Buffy Sainte-Marie’s up where she belongs

She might be approaching the autumn years of an extraordinary multi-faceted career, but Buffy Sainte-Marie continues to exude the energy of a summer hurricane that shows no signs of abating.

Feisty and free flowing though now in her late seventies, this most wide ranging and gifted of native North American artists — the standard bearer for First Nations’ musicians worldwide — still runs wild, bending the wind with incomparable singing and boundless enthusiasm while hitting hard with her timeless sociopolitical songs and powwow rockers.

Nearly sixty years have passed since she emerged in New York’s famed Greenwich Village scene and wrote songs that became part of the soundtrack to the anti-war movement.

It was Bob Dylan who sent Buffy to the now legendary Gaslight Café, where things really opened up for her. “I owe him a debt of gratitude,” she declares. “He was such a magnificent songwriter, especially in those early days. He was writing things that very few other people had the courage to sing.”

The same could indeed be said of Saint-Marie, whose songs became a clarion call for native North American rights.

Buffy’s written a swag of classic songs since their emergence in the early 1960s, yet while ‘His Bobness’ has long since secured immortality, Buffy has not received acclamation commensurate with her considerable achievements as a musician, even though last year she was finally inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall Of Fame.

She’s hoping that the release of an award-winning biography written by Andrea Warner and featuring a foreword by Joni Mitchell, or the surprise placement of her recording of ‘The Circle Game’ in the Oscar-nominated Once Upon A Time In Hollywood will elevate her profile.

Saint-Marie was very surprised to find her rendition of Mitchell’s song in Quentin Tarantino’s movie. “I love the song, but I really hate my version of it. I didn’t like the production or the way they had me sing it. Joni’s version was brilliant. I don’t know why they didn’t use that.”

Anomalously, some of Buffy’s best-known songs are widely attributed to the artists that popularised them rather than herself, including her Oscar and Grammy-netting song from An Officer And A Gentleman, ‘Up Where We Belong’. Does that bother her? “Yes sometimes, but not much,” she replies. However, she was justifiably irked last year, that when actor Wes Studi received an honorary Oscar, to hear Christian Bale — her favourite actor — introduce her friend as the first Native American to receive an Academy Award.

A cluster of stars has recorded Sainte-Marie songs over the years, including the legendary likes of Gram Parsons, Janis Joplin, Glen Campbell, Andy Williams, Peggy Lee, Barbara Streisand and Willie Nelson. “They’re all a great compliment,” she says: “How can I not be partial to Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warne doing ‘Up Where We Belong’? Françoise Hardy doing ‘Take My Hand for Awhile’? Roberta Flack ‘Until It’s Time For You To Go?’ And just the other day, the local classic rock radio station played Quicksilver Messenger Service’s version of ‘Cod’ine’.”

Buffy’s highest selling composition, ‘Until It’s Time For You To Go’, is also one of the world’s most recorded songs, with hundreds of cover versions. Despite enormous pressure, Sainte-Marie presciently declined to sign away the publishing rights for it.

Sainte-Marie was pleased when Donovan had a hit with her anti-war evergreen ‘Universal Soldier’, even if it took her 25 years to buy back the rights. “I wanted the world to hear those lyrics. I thought the song could be effective, no matter who sang it. And, to some extent, it was effective, especially in expressing something a lot of people felt but couldn’t exactly put it into words: individual responsibility for the world we live in.” What Buffy didn’t like, however, was the fact that nobody on Donovan’s team ever mentioned that he didn’t write it. “Most people still also attribute it to Donovan. I still get arguments about it,” she says.

Does Sainte-Marie think politically motivated songs — ‘protest’ songs, if you will — have lost efficacy in this cynical and crass modern world? “No, but they’re not making people money at the moment, therefore songwriters are hired — or hire themselves — to write ‘what will sell’, and express their social commentary otherwise, through hip-hop, rap, blogs, social media, citizen action etcetera. Protest isn’t dead but most people only know about the money trail. They’re like little kids who believe daddy’s party line about success. It takes a different kind of intelligence to come up with alternative solutions and most people’s creativity centres around what others will buy and sell.

“Most of the people singing protest songs they didn’t write themselves in the 1960s accumulated fortunes just following the trends and seeming to care. While protest songs were making money for singers, to record companies, managers and agents it was trendy, that’s all. The real smart people knew that then and still do. Show business is consistently about money. Occasionally it gets to be about other things, too. That’s why, even if our songs are delivering a great message now, or not, we need to be building on all kinds of other fronts as well. Think globally/act locally is still required.”

