Buffy Sainte-Marie

Buffy Sainte-Marie

Sainte-Marie in 1970
Background information
Birth name Beverly Sainte-Marie
Born February 20, 1941
Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada
Genres Folk, rock, country, electronic
Occupation(s) Musician, singer, songwriter, composer, record producer, visual artist, educator, social activist, actress, humanitarian
Instruments Vocals, guitar, mouthbow, piano, ukulele, autoharp, harmonica, percussion
Years active 1963 – current
Labels Vanguard Records, Angel Records, Capitol, Island, MCA, Appleseed, Ensign/Chrysalis Records
Associated acts Joni Mitchell, Pete Seeger, Leonard Cohen
Website buffysainte-marie.com

Buffy Sainte-Marie, OC (formerly Beverly Sainte-Marie; born c. February 20, 1941) is a Canadian-American Cree singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist,[1] educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire also includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism.

She founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project, an educational curriculum devoted to better understanding Native Americans. She has won recognition and many awards and honours for both her music and her work in education and social activism.

Personal life

Buffy Sainte-Marie was born in 1941[2][3] on the Piapot Cree First Nations Reserve in the Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada.[4] She was orphaned and later adopted, growing up in Wakefield, Massachusetts, with parents Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie, who were related to her biological parents.[5] She attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, earning degrees (BA 1963 and PhD 1983) in teaching and Oriental philosophy.[6] and graduating in the top ten of her class.[7]

In 1964 on a return trip to the Piapot Cree reserve in Canada for a Powwow she was welcomed and (in a Cree Nation context) adopted by the youngest son of Chief Piapot, Emile Piapot and his wife, who added to Sainte-Marie's cultural value of, and place in, native culture.[8]

In 1968 she married surfing teacher Dewain Bugbee of Hawaii; they divorced in 1971. She married Sheldon Wolfchild from Minnesota in 1975; they have a son, Dakota "Cody" Starblanket Wolfchild. That union also ended and she married, thirdly, to Jack Nitzsche in the early 1980s. She currently lives on Kauai.[9]

She became an active friend of the Bahá'í Faith by the mid-1970s when she is said to have appeared in the 1973 Third National Bahá'í Youth Conference at the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,[10] and has continued to appear at concerts, conferences and conventions of that religion since then. In 1992, she appeared in the musical event prelude to the Bahá'í World Congress, a double concert "Live Unity: The Sound of the World" in 1992 with video broadcast and documentary.[11] In the video documentary of the event Sainte-Marie is seen on the Dini Petty Show explaining the Bahá'í teaching of progressive revelation.[12] She also appears in the 1985 video "Mona With The Children" by Douglas John Cameron. However, while she supports a universal sense of religion, she does not subscribe to any particular religion: "I gave a lot of support to Bahá'í people in the '80s and '90s … Bahá'í people, as people of all religions, is something I'm attracted to … I don't belong to any religion. … I have a huge religious faith or spiritual faith but I feel as though religion … is the first thing that racketeers exploit. … But that doesn't turn me against religion …"[13]:16:15–18:00min

Career

Sainte-Marie played piano and guitar, self-taught, in her childhood and teen years. In college some of her songs, "Ananias", the Indian lament, "Now That the Buffalo's Gone" and "Mayoo Sto Hoon" (in Hindi) were already in her repertoire.[6]

1960s

By 1962, in her early twenties, Sainte-Marie was touring alone, developing her craft and performing in various concert halls, folk music festivals and Native Americans reservations across the United States, Canada and abroad. She spent a considerable amount of time in the coffeehouses of downtown Toronto's old Yorkville district, and New York City's Greenwich Village as part of the early to mid-1960s folk scene, often alongside other emerging Canadian contemporaries, such as Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell (she also introduced Joni to Elliot Roberts, who became Joni's manager).[8]

She quickly earned a reputation as a gifted songwriter, and many of her earliest songs were covered, and often turned into chart-topping hits, by other artists including Chet Atkins, Janis Joplin and Taj Mahal. One of her most popular songs, "Until It's Time for You to Go", has been recorded by artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Michael Nesmith, Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra, Roberta Flack, Françoise Hardy, Cher, Maureen McGovern, and Bobby Darin, while "Piney Wood Hills" was made into a country music hit by Bobby Bare. Her vocal style features a frequently recurring, insistent, unusually sustained vibrato, one more prominent than can be found in the music of any other well-known popular music performer.

