“If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth… In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society — in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation.” — John F. Kennedy, Oct. 26, 1963
Author: MoST
quote from Joni Mitchell
“When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it’s time for artists to make their mark.” —Joni Mitchell, 2006
quote from John Lennon
“My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.” —John Lennon
interview with Jay Sweet
“The spirit of servitude that [Pete] Seeger brought to the world didn’t die when he passed away in 2014, and that fact is perhaps most evident at Newport Folk Festival, the now-iconic event that Seeger helped George Wein get off the ground in 1959. “The spirit of Pete, and of Pete’s egalitarian nature, is in every ounce of this festival’s DNA,” says Jay Sweet, executive producer of Newport Festivals.” —Dacey Orr Sivewright in The Bluegrass Situation, 5/22/2019
quote from Glen Hansard
“I choose to believe that there is good in people and that everything is a lesson. Our place on Earth is to go deeper, to somehow get wiser. To have spirit.” —Glen Hansard
quote from Patti Smith
“We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it’s opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There’s so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones.” — Patti Smith, 2015
quote from Kris Kristofferson
“I think that a society lives or dies according to its respect for its art.” —Kris Kristofferson, 1995
interview with Mavis Staples
“I’m singing these songs to inspire you, to keep you going, to lift you up and give you a reason to get up in the morning.” –Mavis Staples
quote from Arlo Guthrie
“Everywhere I go, I see all kinds of people at my shows – conservatives, liberals, new-agers, teen-agers, old pensioners. And for those people to have something in common is real interesting to me.” –Arlo Guthrie, 1991
quote from David Bowie
“I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go. I realised from the beginning that you could actually affect the way people saw things in quite a major way.” —David Bowie, 2002