Buffy’s ground-breaking record Illuminations — the first vocal album to employ what is now known as electronica — turned 50 last year, a milestone that was celebrated with a limited edition vinyl re-issue. In a long interview about that landmark release published in Musicworks magazine, she imparted that as an unschooled musician from a non-business family, she had nothing to lose by going off the tracks. “I played my guitars all upside down and inside out, using weird tunings and strings from other instruments, and I hung out with electronic musicians like Jill Fraser and Michael Czajkowski, who was brilliant at sound processing using a synthesizer.”

Sainte-Marie has faced erasure throughout her career and had little access to the bigwig publicists and managers that could’ve helped her flourish. In the twilight of her music career, she’s optimistic about the next couple of years, especially since she’s finally working with a publishing company for the first time.

“Although I’ve had some success with several of my songs, I’ve never had anybody ‘pushing’ them. I’ve never had a ‘song plugger’, as they’re called, making songs available to producers and artists about to record. So perhaps having a major publisher involved will bring to light some of the other hit material songs in my catalogue beyond the ones already covered. Who knows?”

Sainte-Marie, who holds degrees in teaching and Oriental philosophy, also has myriad pursuits away from music, in art (as a visual artist she pioneered digital paintings), education and public speaking. She recently finished her children’s book Tapwe and the Magic Hat, which is centred in a Cree community in the 1960s. It should be out next year. In the interim, Hey Little Rockabye and a picture book based in her song Farm in the Middle of Nowhere are set for publication. Buffy is also working on the Creative Native Project, which aims to teach Indigenous high school children about getting into the arts and showbiz. As she emphasizes: “I’m busy, busy”.

On the activism front, Sainte-Marie, who was born into a Cree family on a reservation in Canada’s Saskatchewan but raised by adoptive American parents, is still very closely involved in the welfare of fellow native north Americans, the impacts of colonisation on them and the never-ending fight for reparation.

Back in the 1960s the author of such passionate songs related to the subject as ‘My Country ’Tis Of Thy People You’re Dying’, ‘Now That The Buffalo’s Gone’ and ‘Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee’ also railed against the lack of Indigenous representation in television culture by agreeing to take a part in the popular Western series The Virginian only if actual Indigenous people were hired to play Indigenous roles. It became the first “Indian show with an all-Indian cast”.

When asked how stands that particular fight currently she responds: “Better than it used to be but nowhere near what it ought to be. What’s brilliant is that indigenous people from all over the world are little-by-little coming into their own, all the way to Ph.Ds. And they’re out there writing books, delivering information, working within communities and beyond, it’s great to see. I never underestimate that.”

Although she was allegedly blacklisted by American radio throughout the 1970s because of her association with the American Indian Movement, Buffy’s unsure to what extent her activism negatively impacted on her career in music, chart success et al.

“Some music biz insider might be able to answer that, but I can’t. Hell, I didn’t even know I was being blacklisted or manipulated by music execs, I just thought singers come and go. Had I understood I might’ve been more pissed. Norbert Hill, Ph.D wrote a long piece about me in his book about Hollywood’s paucity of indigenous actors called The Pretend Indians. He claimed that had I not been taken out, I would’ve had a Joni-sized career and the entire movement would have had a positive voice. Instead we were represented in the public mind by a fist in the air.”

Sainte-Marie, who lives on a farm in Hawaii these days, is astonishingly fit and energetic for her age, something she attributes to a health and fitness regimen that includes “daily ballet and flamenco [dancing] and a little bit of gym”, plus sugar-free eating. Max Lugavere’s Genius Foods is her bible.

Apart from being “a couple of notes lower”, which she likes, she claims her singing voice is as strong as ever. “What you call ‘the trademark vibrato’ happens when I get emotional. Occasionally I’ve been scolded that I was ruining my voice by not doing the European singer thing: honey and lemon etcetera. But, you know what? My aunts and uncles sing powwow all night long, without warming up or drinking honey and lemon, and they’re just fine, and I’m 78 and I’m fine too.”

• The above interview first appeared in Rhythms, Australia’s only dedicated roots music magazine.

Author: Tony Hillier

Tony Hillier is an Australia-based freelance music writer, broadcaster, musician, MC and band leader. He writes album and concert reviews and feature articles for The Australian (the country’s only bona fide national newspaper) and Rhythms (Australia’s only dedicated national roots music magazine) and prepares/presents weekly programs for the national broadcaster (ABC) and community radio. He is also a member of the Transglobal World Music Chart (TWMC) panel.