Sainte-Marie performing in the Netherlands in the Grand Gala du Disque Populaire 1968

In 1963, recovering from a throat infection Sainte-Marie became addicted to codeine and recovering from the experience became the basis of her song "Cod'ine",[7] later covered by Donovan, Janis Joplin, The Charlatans, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Man,[14] the Litter, The Leaves, Jimmy Gilmer, Gram Parsons,[15] Charles Brutus McClay,[16] The Barracudas (spelt "Codeine"),[17] The Golden Horde,[18] and more recently by Courtney Love. Also in 1963 Sainte-Marie witnessed wounded soldiers returning from Vietnam at a time when the U.S. government was denying involvement[19] – this inspired her protest song "Universal Soldier"[20] which was released on her debut album, It's My Way on Vanguard Records in 1964, and later became a hit for Donovan.[21] She was subsequently named Billboard Magazine's Best New Artist. Some of her songs such as "My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying" (1964, included on her 1966 album) addressing the mistreatment of Native Americans created a lot of controversy at the time.[5]

In 1967, Sainte-Marie released the album Fire and Fleet and Candlelight, which contained her interpretation of the traditional Yorkshire dialect song "Lyke Wake Dirge". Sainte-Marie's other well-known songs include "Mister Can't You See", (a Top 40 U.S. hit in 1972); "He's an Indian Cowboy in the Rodeo"; and the theme song of the popular movie Soldier Blue. Perhaps her first appearance on TV was as herself on To Tell the Truth in January 1966.[22] She also appeared on Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest with Pete Seeger in 1965 and several Canadian Television productions from the 1960s through to the 1990s,[8] and other TV shows such as American Bandstand, Soul Train, The Johnny Cash Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson; and sang the opening song "The Circle Game" (written by Joni Mitchell[8]) in Stuart Hagmann's film The Strawberry Statement (1970).

In the late sixties, Sainte-Marie used a Buchla synthesizer to record the album Illuminations, which did not receive much notice. "People were more in love with the Pocahontas-with-a-guitar image," she commented in a 1998 interview.

1970s

In late 1975, Sainte Marie received a phone call from Dulcy Singer, then Associate Producer of Sesame Street, to appear on the show. According to Sainte-Marie, Singer wanted her to count and recite the alphabet like everyone else, but instead, she wanted to teach the show's young viewers that "Indians still exist". Sainte-Marie had been invited earlier that year to appear on another children's TV show which she would not name, but turned the invitation down since the program ran commercials for G.I. Joe war toys.

Sainte-Marie regularly appeared on Sesame Street over a five-year period from 1976 to 1981, along with her first son, Dakota Starblanket Wolfchild, whom she breast-fed in one episode. Sesame Street even aired a week of shows from her home in Hawaii in December 1977; where Sainte-Marie and her family were joined by Bob (Bob McGrath), Maria (Sonia Manzano), Mr. Hooper (Will Lee), Olivia (Alaina Reed Hall, who was Sainte-Marie's closest friend from the Sesame Street cast), Big Bird and Oscar (both portrayed by Caroll Spinney).

In 1979 the film Spirit of the Wind, featuring Sainte-Marie's original musical score including the song "Spirit of the Wind", was one of three entries that year at Cannes, along with The China Syndrome and Norma Rae. The film is a docudrama of George Attla, the 'winningest dog musher of all time,' as the film presents him, with all parts played by Native Americans except one by Slim Pickens. The film was shown on cable TV in the early 1980s and was released in France in 2003. Sainte-Marie's musical score has been described as 'inspiring', 'haunting', and 'perfection'.[23]

1980s

Sainte-Marie began using Apple Inc. Apple II[24] and Macintosh computers as early as 1981 to record her music and later some of her visual art.[6] The song "Up Where We Belong" (which Sainte-Marie co-wrote with Will Jennings and musician Jack Nitzsche) was performed by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes for the film An Officer and a Gentleman. It received the Academy Award for Best Song in 1982. The song was later covered by Cliff Richard and Anne Murray on Cliff's album of duets, Two's Company.

In the early 1980s one of her native songs was used as the theme song for the CBC's native series Spirit Bay. She was cast for the TNT 1993 telefilm The Broken Chain. It was shot entirely in Virginia. In 1989 she wrote and performed the music for Where the Spirit Lives, a film about native children being abducted and forced into residential schools.

