The Canadian Indie Rock Canon #63 and 64: Buffy Sainte-Marie – It’s My Way!/Illuminations
It's My Way
Illuminations
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Polaris Prize “upsets” and The Canadian Indie Rock Canon seem to go hand in hand, and while this particular winner won’t be directly spoken about (Power In Blood by Buffy Sainte-Marie, an excellent album in its own right and one looking into after covering the albums here) it is important because, well, it’s how I discovered Sainte-Marie’s music. Because there was some outrage and calls of “false equality” when Power In Blood won and I was sadly one of those dissenting voices. All I saw was an aging icon and obvious visible minority getting the W over my beloved Alvvays and Viet Cong. But my knee jerk reaction made me question myself in one respect, have I even listened to this album? Or any of Buff Sainte-Marie’s work? When I finally took the time to listen to it Power In Blood took me by surprise considering that Sainte-Marie had not released an album in seven year prior and she was at the age of 75, this was a forward thinking gonzo pop album, more in line with Bjork or Kate Bush and less to do with 60’s folksters and hippie camp fire circles. Where the hell did this come from and more so how did she take some of her known beloved hits such as “It’s My Way!” and put those songs completely on their heads. And while I still might enjoy Alvvays or Viet Cong more that isn’t to say that Power In Blood didn’t win on its own merits, it’s at time both past reflective and forward thinking at the same time.
The power of that album made me realize how little I knew about someone who is often regarded as a musical legend in Canada. However even in that respect Sainte-Marie isn’t often given the same adulation as Mitchell, Young, Cohen and The Band as classic rock Canadian icons, she often feels more like someone the folk community props up at best and at worst a footnote in the history of Canadian music. Probably the most telling clue into Sainte-Marie’s lack of stature even among Canadian music critics is her very notable absence in Bob Merserau’s 100 Greatest Canadian Albums and any of the voted on Best Canadian album lists in the now defunct Chart Magazine. And while I’m not some crazy conspiracy theorist it does feel very odd that someone who loomed so large during her creative peak (as stated Sainte-Marie was and still is a massive figure in the folk community and a huge influence on the much lauded Joni Mitchell, so much so that Mitchell often confided in Sainte-Marie for advice and both would cover each other’s songs) would suddenly be seemingly pushed to the background of Canadian music history.
Buffy Sainte-Marie was born in 1941 of the Cree tribe on the Piapot 75 Reservation in Qu’Apelle Vallet, Saskatchewan. As an infant she was abandoned by her birth parents and was adopted by Albert and Winired Sainte-Marie from Massachusetts. Though her parent had some Native lineage from the Mi’kmaq tribe Sainte-Marie remember her upbringing lacking any native culturally and her surroundings to be predominantly white cultural environment. She recalls in an interview with MacClean magazine “Many indian children were effectively kidnapped – it was supposed to be for our own good.” It wasn’t until her teens until Sainte-Marie learned of her Cree roots and began ton try and reach out to her relatives.
Although Sainte-Marie had no intention of making music her career, she had wanted to become a teacher, she still pursued music as a hobbyist, being self taught on the piano and the guitar using unconventional tunings to create unique sounds. She began to perform at coffee houses while in college and one open mike performance at the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village caught the eye of critics and record companies. By 1963 she was seen as one of the most promising folk artists in New York and had formally given up her plans of teaching to pursue music full time. It was during this time that she had become friends with fellow Native Folk Singer Patrick Sky who had began to teach her how to play the mouth bow, a traditional Native instrument that would become a signature in Saint-Marie’s sound.
Leading up to her debut album Sainte-Marie dealt with a number of personal issues the became much of the content of the album’s lyrics. She suffered a throat infection in 1963 that was so severe she was prescribed codine to cope with the pain, developing an addiction to the drug. In the same year she witnessed the return of soldiers returning from the Vietnam war at the time that the US government was denying involvement. In 1964 she returned back to the reservation she was born on, the Chief son officially adopting her as part of the Cree nation. Many of these events and more are directly referenced in her 1964 debut It’s My Way! Which was critically lauded at the time and was singled out as an especially scathing and controversial album due to the issues it touched even within the protest heavy genre of 60’s folk music.
It’s My Way! Establishes Sainte-Marie’s signature sound on opening track “Now That The Buffalo’s Gone” an absolutely gut wrenching indictment of the American dream and how it was built on colonialism, made only more powerful with Sainte-Marie’s solo guitar and her voice with the tell-tale warble that would become synonymous with the songs she sings. “Now That The Buffalo’s Gone” doesn’t deal with folk’s tendency towards symbolism and subtext at the time, Sainte-Marie goes for the heart of the issue singing how treaties are broken and that even Nazi Germany was afforded pride and dignity in defeat that the natives were not afforded. With her voice able to switch between gentle and kind to boomingly assertive the last verse nails the message home “It’s all in the past you can say, But it’s still going on here today” remains as relevant now as it did decades ago.
