Post by Okwes on Apr 6, 2008 12:46:21 GMT -5
Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carrying the medicine, sharing a message Posted:
March 31, 2008
by: Jerry Reynolds <http://www.indiancountry.com/author.cfm?id=331> /
Indian Country Today
www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416929
<http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416929>
WASHINGTON - Another honor now gathers to the name of Buffy
Sainte-Marie. As she related at the National Museum of the American
Indian's Rasmuson Theater March 19, the Cree singer, composer, musician
and educator joins folk song legend Pete Seeger and others among the
performers and artists blacklisted by the federal government in the
1950s and '60s.
Seeger, other artists and numerous film screenwriters are well-known for
standing on principle in the 1950s. At great cost to themselves, they
defied the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in its witch hunt for
Communists and everyone knew it. Eventually, in a kind of backdoor
acknowledgment of a national psychosis, later generations embraced them.
In the 1960s, blacklisted performers were fewer and their fates less
known than in the McCarthyist '50s, perhaps in part because ''students
ruled.'' (The government could harass ex-Beatle John Lennon no end, for
instance, but blacklisting him to prevent his performing never would
have worked - too many fans.) But quietly, the late President Lyndon
Baines Johnson, still staking his reputation on the Vietnam War, marked
down a few names from the peace movement, as well as a few from the
civil rights movement who apparently sassed him too much, for career
setbacks.
Sainte-Marie, just emerging in the 1960s, was one of them (she also
mentions country bluesman Taj Mahal and actress-singer Eartha Kitt). She
found her natural audiences in Canada and Native communities anyway, and
took her time finding out.
''It hadn't bothered me not to know. And when I'd have a concert and
there'd be, you know, several thousand people at the concert, and they'd
all say, 'Well, how come we can't get your records?' - I'd be blaming it
on the record company. But the record company always said that they
would ship the record, but they wouldn't get to the town. And when I'd
be invited on the Tonight Show or any of the late shows, the host would
be very nice to me. But the producers, gradually when I would appear,
they'd say, 'Look, you know, we want you to sing 'Until It's Time for
You to Go' because ... Barbara Streisand
recorded it. But don't do - don't, you know, Indian rights and you know,
any kind of social awareness, protest movement - don't talk about that
because that's, you know, boring now.' ... I didn't think much of it.
But when I found out the CIA had truly been involved in it - it was
something that Indian Country Today printed last year, when that CIA
agent came out and mentioned that he had been in on the suppression of
my music and other artists' from that time.
''Finally there was some evidence anywhere, at least some corroboration,
to what I'd been told by broadcasters. It was weird, you know, what it
did to me. ... I suppose if I were a business person I'd say, 'Yeah, it
hurt my career.' But what really bugged me about it is that my voice was
silenced, and I think the things that I was saying and singing in those
days was a medicine to help and support ideas, people, healings that
could have been happening. ... When you carry the medicine, sometimes
you have to carry it a long way.''
Irony abounds: in ''Universal Soldier,'' she penned an anthem of the
peace movement; and ''Indianness,'' with all it implies of social
justice, must have recommended her for the civil rights movement, too.
But outside her art she was hardly a part of them. And despite composing
a succession of pop standards for others, she was never going to be a
star of nation-threatening status.
''Civil rights movement? I wasn't there. ... That's where all the
photo-ops were. So a lot of the folk singers were there. And most
everybody knew each other. But I was from so out of town I didn't know
anybody. And I didn't drink, so I missed all the parties where business
is done. ... I was from so out of town, I was so green, I was on the
rez. ... They think I was there, but I wasn't.''
Not then, anyway. But the medicine had kept for a long time and carried
far by March 19, fifth anniversary of the U.S. war on Iraq and its
attendant demons, rated by some as the stuff of another national
psychosis in the making.
And after an hour of insight on creativity, a passage or two of a
cappella singing, and regular showings of sheer intelligent liveliness
from one whose good health sets her apart from some of her peers,
Sainte-Marie's inner protester came out in lines of a longer poem she
read aloud, ''The War Racket'':
''And that's how it's done.
About every 30 years
the rich fill their coffers.
The poor fill with tears.
The young fill the coffins.