1990s

Buffy Sainte-Marie playing the Peterborough Summer Festival of Lights on June 24, 2009.

Sainte-Marie voiced the Cheyenne character, Kate Bighead, in the 1991 made-for-TV movie Son of the Morning Star, telling the Indian side of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where Lt. Col. George Custer was killed.[25]

In 1992, after a sixteen-year recording hiatus, Sainte-Marie released the album Coincidence and Likely Stories.[26] Recorded in 1990 at home in Hawaii on her computer and transmitted via modem through the early Internet to producer Chris Birkett in London, England,[8] the album included the politically charged songs "The Big Ones Get Away" and "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" (which mentions Leonard Peltier), both commenting on the ongoing plight of Native Americans (see also the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.) Also in 1992, Sainte-Marie appeared in the television film The Broken Chain with Pierce Brosnan along with First Nations Bahá'í Phil Lucas. Her next album followed up in 1996 with Up Where We Belong, an album on which she re-recorded a number of her greatest hits in more unplugged and acoustic versions, including a re-release of "Universal Soldier". Sainte-Marie has exhibited her art at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Emily Carr Gallery in Vancouver and the American Indian Arts Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1995 Buffy's Music and voice appeared in an episode of HBO's Happily Ever After, which is an animated cartoon series of fairy tales for children. Buffy appeared in the episode about Snow White which was also titled as "White Snow". White Snow is a young Native American Princess who is saved by a young Native American Prince. Buffy wrote the theme song and also sings a song and is the voice of the mirror on the wall. The episode appeared in the first season of Happily Ever After but the episodes continue to be aired as reruns.

In 1969 she started a philanthropic non-profit fund Nihewan Foundation for American Indian Education devoted to improving Native American students participation in learning.[27] She founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project in October 1996 using funds from her Nihewan Foundation and with a two-year grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek, Michigan. With projects across Mohawk, Cree, Ojibwe, Menominee, Coeur D'Alene, Navajo, Quinault, Hawaiian, and Apache communities in eleven states, partnered with a non-native class of the same grade level for Elementary, Middle, and High School grades in the disciplines of Geography, History, Social Studies, Music and Science and produced a multimedia curriculum CD, Science: Through Native American Eyes.[28]

2000s

Sainte-Marie performing at The Iron Horse in Northampton, Massachusetts, on June 15, 2013

In 2000, Sainte-Marie gave the commencement address at Haskell Indian Nations University.[29] In 2002 she sang at the Kennedy Space Center for Commander John Herrington, USN, a Chickasaw and the first Native American astronaut.[30] In 2003 she became a spokesperson for the UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network in Canada.[31]

In 2002, a track written and performed by Sainte-Marie, entitled "Lazarus", was sampled by Hip Hop producer Kanye West and performed by Cam'Ron and Jim Jones of The Diplomats. The track is called "Dead or Alive". In June 2007, she made a rare U.S. appearance at the Clearwater Festival in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.

In 2008, a two-CD set titled Buffy/Changing Woman/Sweet America: The Mid-1970s Recordings was released, compiling the three studio albums that she recorded for ABC Records and MCA Records between 1974 and 1976 (after departing her long-time label Vanguard Records). This was the first re-release of this material. In September 2008, Sainte-Marie made a comeback onto the music scene in Canada with the release of her latest studio album Running for the Drum. It was produced by Chris Birkett (producer of her 1992 and 1996 best of albums). Sessions for this latest project commenced in 2006 in Sainte-Marie's home studio in Hawaii and in part in France. They continued until spring 2007.

Censorship

Sainte-Marie claimed in a 2008 interview at the National Museum of the American Indian[32] that she had been blacklisted and that she, along with Native Americans and other native people in the Red Power movements, were put out of business in the 1970s.[33]

"I found out 10 years later, in the 1980s, that President Lyndon B. Johnson had been writing letters on White House stationery praising radio stations for suppressing my music", Sainte-Marie said in a 1999 interview at Diné College given to Brenda Norrel, a staff writer with Indian Country Today ... "In the 1970s, not only was the protest movement put out of business, but the Native American movement was attacked."[34] According to Norrel, this article was initially censored by Indian Country Today, and finally published only in part in 2006.

