I know everybody hates pop quizzes, but here's one for you anyway. Who is the only Native American/Canadian to win an Academy Award?
Give up? I'll give you some clues (if the title of the review hasn't given it away yet), she's a Cree Indian from Saskatchewan Canada originally who had a very successful career as a folk/country artist in the sixties and early seventies.
She was an Indian before it became fashionable to be one and sang about Native issues when nobody else was. She also wrote and performed songs about the state of the world, and people's emotions. She's also never recorded her award winning song, "Up Where We Belong," leaving that to Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warrens.
Buffy Sainte-Marie has been singing her songs of peace and respect for years now, although her lyrics and her voice have never been the type that would send her up the pop charts. The fact that she sounds like she's always on the verge of picking up a gun and heading off on the war-path to exact some revenge for all the indignities visited upon her people never made her the flavor of the month among record executives either.
It's people like her that make you give thanks for a label like Vanguard Records. Back in the sixties and seventies they were the only ones who would release music by performers who sang the overtly politically music that wouldn't be touched with a ten foot pole by the more conservative labels. Now some forty years after some of these original recordings were made they've put together a series of compilations for a lot of those same performers under the name of "Vanguard Visionaries"
If you've forgotten about Buffy and don't really recall what could make her entitled to be called a visionary then that makes this disc all the more important. Not only is it a wonderful greatest hits package of the music she did while she was with Vanguard records – it serves to remind us all of her unique voice and unwavering strength of character.
But it's not just vocally and lyrically that she was so distinctive. Think about other single female folk acts that you know of from that era and what comes to mind? Simple melodies plucked out on a guitar and basic arrangements about as threatening as the flowers they wore in their hair. At the same time, Buffy was using electronics and overdubs to stretch and distort her voice in the harmonies on songs like "God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot," and "The Vampire."
Still, what she was then and remains today, was a fierce advocate for the rights of Native Americans. She was the lone public voice singing about the centuries of mistreatment incurred by the first peoples of North America and probably the first person to use the "G" word, genocide, publicly regarding government policies toward the American and Canadian Indian populations.
Most people's first knowledge about the horrors of Residential schools and blankets infested with small pox, all part of the war that continues to this day against Indians across the continent, came from her songs. (A war that is world wide: Brazil, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, Columbia, Indonesia, Viet-Nam, Japan, Siberia, and anywhere else where there is an indigenous population the story is simply a variation of what happened here.) Instead of on the battle field, the war today is conducted by people behind desks in the offices of multinational corporations and government bureaucracies.
Article comments
1 - David Rachlin
This was an excellent article about one of North America's greatest gifts to the world. Buffy Sainte-Marie is a brilliant artist and humantarian whose music and message are timeless.
2 - Bill
Amen. I was lucky enough to see per perform this past June at the Clearwater Festival in NY and she stole the show. She wasn't the closer (Bruce Cockburn and then the Cowboy Junkies played after her) but the audience responded the most loudly and positively to her. She was certainly on top of her game that day.
3 - JT
Jennifer Warnes, not Warrens, Richard Marcus. I hope it was just your typist. Her name should be correctly noted, I would hope, by a journalist who credits her.
4 - President_dudley
Dear Mr. Marcus,
Thanks for this. Ms. Sainte-Marie's work is likely the most under-recognised of any artist i know, and any recognition of her is well regarded.
However, just to quibble, when you say she never recorded "Up Where We Belong": not so.
Go to her website: cluck on Discography. At the bottom you'll find a recording by that name with her recording of that song. It was released only in Canada & UK if i'm right about that, but worth tracking down. For instance, the "God Is Alive" is a fresh, stripped down version not her electronic rendering on "Illuminations".
That said, thanks again, & if you can allow it, here's an mp3 of Buffy's from the 2007 Clearwater Festival of "Up Where We Belong" at Sendspace.
Love lift us up,
dudley
5 - Richard Marcus
Dudley
It's funny you know I had actually got the impression that Buffy had never recorded the song form her when I last saw her in concert in 1995 - she intorduced it by saying she had never done a studio recording of it.
Of couse it was much more interesting in her hands than the schmaltzy version from the movie. Anyway I stand corrected on that and thanks very much for writing in.
As usual my information is a decade out of date.
cheers
Richard Marcus
6 - pieter
Dear Richard, thank you for this great article. Am I allowed to use this on the Tribute Site: Buffy Sainte-Marie, a legend in her own time.
Pieter
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