There is something about participating; it is almost my religion. If the world is still here in 100 years, people will know the importance of participating, not just being spectators. Millions of small groups around the world, that don't necessarily all agree with one another, are made up of people who are not just sitting back waiting for someone to do things for them. No one can prove anything, but of course if I didn't believe it had some kind of power, I wouldn't be trying to do it.

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

I fought for peace in the fifties.

In the United States, many people said you can't have folk music in the United States because you don't have any peasant class. But the funny thing was, there were literally thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who loved old time fiddling, ballads, banjo tunes, blues played on the guitar, spirituals and gospel hymns. These songs and music didn't fit into any neat category of art music nor popular music nor jazz. So gradually they said well let's call it folk music.

The easiest way to avoid wrong notes is to never open your mouth and sing. What a mistake that would be.

My mother gave me a ukulele at age eight, and I sang the popular tunes of the day.

I was working for Alan Lomax in the Library of Congress folk song archive, and starting to realize what a wealth of different kinds of music there was in this country that you never heard on the radio.