Report from Santa Fe; Buffy Sainte-Marie

The National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tows, New Mexico. Hi, I'm Lorie Mills and welcome to Report from Santa Fe. Our guest today is Buffy St. Marie, the Academy Award-winning composer, songwriter, creator of so many wonderful things. And as you looked at your life, you did call it a multimedia life. So welcome to the show. Thank you, Lorie. I have been a fan of years, for 40 years. And your first album, which I'd like to show here, was called It's My Way. And you have led an extraordinary life. It is purely your way. And I'd like to just tell our viewers a little bit about you. You were born

Cree, Indian, in Saskatchewan, Canada. And you were raised in Northwest, Northeastern America. But you have you have degrees in fine arts and in Oriental philosophy and teaching. And yet you have had this extraordinary musical career. So do you want to tell us a little about it? How you got started in the 60s, 60s kind of activist songs? Your songs were the soundtrack of that era. Oh, thank you. That's a very nice thing to say. Appreciate it. Well, actually, the first music memory that I have was when I was about three when I saw a piano. And I walked over to that and I said, OK, I'm staying. I could play right away. I taught myself how to play. And I think I've continued in that way. My childhood was not Barbie dolls and sports. My childhood was art. I had a hard time as a kid. There were pedophiles in the house and in the neighborhood. So I think in order to hide and support the things that were fun for me. I didn't

think twice about it. I just colored and made pictures and made up stories and made music. And I've always thought, even as an educator, that the arts are natural. I think that's why I like this part of the country, too, because there are so many artists and so many natural artists. And of course, you can go and you can learn how to refine your art in a school. And that's absolutely wonderful. But we mustn't ever forget that if you take a whole bunch of little kids to the beach, they're going to make art. They're going to use their imaginations and make drama. They're going to make stories. They're going to dance. They're going to make pictures. They're going to make sand castles, basic architecture. So I think that when I went to college at the University of Massachusetts and was singing the songs that I had been writing all my life, they were a support to me. They were a way to express myself. And also I think to do that thing that artists like to do because I think artists are kind of like cameras. Yeah. And we're

seeing our lives. We're participating in our lives. And it's just though we're taking little pictures. And for me, I kind of string my world together with the arts. And it doesn't matter to me whether it's music, writing, you know, thinking and talking with a friend, making pictures, making dance. It's all a reflection of what's actually going on. Did you not say that in your youth, your one passion was daydreaming? I don't remember saying that but it was. Yeah. Yeah. I've always been that kind of person. I'm dyslexic in music. So I can write for an orchestra but I can't read it back. So when I was, gosh, we're really jumping ahead aren't we? But by the time I was scoring movies in the late 60s and early 70s, I realized that I was going to have to work not with a pencil on paper but with a tape recorder. And of course when computers came along, I was home free and I started using computers from

music and art in the 80s. And then I could I could do my orchestrations and hear them as they would actually sound without having to resort to tape. So basically what I have been from the time I was a child through the 60s into the 70s when I was going movies and doing Sesame Street and and being blacklisted. And through the 80s when I was first into computers and digital art and doing the cradle board teaching project in the 90s when I started recording again and I found that how nice it was to record again in other countries. It's always been the same motivation and the same kind of stringing the beads of reality onto onto strings and trying to make things. Beautiful enough to share them with other people. Well you share them with so many people. Let's go back to the 60s and 70s because you were a folk artist and you had gotten a teaching degree and you were going to go teach. But you had been doing folk songs and protest songs in

coffee houses and you went to New York. Your songs were so successful. They really did a universal soldier until it's time for you to go the circle game. You were just so many of the things that you were. So so popular for your songs were performed by Janice Joplin's Chair, Barbara Streisand, Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond, Tracey Chapman, the Boston Pops Orchestra, Bob Bobby Daron. So I mean it's just amazing. Panifly, if people who are all attracted to the beauty and the truth of your songs, I have to speak about one one song in particular because it's the one for which you received the Academy Award and I think 1982. You wrote Up Where We Belon, which was performed in the movie, An Officer in a Gentleman by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes. Yes, they were great. They were great. And so you and Jack Meachy, and Will Jennings. And Will Jennings received the Academy Award for the best song and you are the only Native American, the only Canadian to win an Oscar

