Abigail Washburn Quotes

Abigail Washburn is an American folk musician and banjo player known for her blend of traditional Appalachian music with elements of Chinese folk music. Her unique style and cross-cultural collaborations have earned her recognition and praise in the folk music community. Washburn's music explores themes of cultural exchange and unity.

When I first started playing the banjo and miraculously fell into a record deal in Nashville, TN, there was a period when I didn't go to China. It hurt. Like a pain in my gut... that pain you feel when you know it's time to connect with your parents or your God or your child or your past or your future... and you don't do it.

One of my favorite albums in the world is Bruce Springsteen's 'Nebraska.' Each song has this very distinct character who has something profound to say.

I'm no ethnomusicologist. There is a connection between the five-note scale used both in traditional Chinese music and the blues, but I don't really understand it. All I know is, whenever I play with Chinese musicians, we seem to belong to the same musical gene pool.

I was born in Evanston, Illinois. I spent my elementary and part of my junior high school years in a D.C. suburb. And then I spent my high school years in Minnesota. And then I spent my college years in Colorado. And then I spent some time living in China. And then I spent three years in Vermont before moving down to Nashville.

You can enjoy many different types of music. I think that's something more Americans should think about.

I would still describe China as a vast, invigorating puzzle that will never make sense to my western upbringing.

In some ways, in the U.S. we don't know how to be. I think in a lot of ways America is about liberation and about change and progressive human relations. And because of that, I feel like that we're confused about who we're supposed to be and what it is that's supposed to satisfy us and make us feel fulfilled.

I played piano and was always in the choir. I tried to play flute because all the pretty girls played flute.

One thing I carried my whole life, especially from my grandparents in Chicago, was a huge idealism for the world.

I had no intention of becoming a performer, and yet under miraculous circumstances I was brought into the music industry fold. If divine powers hadn't intervened, I'd still be living in China working in some area of Sino-American comparative law.

In some ways, my most comfortable feeling has been that of being an outsider coming in, but over the years I've tired of that and I'm ready to feel at home. That's what music gives me: a feeling of absolute home.

Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech always sends me down some path, some trajectory of some creative idea.