I think folk music helps reinforce your sense of history. An old song makes you think of times gone by.

Down through the centuries, this trick has been tried by various establishments throughout the world. They force people to get involved in the kind of examination that has only one aim and that is to stamp out dissent.

But if two and two and fifty make a million...

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

Be wary of great leaders.

There is an old Arabic proverb, 'When the king puts the poet on his payroll, he cuts off the tongue of the poet', so throughout the ages, people in power have liked to control music, they used to throw songwriters in jail throughout history, and were assassinated.

I learned by transcribing songs out of the Library of Congress collection in Washington where I was working. I got a job when I just turned twenty in 1939 and Alan [Lomax] needed some help. I listened to hundreds of records every week.