ever. There'll be others. We want there to be, especially if they follow your lead. But one of the one of the when I first heard you sing 40 years ago, the timbre of your voice, it's one thing to be sitting here talking, but the timbre of your voice and the vibrato, I don't think that people can get it if they hear you speaking. So may I be so bold, may I be so bold? I know what you're going to ask. I know. If you could just occupy it. You have no instruments here. This is our regular BBS TV studio. But if you wouldn't mind if they could just hear the the texture of your voice because it is unique in the whole planet. A little demo, huh? A little demo. Just anything that you feel like. Well, they might, you mentioned Elvis Presley in that song. That song was called until it's time for you to go. Oh, I love it. You're not a dream. You're not an angel. You're a man. I'm not a queen. I'm a woman. Take my hand. We'll make a space in the lives that we planned. And here we'll stay until it's time for you to go.

So I think what you're hearing is some combinations of just the way my, you know, the way I'm built, like, you know, singers, the way my throat happens to be constructed, but also influences from people like E.D. Piaf, not that I was trying to copy her, but E.D. Piaf in particular, and Carmen Amaya, the flamenco dancer and singer. I mean, these people saying with the kind of passion that you didn't really hear in the US. E.D. Piaf was not afraid of her emotions, or the vibrato that came naturally with the shinnos in that. So I think that with the, with the experience of other singers being unafraid to just let it go, I kind of had a fierce vibrato going on without trying. And I learned how to turn it on and off after I had made a couple of albums and realized that people thought that, oh, this, this is

something you can control, because I wasn't really hearing it myself. I started out, you're there. Yeah. You're in your own head. You can't tell yourself. And I was only on a stage because of the songs. I wasn't there because I thought I could sing. I don't think I was a very good singer at all. I think I've learned how to become a better singer, but I was so involved in the songs, and I believed so much in what the songs had to say, whether it was a simple love song, like until it's time for you to go, or whether it was something that might be sung by other people, like love that does up where we belong, where the eels cry on a mountain high, or even universal soldier, which is definitely a song of, you know, it's a, it's a think song. And bury my heart, it wounded me, is a think song, you know, it's a song about something that is very real, but that people are probably not going to want to hear about because it was, you know, it's about, it's about

genocide and oppression. And so how do you get someone to give you three minutes out of their lives to hear something that they probably are not going to want to hear, but it's important for them to know in order for the world to continue to ripen and be a good place. You have to be clever with a song like up with a universal soldier, or bury my heart, wounded me. You have to put them to a melody that's catchy and easy to understand and the melody that embraces you and peaks your curiosity. Well, that sounds very, very conscious. That part is, yeah. Yeah, but, but when I've, I've read your writings about songwriting, you often say that it's like the whale and the bathtub that it forms in your head and you have to, then you have to do it. And so that may be the function of that early day dreaming is to let your brain be organizing this thing. You also have a wonderful quote about, you may not even remember this one, but that the song is not your life, but it's like the bruises and scars, the lipsticks, smooches, and the cotton candy from being at the circus.

Yeah, it is kind of. But as a songwriter, I do things in both ways. I do the inspiration part. Like until it's time for you to go, it's just pure inspiration you're in love and all of a sudden you just filled with this song. And it's it's like pure poetry. It's like indigenous poetry. It's not thought out. But as a college girl, trying to make sense to people who are putting up with these, what I would call dirty old men in Washington who are sending young people off to wars that they won't even send their own kids to. You know, you have to, if you, if what you're trying to do is to crystallize that kind of fact and emotion into something that's timeless, that makes sense in any country about any war, you know, at any period in history, then you put on your college girl hat and you write the song like Universal Soldier as you would a college thesis for your favorite professor and you want an A-plus. So you think about it and you present it so that the

