Power In The Blood

Description

Equal parts activist, educator, songwriter, performer and visual artist, Buffy Sainte Marie is one of the most original and important voices of our time. Throughout her life she has been an untiring champion for indigenous people and the environment, through her music, art, education projects, and by taking direct political action.

Born on the Piapot Cree First Nations Reserve in the Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada, She was orphaned and later adopted, growing up in Wakefield, Massachusetts, attending the University of Massachusetts Amherst, earning degrees (BA 1963 and PhD 1983) in teaching and Oriental philosophy.

Her career in music started in New York City's Greenwich Village in the early to 1960s alongside contemporaries Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell, for who she was an early champion. Making a name for herself as a gifted songwriter, many of Buffy's earliest songs were covered, and often turned into chart-topping hits, by other artists including Chet Atkins, Janis Joplin and Taj Mahal. One of her most popular songs, "Until It's Time for You to Go", has been recorded by artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond and Cher.

But it was her song "Universal Soldier" that became one of the first anti-Viet Nam war anthems to inspire a generation to protest, the lyrics pointedly calling out every participant in the war machine, not just the leaders. The song appeared on her debut album It's My Way released on Vanguard Records in 1964, and later became a hit for Donovan. Buffy was subsequently named Billboard Magazine's Best New Artist. Her song "My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying" from 1966 addressed the mistreatment of Native Americans at a time that few people were aware of the plight of the indigenous.

Buffy Sainte-Marie is well known for breaking down social & cultural barriers, such as breast-feeding her infant son Dakota on the nationally televised program for children, Sesame Street. Her best known work, winning the "Best Original Song" Academy Award, performed by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes, is the classic "Up Where We Belong" from the film An Officer & Gentleman, co-written by her then husband, Jack Nitzsche.

"Power In The Blood" was recorded in Toronto throughout 2014 and 2015, will be released on May 12 on True North Records. It was recorded with three different producers (Michael Wojewoda, Chris Birkett and Jon Levine). The album starts with Buffy reprising the title track from her very first release, "It's My Way", demonstrating how her work can transcend two generations, still sounding contemporary, inspiring individualism and self-expression 50 years after it was written.

The title track for Power In The Blood appears 2nd, is an adaptation of the Alabama 3 song of the same name - one of two songs that were not written by Buffy on the album. Other highlights include "Orion" a Jack Nitzsche film score over which Buffy wrote new lyrics, their first collaboration to be released since Up Where We Belong, and the hard hitting socio-politital statements "Generation" and "Uranium War".

"For more than four decades, legendary Canadian-American Cree singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie has been blazing trails." - Winnipeg Free Press

"The iconic Canadian songwriter has written standards, social-justice anthems and Oscar-winning ballads, but never because it was what the industry expected from her." - The Globe and Mail

In support of the new album Buffy will be touring the UK in March as support to Morrissey and back later in the Summer for her own headline gigs.