Q: What's the purpose of cantometrics? How can someone learn it?
A: I recently published a set of seven cassette tapes of folk songs from all 10 cultural levels around the world. In the booklet that comes with it, the songs are broken down and analyzed so that the student can learn the cantometrics system on his own. When you learn the system, you can understand any music, even if you don't know the language it's being sung in. By the time you've heard two or three tapes, you get used to the world standard of music. Cantometrics measures things like repetition, ornamentation, rhythm, melody, orchestral arrangement. … It analyzes music in relation to social structure — political organization, community solidarity, severity of sexual sanctions. Cantometrics makes the world's music into a geography.
Q: How does American music differ from that of the world in general?
A: In our culture, for example, we didn't have much repetition until rock and roll came around. And that represents another influence. … As you know, we of European background don't sing very well together. Everybody starts singing at a different tempo, like seven cats in a bag. But if you take people who live and work together, it's like clouds rolling out of the sea. … It turns out that the people with the most repetition in their songs have the most primitive cultures — at least, in relation to their economic development. Everybody knows the same thing about everything. So being specific is boring, and repetition is what they like. You don't impose your boring accuracy on everyone.
Q: What do you consider the real beginning of the folk music movement in America?
A: It all began in Texas in 1885 when my father heard "Whoopee Ti Yi Yo" on the Chisholm Trail. He was a country boy. He grew up in Texas, and the cowboys drifted past. He wrote the songs down just for the hell of it. Then he got a grant from Harvard and found out how important it was. He was the first person in the country to use a recording device, in 1902.
Q: Did you know Woody Guthrie very well?
A: Know him? I made him famous. I had a coast-to-coast radio program when Woody first came to New York. I introduced him when he first sang on radio. He stayed at my house. … They offered him a huge contract, but he just walked off and went to Oklahoma. He was a deeply passionate person, and tremendously gifted. First of all he was the funniest man that ever talked. And Woody was so quick: talking to him was like playing jai alai. He got up in the morning and wrote 25 pages before breakfast just to warm up. And there was always a slightly strange thing about woody — an itchy feeling that he had. It might have been beginning of the disease which later killed him.
Q: What's your connection with Pete Seeger?
A: Peter Seeger is my protege. I gave him his banjo. The banjo was a dead issue, and he came to me and asked what he should do with his life. He was a Harvard hippie. … We got to be colleagues. We worked on the whole revival of the American folk music. I taught him most of his early songs.