simplest person or the most highly educated person can get it and there's no argument against it. So that's that's the vegetation and the intellectual part of it. It's definitely two different processes but both are come from that initial inspiration of daydreaming. And I think the as you say how to land that target, how to make that arrow land, that the texture of your voice in the vibrato, it's enough to make the cells in the listeners body, say, wait a minute, this is different. What is going on here? And so they're really, I think we're open to your message because of the quality of your voice. Maybe, huh? Yeah. Yeah. That part's natural though. That's just emotion. I think that textural stuff that you're talking about. I think that's emotion. I mean as somebody who writes for an orchestra, you know, you learn how to to tell, we just did the Detroit Symphony Song kind of have orchestra. You kind of learn how to write, you learn how to tell the violinist which both strokes to use at which part in the song. So that the violinist who's never

even heard the song before can play it so that it's expressing an emotion. But singing it is different because it's with the body, it's with your guts. It's with your heart. If your heart is breaking, you know, thinking about your voice. It'll show up in your voice but actually it's more like telepathy and you you're telepathyizing to an audience. The real feeling that you're having and they get it, it's kind of like acting I guess when acting is real. Speaking of that, the vulnerability in your voice, you do, you used to hang with a lot of Canadian musicians, of course, like Johnny Mitchell and Leonard Cohen and Neil Young. But your helpless, Neil Young is more helpless than here. It's much more vulnerable than here is. I can think anybody ever noticed, like, or Jennifer helpless. It's just magnificent. Oh, and those three people that you mentioned are so lovely. So what great writers. I have a biodocumentary coming out called Buffy St. Maria Multimedia Life. And Johnny Mitchell said the sweetest thing. She was so kind. And I just did a tribute to Leonard Cohen at the Montreal Jazz

Festival. We had a hundred thousand people, you know, listening to other artists do Leonard songs on it. You know, it's really wonderful to look back at long careers and realize that these people, you know, some of them have become very famous and others have had political problems or whatever. But, you know, that there really is a senior class of very great songwriters who've reached a lot of people with some very important and very lovely messages. Who are your favorites? Maybe the major influences. We've senior work with Pete Siger, of course, and I'm a hero of my men. He's a sweet heart. I always liked unusual people. I've always loved Leonard Cohen's music. And as a writer, I mean, he's a record of the future. Oh, my gosh. Isn't that a treasure? And as I mentioned, Edie Piaf, this pure emotion and beauty. And Carmen Amaya, I'm kind of an amateur flamenco dancer. So I really, I spent some time

at UNM during the summer. I was giving a lecture there. And I realized that the University of New Mexico is the only place in the world we can get masters in flamenco. So next summer, I want to show up and take some classes because we'll just sit in with some classes and just enjoy that. And I think one of the other things I love about New Mexico is this three cultures. It's so, I mean, you hear about it all the time. So maybe you guys are sick of hearing it, but I love it. I think it's beautiful. Oh, man, it's wonderful. I love to come to Santa Fe and especially in the winter time, you know, you can smell all the chimneys and the small penions. Oh, it's so beautiful. Yeah. I live in Hawaii and our vegetation is all different. Well, you have vegetation. We had rain this year, though. So we had, it's somewhat more green than usual. But it's beautiful. I love your desert colors and plants. I'm kind of a plant, not anyway. I want to, it's hard to cover your entire career. How many albums? Well, Americans think they're a four.