Awards and honors

In 1997, Sainte-Marie won a Gemini Award for her 1996 variety special, Up Where We Belong.[35]

In 1983–4, the song "Up Where We Belong" (music by Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Sainte-Marie; lyrics by Will Jennings) from An Officer and a Gentleman won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a BAFTA Film Award for Best Original Song.[36]

In 2009 she received the Juno Award for the album Running for the Drum.

In 2010, she received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award.[37]

Honorary degrees

In 1996 she received an honorary Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa degree from the University of Regina in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. She then gave the convocation address to the administration, education, and engineering graduates. As part of the address, Sainte-Marie sang a song about the Canadian Indian residential school system.

In 2007 she received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.[38] On June 13, 2008, she received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Carleton University, in Ottawa, Canada,[39] an honorary Doctor of Music from The University of Western Ontario on June 10, 2009, in London, Ontario, and an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the Ontario College of Art & Design on June 4, 2010, in Toronto, Canada.[40] On May 23, 2012 she received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Discography

Albums

Year Album Peak chart positions
CAN US UK[41]
1964 It's My Way! — — —
1965 Many a Mile — — —
1966 Little Wheel Spin and Spin — 97 —
1967 Fire & Fleet & Candlelight — 126 —
1968 I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again — 171 —
1969 Illuminations — — —
1970 Performance (film soundtrack) — — —
The Best of Buffy Sainte-Marie — 142 —
1971 The Best of Buffy Sainte-Marie Vol. 2 — — —
She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina — 182 —
1972 Moonshot — 134 —
1973 Quiet Places — — —
1974 Native North American Child: An Odyssey — — —
Buffy — — —
1975 Changing Woman — — —
1976 Sweet America — — —
1992 Coincidence and Likely Stories 63 — 39
1996 Up Where We Belong — — —
1998 Singing Siam — — —
1999 Cry With the eagle — — —
2001 Canada oh Canada — — —
2003 The Best of the Vanguard Years — — —
2008 Buffy/Changing Woman/Sweet America — — —
Running for the Drum NA — —

[26]

Singles

Year Single Peak chart positions Album
CAN CAN AC US UK[41] AUS
1970 "Circle Game" 76 — 109 — 83 Fire & Fleet & Candlelight
1971 "Soldier Blue" — — — 7 — She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina
"I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again" 86 — 98 34 — I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again
1972 "Mister Can't You See" 21 — 38 — 70 Moonshot
"He's an Indian Cowboy in the Rodeo" — — 98 — —
1974 "Waves" — 27 — — — Buffy
1992 "The Big Ones Get Away" 24 14 — 39 — Coincidence & Likely Stories
"Fallen Angels" 50 26 — 57 —
1996 "Until It's Time for You to Go" — 54 — — — Up Where We Belong
2008 "No No Keshagesh" — — — — — Running For The Drum

[26]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Buffy Sainte-Marie.

