“I’ve come to realize that music can help us to clarify, to ascertain, and to assert our humanity while making genuine connections….We are all looking for the same things out of life and music has always been a tool we’ve used to explore it.” —Jon Batiste, 2019
Author: MoST
Newport Folk turns 60
a small collection of photos and articles about The Newport Folk Festival, original inspiration for this blog, which celebrated its 60th anniversary on july 26-28.
click here to visit the Newport Folk Festival instagram page
review/article from The Arts Fuse
“This [festival community] surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.” —Jay Sweet, memorializing Pete Seeger
new song from Wilco
“Love conquers all, but not when it’s used as a sedative, right? I worry that I’m often comfortable and placated by my ability to recognize and feel the love that already exists around me. What I see in myself and others is a struggle to summon sufficient outrage to act and then retreat into the delusion that the love that exists will eventually triumph. But it won’t! For love to triumph I believe we’re duty bound to create more of it, and for more people – people we don’t know, even people we don’t like! And that takes courage I don’t always have. The song is a reminder to myself to act with more love and courage and less outrage and anesthetized fear.” –Jeff Tweedy
John Malkovich quote
“When you do a really good play, the audience and the performers are looking into the same looking glass, the same microscope. And the specimen they are looking at is human life and that’s why I do it, that’s why I like it.” — John Malkovich, 2010
Joan Miro quote
“More important than a work of art itself is what it will sow. Art can die, a painting can disappear. What counts is the seed.” —Joan Miro
Leonardo da Vinci quote
“Whatever you do in life, if you want to be creative and intelligent, and develop your brain, you must do everything with the awareness that everything, in some way, connects to everything else.” — Leonardo da Vinci
evidence shows studying music improves academic performance
“Often, resources for music education—including the hiring of trained, specialized music educators, and band and stringed instruments—are cut or not available in elementary and secondary schools so that they could focus on math, science and English,” said Gouzouasis. “The irony is that music education—multiple years of high-quality instrumental learning and playing in a band or orchestra or singing in a choir at an advanced level—can be the very thing that improves all-around academic achievement and an ideal way to have students learn more holistically in schools.”
quote from Olafur Eliasson
“Art helps us identify with one another and expands our notion of we – from the local to the global.” — Olafur Eliasson, 2016
quote from John F. Kennedy
“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
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