But there are, I think this, I think the one that's coming, I think you see the 17 or 18. Uh-huh. Yeah. So Americans lost track of me. Well, I'll show some of the early ones. That's an early one. Yes. This is the first one, isn't it? It's my way. My Buffy Saint Marie. And here's a later one. Oh, my goodness. God is alive. Magic is a foot is, yeah. Feet, what is it? You read it? Fire and fleet and candlelight. That's it. I'm going to have some long hair in it. Yes. And then we have some of the DVDs that came out in the 90s. This is a, but that's what Vanguard called the best dog. Vanguard, Vanguard said, if you don't resign with us, we're going to put out a best dog. It wasn't best. A best dog album with that picture on it. That was the black male album. And I didn't resign with them. So they put it out. But now this year you're coming out with two. Here's one. Tell us about this one. Well, this was a surprise to me. A-B-C, excuse me, Ace Records in London found my three favorite albums, which nobody in the U.S. was ever able to

hear because they were just blacklisted. I could not get any airplane on them. Buffy, changing woman, and sweet America. And people are always saying, you know, can we get these albums? And I said, oh, you know, they were never, they were never put to CD. But now you can. So, you know, you can order them online. Ace Records. So that's coming out this year, but also this year, you have running for the drum. Running for the drum. It's a brand new album and it has a whole lot of kind of up-tempo dance. Almost sounds like house remix kinds of songs with lots of, a lot of powwow singing to real club mixes. It has big love songs like A-B-We-B-Long until it's time for you to go, but new ones. It has a real good jazz song called When I Had You. It has some rockabilly songs. I rerecorded Little Wheel Spin and Spin for this album. But it's of, you know, my albums are always very diverse in style, which kind of can go against

your recording artists, because they don't know what being to put you in. But it's a real whiplash collection of songs that sound like maybe Fats Dominole could have written them in New Orleans. Well, that's what's so amazing to me. You go from old-timey music like Cripple Creek, and you know, that's really popular now with old chromatists and show and things like that. And you do blues so beautifully. You do the old Anglo folk songs and Anglo-Saxon tradition. You just do everything. I think it's because I went through that wonderful time in the 60s, when the early 60s. There was a window open for a very short time for music of all kinds. For me, it started in Greenwich Village. But, you know, even on the radio, you could hear old Scottish folk songs alongside Delta Blues songs, alongside Flamenco, alongside contemporary songwriters. And now we have a very narrow playlist of, you know,

whatever, you know, 10, 12 songs. But now we have iTunes. We have the internet. We have YouTube. Exactly. So it's just, though, it's a reincarnation of a multiplicity of, you know, all different kinds of music. And I think when people hear only one kind of music, you know, they miss a lot. I think almost everybody, for instance, people will say, well, I like country music, and opera all sounds the same. As somebody else will say, well, I like heavy metal music, and country music all sounds the same. Or, you know, but no, once you have seen a lot of artists and lots of songs from any kind of music you realize there's a real diversity in all music. And if you're listening to all different kinds, I think I think you have a better day. And that diversity is really interesting. We had a very famous futurist here named Lowell Catlett, who said, this generation is the first generation that is not defined by their own music. We had the 60s. Definitely everyone knew what that was. We had the 70s. We had heavy

metal. We had disco. We have all these eras that really do define a generation. But these kids are listening to everything. They're listening to Billie Holiday. They're listening to Johnny Cash. They're listening to this incredible diversity. It is kind of this, the great melting pot finally in terms of music. Yeah, because it's all available. Yeah. We don't have somebody just forcing it down our throats because it's, you know, what it was going to sell this week. So I think that's nice. I mean, I think there's a lot wider choice available to listeners now. But you did have some misadventures in the musical trade. So let's talk about what it feels like to be blacklisted. It doesn't feel like anything because you don't realize you've been blacklisted. You can have the FBI and the CIA all over you and you won't know it. They're very smart people. So for me, I found out it took me maybe 10 to 15 years before I ever knew that there was FBI files on me or that the Lyndon Johnson White House had blacklisted me and made sure that the medicine that I

have, you know, an outspoken person who is becoming very famous with non-outspoken songs as well. That was the double whammy I had. Universal soldier and, you know, songs about Native America. That was one thing that's okay. But when you're having hits and all this personally and Barbara Streisand are singing your love songs, all of a sudden you're on the Tonight Show. And that's a threat, I guess, to some guys. And so I found out, I don't know, 10, 15 years after the fact that they had blacklisted me, that they had made sure that my records would never be played on the radio, that if I were doing a concert for 2,500 people, the people will wear your records. And the record company was like, well, we shipped them. So I don't know. I just figured that tastes had changed. And when I couldn't get any airplay, I thought, well, they don't like me anymore. But the rest of the world like you. I know. I was winning all kinds of awards and selling a whole lot of albums in Canada,

