Some quotes from Dewey Balfa:

"My culture is not better than anyone else's culture. My people were no better than anyone else. And yet I will not accept it as a second-class culture. It's the best culture for me. Now, I would expect, if you have a different culture, that you would feel the same about yours as I feel about mine."

"A culture is like a whole tree: you have to water the roots to keep the tree alive, but at the same time you can't go cutting off the branches every time it tries to grow."

"My father, grandfather, great-grandfather, they all played the fiddle, and you see, through my music I feel they are still alive."

"I refuse to be just another American plastic card with a number on it."

"When we first started going to the festivals, I can remember people saying, "They're going to get laughed at." But when the echo came back, I think it brought a message to the people... but a lot of people don't realize that they have a good cornbread on the table until somebody tells them."

"A culture is preserved one generation at a time."

"Ralph Rinzler asked me at a festival one time, "Do you realize how many lives, how many people, the Balfa Brothers have affected through the years of music?" I said, "No." And I really had no idea. We never thought of promoting the group. We were promoting the culture. We never thought that we were bringing the music to different people and different places. We always thought the music was bringing us."

"A culture can not be kept alive under glass in a museum."

"I've often said that if Daddy had left us the money to travel and see the world I would probably have never bought the first plane ticket. But what he left me musically, nobody can steal it from me; and it's one of the most wonderful things he could have left me- no matter how much money he would have left me, I could never buy what the knowledge of music has given me."

This site created and maintained by Kevin Wimmer (kwimmer@aol.com).
Copyright 1998, 1999 Kevin Wimmer and Balfa Toujours. All rights reserved.
Last updated 6/14/99.