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I have a voice that's obviously untrained - and I think untrainable - so I kind of secreted it away for a long time. Actually, I would write songs with lyrics when I was younger, but I would just sing in my head.

Joanna Newsom

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Joanna Newsom
Age: 42
Born: 1982
Born: January 18
Actor
Composer
Film Actor
Harpsichordist
Musician
Pianist
Recording Artist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Television Actor
Grass Valley
California
Joanna Caroline Newsom
Head
Kind
Actually
Secreted
Would
Voice
Untrained
Time
Song
Lyrics
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Younger
Thinking
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Obviously
Writing
Sing
Songs
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More quotes by Joanna Newsom

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Around eighth grade I decided I wanted to be a composer and that's what I went to college for. Just a few years back, I switched out of composition and into creative writing so I could work with words.
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I wasn't interested in writing music that wasn't beautiful for me to listen to.
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What a woman does is open doors. And it is not a question of locking or unlocking.
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If I ever met Dolly Parton for sure, I would just not be able to say anything. I love her.
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I have a deep rooted folk sensibility that I can't get away from completely.
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I have a recording that I did of instrumental songs.
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I'm not a wanderer, which is funny because I'm on tour half the time. I'm a home, hearth and family kind of person.
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I wanted to write songs which I think is a different thing. I wanted to write music that is informed by folk music. The chord progressions are obvious references.
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People are often afraid for me. They think that I am going to break. I can make it through a set.
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I am not doing something that it is experimental music in relation to classical music.
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Families of privilege and money would have harps in their parlors, and their cultured daughters would learn to play. It's got such a strange history. But that wasn't the context that I learned it in, so the inherent friction between that history and the more humanist folk-y history wasn't in my conscience at all.
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People in San Francisco and the East Bay have shown interest, done interviews, and have come to shows. I guess that the news travels fast out of this island that we are on.
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I don't look at people's expressions, because I still get nervous when I play, especially when I first put the harp up there. I just try to tune - it takes me a half-hour to tune, and I get nervous if I look at anybody when I do it.
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In high school, we studied a lot of poetical forms. I was really interested in the math that was involved and the strange live break ups. That gave me a great amount of respect for a rhymed stanza.
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I didn't really know a lot of the history when I was younger. I didn't realize that the harp is coded in such a specific way in musical circles. It's kind of this society instrument because of its history as a young woman's parlor instrument.
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It broke my heart when I learned the moon had been passing the sun’s light off as its own.
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I recorded harp first or singing first. I recorded it all together. Part of the reason is that I don't know how to play the songs without also singing. I forget how they progress. I don't think that any of them are verse, chorus, verse, and so on. They are not simple.
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The so-called positive press has in some ways been more difficult to swallow than the negative.
Joanna Newsom
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I would happy for someone to download my music.
Joanna Newsom
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I can understand someone not liking the voice or the songs.
Joanna Newsom