and I was touring in Europe and Asia and down under. And then only last year I found out that the CIA was in auditors. Well, I had no idea. So what it feels like to be blacklisted doesn't feel like anything. It feels like you've been forgotten. And that doesn't surprise an artist at all, because we're lucky to have any recognition. And I never thought that I would last more than a year. I thought I was just a fad. And I was Billboard's best new artist and I figured, oh gosh, that's great. And then I was selling a lot of albums and all of a sudden no record, no radio play at all, of my albums. And I just didn't think twice about it. I was having a great life touring around. I had joined the cast of Sesame Street in the 70s, but there was no radio play of my albums anymore. It didn't matter how famous I was or how many people like the album. If people want to cut an artist off, they can. And I work with IAAA and have in various capacities, you know, just loved that school and done what I could to support them. But I think that art

schools and people who love artists and people who appreciate alternative views, alternative music, alternative cultures, you have to understand that when it comes to money and power, there are some people who are very serious about not sharing it and not having you express a people's view of something that goes against what they're trying to sell. I mean, it is basic money and power. It's not one political party because I went through it again with Nixon. Both the Republicans and the Democrats are capable of presenting us with administrations that are unfair and that will do illegal things like, you know, limit freedom of speech or blacklist artists. I'm not the only one. Earth a kit. You ain't known hard. Taj Mahal. Eventually the Beatles, the Beatles even had problems. Yeah, but of course they were so huge by then. If you had, people of color really got it hard. You know, we did. We were disappeared in the U.S. during those administrations. But

and you know, sometimes people say, well, this is still going on today and I don't know because yeah, I didn't know then. You don't know. The artist is not going to know. Well, and yet, you know, you received international artists of the year in France and in Canada, you were in the Juno Hall of Fame, which is like, what are the juniors? The Grammys. The Grammys, yeah. And the Queen of England gave you medals and you're a, the United Nations had you represent the year of Indigenous people. I mean, you've just just kept on going and going. I've had a great line. I know. And then you've done it your way. But in the U.S. it hurts my heart because I felt at that time and I still feel that I've had, like every artist has, a unique contribution to make and a very special medicine when it came to peace and Native American rights and culture. You know, I've been a part of that and it's been kind of a special medicine. You were the first visible sign of a Native American woman activist just bringing the message. But I saw it as a

medicine that I was sharing, but to be disallowed from sharing it in the country that I thought needed it the most, the U.S. When audiences wanted it, when Native American people were ready for it, when we had so much on our side to have the bottle just hidden away. Now that I look back on it, I think it was a very, it was a despicable act, not just against me, but really against the people who could have been greatly supported and made even stronger strides at that time, like IAA. If I had not been blacklisted, if I had really been able to spearhead alongside my peers, I think, you know, all of us would have been able to work more cohesively and more powerfully to create, you know, the things that have been a struggle. And for the people who do not know, IAA is the Institute of American Indian Arts. Thank you. I think everybody knows.

You know, but some people may not. And they're up, they're pushing, they're getting close to their 50th anniversary. And they combine so many of the threads of your life, because you, in many, I've always been an educator, you know, through your music and through the works you done, you took your earnings from your, your early concerts and you founded a foundation called the Nehewan Foundation, which is, which helps, we're almost out of time, but this scholarship's for Native Americans. And you have been, like, back in the day you started that. And so you've always been walking your talk. And unfortunately, we're going to have to stop walking and talking, because we've run out of time. Well, thank you very much. I'm so happy to have you with us today. Thank you so much. And I'm happy to have you, our audience with us today. I'm Lorraine Mills. This is Report from Santa Fe. We'll see you next week. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public

education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Taos, New Mexico.