet Union who have been refused exit visas; if you've sung it with Bishop Tutu protesting apartheid, the song breathes, it lives, it has a contemporary currency.

If you're serious about singing or acting, which are two art forms that get repetitive, the way to keep the music fresh is to recognize that it is totally impossible for it to ever be the same, night after night. You open your mouth and you'd like a certain sound to come out of it, but it doesn't always come out exactly like you thought it was going to come out!

The fact that there are singer-songwriters dealing with substantive issues is encouraging. It's important for young people to perceive that there are acceptable avenues of dissent, because we live in a world where dissent is hard-pressed; treated as if it were unpatriotic. I've always liked the concept of the loyal opposition. It allows for dissent to be a respectable part of the whole.

There has to be a certain amount of love just in order for you to survive together. I think a lot of groups have gone down the tubes because they were not able to relate to one another.

Folk music has always contained a concern for the human condition. And since it brings people into it from different points of view, that can help illuminate what a consensus might be to important issues.

Folk music has a sort of a bubbling-under quality. The stream runs through the cultural consciousness, and whether or not it's on the radio is not the issue. Folk music is always there.

All of us are subject to being passive to the social ills around us. It's a struggle not to become, by staying silent, an accomplice.