References

  1. ↑ More than 26.5 million copies sold world-wide as per Buffy Saint-Marie biography/profile
  2. ↑ "Buffy Sainte-Marie Biography". Profile at Film Reference.com. Retrieved 2008-06-10.
  3. ↑ Nygaard King, Betty. "Saint-Marie, Buffy". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2008-06-10.
  4. ↑ Bennett, Tony, and Valda Blundell. 1995. Cultural studies. Vol. 9, no. 1, First peoples: cultures, policies, politics. London: Routledge. pg. 111; ISBN 0-203-98575-3
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Encyclopedia of the Great Plains entry by Paula Conlon, University of Oklahoma, edited by David J Wishart
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 "Buffy Sainte-Marie UK Biography". Buffysaintemarie.co.uk. Retrieved 2014-04-23.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 45 Profiles in Modern Music by E. Churchill and Linda Churchill, pgs. 110–2
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life (Director's Cut) DVD, distributed by Filmwest Associates of Canada and the US, , 2006
  9. ↑ "Buffy fans Tarantino and Morrissey – Reader comments at The New York Sun". Nysun.com. Retrieved 2014-04-23.
  10. ↑ George Wesley Dannells, Liz Kauai (May 28, 2009). "Question – Who Else Besides Cher Was a Surprise Performer at the 1973 Oklahoma City Baha’i Youth Conference: Answer – Buffy St. Marie". bahaiviews.net. Retrieved March 26, 2015.
  11. ↑ Bahá'ís and the Arts: Language of the Heart by Ann Boyles, also published in 1994–95 edition of The Bahá'í World, pgs. 243–72
  12. ↑ Live Unity:The Sound of the World A Concert Documentary, VCR Video, distributed by Unity Arts Inc., of Canada, © Live Unity Enterprises, Inc., 1992
  13. ↑ Buffy Sainte-Marie; interviewed by Jon Faine (March 3, 2015). The Conversation Hour (radio). Melbourne, Australia: Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
  14. ↑ On their album Maximum Darkness
  15. ↑ On Another Side of This Life: The Lost Recordings of Gram Parsons 1965–1966
  16. ↑ Charles Brutus McClay – "Bottled in France", released 1970 by CBS France, cat.nr.64478
  17. ↑ The Barracudas – "Drop Out with The Barracudas", released 1981 by Zonophone, cat.nr.ZONO103
  18. ↑ "Codeine (live, London, 1991) by The Golden Horde on SoundCloud". Soundcloud.com. March 9, 2012. Retrieved 2014-04-23.
  19. ↑ "Vietnam War 1961–1964". The History Place. Retrieved 2014-04-23.
  20. ↑ Folk and Blues: The Premier Encyclopedia of American Roots Music by Irwin Stambler, Lyndon Stambler, pp. 528–530.
  21. ↑ "Show 34 – Revolt of the Fat Angel: American musicians respond to the British invaders. [Part 2] : UNT Digital Library". Digital.library.unt.edu. April 18, 2014. Retrieved 2014-04-23.
  22. ↑ ""To Tell the Truth" Episode dated 1966-01-24". IMDb.com. Retrieved 2014-04-23.
  23. ↑
  24. ↑ Names under the sun: Buffy Sainte-Marie – multi-awarded native American singer makes a comeback Los Angeles Business Journal, May 1992 by Michael Logan.
  25. ↑ "Son of the Morning Star". IMDb.com. Retrieved 2014-04-23.
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 Strong, Martin C. (2000). The Great Rock Discography (5th ed.). Edinburgh: Mojo Books. pp. 840–841. ISBN 1-84195-017-3.
  27. ↑ "nihewan.com,nihewan.com". Nihewan.com. Retrieved 2014-04-23.
  28. ↑ "Cradleboard History". Cradleboard.org. Retrieved 2014-04-23.
  29. ↑ New generation of Haskell family honored Topeka Capital-Journal, The, May 13, 2000 by Andrea Albright Capital-Journal.
  30. ↑
  31. ↑ "Buffy UNESCO Spokes Person". Cradleboard.org. February 13, 2003. Retrieved 2014-04-23.
  32. ↑ "2008 Native Writer's Series #3 – Buffy Sainte-Marie". YouTube. April 17, 2008. Retrieved 2014-04-23.
  33. ↑ Paulsen, Sasha (September 24, 2011). "An original rebel with a resonating voice". Napa Valley Register (Napa, CA: Lee Enterprises, Inc.). Retrieved September 28, 2011.
  34. ↑ "CENSORED NEWS: Uncensored: Buffy Sainte-Marie honored with Lifetime Achievement Award". Bsnorrell.blogspot.com. October 22, 2008. Retrieved 2014-04-23.
  35. ↑
  36. ↑ "Buffy Sainye-Marie : Awards". IMDb.com. Retrieved 2014-04-23.
  37. ↑ "Buffy Sainte-Marie". Governor General's Performing Arts Awards. Retrieved August 9, 2012.
  38. ↑ "Cradleboard Comments & News Stories". Cradleboard.org. Retrieved 2014-04-23.
  39. ↑ "Human rights activists to be honoured at Spring Convocation (news release)". Carleton University. June 5, 2008. Archived from the original on June 8, 2008. Retrieved 2008-06-13.
  40. ↑ "OCAD News Release: OCAD to confer honorary doctorates on Carole Condé, Karl Beveridge, Anita Kunz and Buffy Sainte-Marie". June 2, 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-06.
  41. ↑ 41.0 41.1 Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19th ed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. p. 479. ISBN 1-904994-10-5.

First Nations University of Canada Professor and a Cree-Saulteaux of the Muscowpetung First Nation Blair Stonechild (Aboriginal Faces of Saskatchewan and Michigan State University Press) is credited as being her biographer in Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life DVD, distributed by Filmwest Associates of Canada and the US.

External links