The genre hopping of Power in Blood starts to make sense when you start looking deeper into Sainte-Marie’s albums’ Even on her debut she is able to cozy up to different styles of folk, ranging from the Irish Folk sounds of “The Old Man’s Lament” to Appalachian folk on “Cripple Creek.” On “Cod’ine” a song about Sainte-Marie’s substance addiction after the aforementioned throat infection she invokes a blues inflection on her vocals that enhances her lyrics of the downward spiral of pain and addiction she was going through. Still arguably Sainte-Marie succeeds on the album’s big folk anthems. “The Universal Soldier” describes the vicious circle of violence and futility that war brings. Even as she describes the titular universal soldier there’s a strange sad optimism in her voice, both bright and booming while at the same warbles with a sadness, much like a soldier showing a brave face despite the impending chaos he’s about to encounter. “It’s My Way” is a fiery declaration on independence, finding Sainte-Marie using her unique voice, slowly grow louder and deeper as the guitar picks up throughout the song. By the time she’s belting out “I’ve got my own world, I’ve got my own life, I’ve got my own strife, And it’s my way” you’re absolutely captivated by her power.
It’s My Way! Never charted but within the folk community it quietly became a major hit, mostly telling from the number of artists who would cover the song on it including Donovan, Janis Joplin, Gram Parsons and The Charlatans. After the release of the album Billboard declarted Sainte-Marie as the best new artist that year. She began to tour extensively through North America and Europe and began to gain a larger international following. It’s My Way! Was soon followed up by Many A Mile which covered much of the same ground her debut did but by her third album, with Folk’s popularity slowly waning and Sainte-Marie herself never feeling comfortable with one style she began to experiment with her sound. On third album Little Wheel Spin and Spin she was already starting to reach out of folk’s confines, with the album’s “Timeless Love” being recorded with a full string ensemble. Fire & Fleet & Candlelight incorporated more orchestral sounds and Sainte-Marie even employed orchestral arrangements by composers. Flipping genres again was her fifth album Gonna Be A Country Girl Again which had Sainte-Marie recording in Nashville and adopting heavy country music influences. However arguably her boldest move was on her next album which would have her experiment so deeply not just for herself but for the music of the era.
In 1969 with the end of the free love movement and the waning popularity of folk Sainte-Marie became enamored by the Buchla, an early synthesizer the she employed with assotamce from producer Maynard Solomon by moduilating base vocal and guitar work through it to create odd and experimental sounds. The result is an album that at the time was one of Sainte-Marie’s biggest commercial failures but has since become a ciritcal and cult favorite and deserves to be up there with the likes of Can and Krafwerk as an early pioneering work in electronic music. The first quadrophonic vocal album ever the album starts with the words of Leonard Cohen, “God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot” takes its lyrics from Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers but sets it on an echoey reverberating sample of Sainte-Marie’s own vocals, repeating the title of the album but cut in and out while the more familiar voice and guitar of Sainte-Marie slowly creep in. But that echoey voice never leaves, coming in and out of the background as the song takes an almost hypnotic chant like quality.
Illunimations is hardly a straight forward album and naturally Sainte-Marie’s most experimental and out there album to date that features technology as its core sound deals mostly in faith and religion. It’s an odd juixtaposition but one that adds to the confusion and crisis of belief that permeates the lyrics. “Adam” just might be the most chaotic song on the album, beginning with an eerie tone that shifts from left and right channels that is paired with ghost wails and organs in the background before driving into beats and distorted basslines before Sainte-Marie tells the tale of Adam’s fall from grace, her voice sounding like a story teller of bygone era and features he classic vocal warble that is so distinctly her own. “Suffer Little Children” is a bluesy romp that has one of Sainte-Marie’s most fierce vocal performances on the album and could be seen as one of the more “traditional” songs on the album so of course its twangy guitar bleeds right into a wall of synths that begins next track “The Angel,” as mechnical hums and dings makes you think you’re in some futuristic church before giving way to Sainte-Marie sounds more vulnerable ever over arranged strings. Illuminations is able to switch and surprise listeners today.
There’s always a danger in following established institutions of criticism, when the elite for one reason or another decide to ignore an artist it’s tough for them to bubble back to the top into the music listening conciousness (and yes I know the inherent irony of saying this while attempting to make some sort of national indie Rock Canon.) While the name had been heard before Sainte-Marie’s lack of appearance on “Best Of” lists and critical discussion had made me avoid her music for so long. And it’s also not surprising that someone of Sainte-Marie’s background, a Native Female who has a penchant for not puling punches and facing controversies head on, may have had something to do with her being buried in history. But I’m glad she had won that Polaris Prize back in 1995, sad to say it took that for me to discover what I consider one of the tent poles of modern Canadian rock music. Buffy Sainte-Marie is more than some dusty old folkster from an era past, she is a forward thinking, deeply poetic and unique artist who has as much influence on Art Rock as she does Folk. I have been wrong in dismissing her in the past, I hope this simple article atones for some of that lost time.
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(Tentative) Schedule
December 9: Tanya Tagaq - Animism
December 16: Mary Margaret O'Hara - Miss America
December 23: Plumtree - Predicts The Future
December 30: A Big Shiny Retrospective
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Submitted December 02, 2019 at 03:59PM by rccrisp https://ift.tt/2qgqmFg
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