The old will hang a wreath.
The politicians will get photographed
with their names underneath.''
March 31, 2008
by: Jerry Reynolds <http://www.indiancountry.com/author.cfm?id=331> /
Indian Country Today
www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416929
<http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416929>
WASHINGTON - Another honor now gathers to the name of Buffy
Sainte-Marie. As she related at the National Museum of the American
Indian's Rasmuson Theater March 19, the Cree singer, composer, musician
and educator joins folk song legend Pete Seeger and others among the
performers and artists blacklisted by the federal government in the
1950s and '60s.
Seeger, other artists and numerous film screenwriters are well-known for
standing on principle in the 1950s. At great cost to themselves, they
defied the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in its witch hunt for
Communists and everyone knew it. Eventually, in a kind of backdoor
acknowledgment of a national psychosis, later generations embraced them.
In the 1960s, blacklisted performers were fewer and their fates less
known than in the McCarthyist '50s, perhaps in part because ''students
ruled.'' (The government could harass ex-Beatle John Lennon no end, for
instance, but blacklisting him to prevent his performing never would
have worked - too many fans.) But quietly, the late President Lyndon
Baines Johnson, still staking his reputation on the Vietnam War, marked
down a few names from the peace movement, as well as a few from the
civil rights movement who apparently sassed him too much, for career
setbacks.
Sainte-Marie, just emerging in the 1960s, was one of them (she also
mentions country bluesman Taj Mahal and actress-singer Eartha Kitt). She
found her natural audiences in Canada and Native communities anyway, and
took her time finding out.
''It hadn't bothered me not to know. And when I'd have a concert and
there'd be, you know, several thousand people at the concert, and they'd
all say, 'Well, how come we can't get your records?' - I'd be blaming it
on the record company. But the record company always said that they
would ship the record, but they wouldn't get to the town. And when I'd
be invited on the Tonight Show or any of the late shows, the host would
be very nice to me. But the producers, gradually when I would appear,
they'd say, 'Look, you know, we want you to sing 'Until It's Time for
You to Go' because ... Barbara Streisand
recorded it. But don't do - don't, you know, Indian rights and you know,
any kind of social awareness, protest movement - don't talk about that
because that's, you know, boring now.' ... I didn't think much of it.
But when I found out the CIA had truly been involved in it - it was
something that Indian Country Today printed last year, when that CIA
agent came out and mentioned that he had been in on the suppression of
my music and other artists' from that time.
''Finally there was some evidence anywhere, at least some corroboration,
to what I'd been told by broadcasters. It was weird, you know, what it
did to me. ... I suppose if I were a business person I'd say, 'Yeah, it
hurt my career.' But what really bugged me about it is that my voice was
silenced, and I think the things that I was saying and singing in those
days was a medicine to help and support ideas, people, healings that
could have been happening. ... When you carry the medicine, sometimes
you have to carry it a long way.''
Irony abounds: in ''Universal Soldier,'' she penned an anthem of the
peace movement; and ''Indianness,'' with all it implies of social
justice, must have recommended her for the civil rights movement, too.
But outside her art she was hardly a part of them. And despite composing
a succession of pop standards for others, she was never going to be a
star of nation-threatening status.
''Civil rights movement? I wasn't there. ... That's where all the
photo-ops were. So a lot of the folk singers were there. And most
everybody knew each other. But I was from so out of town I didn't know
anybody. And I didn't drink, so I missed all the parties where business
is done. ... I was from so out of town, I was so green, I was on the
rez. ... They think I was there, but I wasn't.''
Not then, anyway. But the medicine had kept for a long time and carried
far by March 19, fifth anniversary of the U.S. war on Iraq and its
attendant demons, rated by some as the stuff of another national
psychosis in the making.
And after an hour of insight on creativity, a passage or two of a
cappella singing, and regular showings of sheer intelligent liveliness
from one whose good health sets her apart from some of her peers,
Sainte-Marie's inner protester came out in lines of a longer poem she
read aloud, ''The War Racket'':
''And that's how it's done.
About every 30 years
the rich fill their coffers.
The poor fill with tears.
The young fill the coffins.
The old will hang a wreath.
The politicians will get photographed
with their names underneath.''