I'm very much a traditionalist, but I think it's important to know about tradition so that you can evolve the music you are deciding to make.
In the days when regional music was very clearly defined and had a clear personality - Memphis, Detroit, Chicago, whatever - Philadelphia had a tradition that was very distinct and unique.
'Filk' is the folk music of the science fiction and fantasy community - you get parodies, you get traditional music that's had the words slightly modified, and you'll also get just original works that have been written about science fiction and fanta...
American movies and music deliver themes of freedom, innocence, and power that appeal to others - partly because America itself was put together out of a multiplicity of national traditions.
Traditional songwriting, to us, is where the experimental nature comes in. We're all involved with so much outside activity with really hardcore, experimental music-making.
There's a long tradition - certainly with country, but in all kinds of genres of music - to have humorous lyrics. Certainly with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and, if you look at country, Roger Miller and Jim Stafford.
When they talk about family values, it's in a repressive way, as if our American tradition were only the Puritan tradition or the 19th century oppressive tradition. The Christian tradition.
My son, Walker, has a band called The Dust Busters. You know, he plays banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin, so a lot of my interest in that kind of music comes from him constantly listening to this stuff. He's taught me the history of it. It's remark...
The Lounge Lizards were relating with a tradition and it was like I was playing within a musical context. The guitar playing stood out as being different in some way. That was a real education for me.
People are going to wake up to this great reservoir of music we've created in America - cakewalks, one-steps, boogie-woogie, country and western. I had a bit to do with one of those traditions.
There's a wonderful tradition of jazz people getting on stage and jamming and finding some feeling for music with audiences who may be fresh. For others, it might be just like a comfortable shirt they've been wearing.
When all the original blues guys are gone, you start to realize that someone has to tend to the tradition. I recognize that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive, and it's a pretty honorable position to be in.
I think that Michael Jackson, just as an entertainer, as a figure who embodies the contradictions of black identity and the possibilities of R&B music in the '70s and '80s, will continue to be one of the most recognized and formidable human beings th...
I'm sure if we had made an album that was more traditional would have been released immediately. When we actually play this music on stage and people become familiar with it, it will become more popular.
Inaudible prayers, particularly of the Canon, which at first don't seem to have anything to do with music, end up being a very important part of the aesthetic of the traditional structure of the Mass.
You can count on one hand the number of Novus Ordo churches in this country that feature a fully Catholic music program of any quality, consistent with the Roman rite tradition.
I'm still trying to make it. I'm still trying to get this over and do it and hopefully leave some kind of a mark on the course of American music, particularly in the tradition of what you might call the singer-songwriter.
We sat still, our breathing loud and rhythmic, its music melancholy, a traditional song of sorrow.
You are my reality, fantasy, daydream, fairytale, music, more than the princess in Cinderella; you are much more than a traditional myth.
When we started in the early '60s, football had a little bit of a tradition. But, they didn't have a mythology. And NFL Films, through our music and our scripts and our photography, created a mythology for the sport.
So many of the sounds that contemporary composers were trying to create were to be found in the traditional musics of the world. That was encouraging but also little daunting to think that you had to work so hard to be new and yet it was old.
