Buffy Sainte-Marie:
Versatile Artist Covers All Bases
By Len O'Connor

The songs she wrote were varied. Some music lovers might think of her as a writer of country protest songs, but her big financial successes (which allowed her to remain an artist instead of having to work in some other field) were her love songs; particularly Until It's Time for You to Go and Up Where We Belong.

She had a string of country hits as well, including The Piney Wood Hills, I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again, and He's an Indian Cowboy in the Rodeo. The protest songs she's written are scathing and pointed. There is no counter argument that holds up against Universal Soldier, Now That the Buffalos' Gone, of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Buffy went from Greenwich Village to Europe, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, and Japan, and had a unique career outside of the United States. She appeared in movies, wrote essays, worked with early computers, presented a colloquium to Europe's philosophers, established a scholarship foundation to fund native studies painted huge pictures, spent time with indigenous people in far away countries, received a medal from Queen Elizabeth II, and won an Academy Award.

In 1976, when her son was born, she quit professional recording to become a mother and an artist. For the next five years, she was a cast member of Sesame Street and she continued to be a student of experimental music for the next sixteen years.

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In 1966, Buffy had made the first ever electronic quadraphonic vocal album. Whereas in the seventies she used a Boucla synthesizer, and later a Serge, creating electronic soundtracks for songs and movies, during the same period she made rare appearances at huge European music festivals, using the early Roland MIDI guitar. In the later seventies and early eighties, she worked at home with a Fairlight and a Synclavier. When the Macintosh computer came out in 1984, Buffy was at the head of the line.

Today, her digital home studio is as personal and hands-on for her as a guitar was in the sixties. Her come-back CD, Coincidence and Likely Stories, was made at home in 1991. Using her Macintosh as a recording instrument, she played most of the parts herself. When it was just the way she wanted it, she dialed the number of her co-producer in London, England, and sent the music down the phone lines via modem, bounced it off the satellite, and it went onto tape in London.

Upon the release of that album, France named her Best International Artist and presented her with the Grand Prix Charles de Gaulle Award. In Ottawa, newspapers reviewed her performance with the 85-piece electronic band for 20,000 people last summer at Big Sky in Alberta, as well as for tiny Reserves and fly-in communities across Canada.

Today Buffy teaches at colleges, and lectures in a variety of fields including digital art, philosophy, film scoring, electronic music, song writing, Indian issues and the Native genius for governments.

Most importantly, Buffy teaches to remain positive amidst tough human realities. Her digital paintings vary in style as do her songs, speeches, classes and essays, each reflecting her lifelong wish to empower creative people's multifaceted potentials "because we need fresh alternative ideas from every direction...students, artist, women, and indigenous people."