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film composer, and he played piano with the Rolling Stones and was involved in a lot of their early records. I was in Perfor- mance, Mick Jagger’s first movie. Not on camera – I had two songs, and I under- stand they’re going to re-release that album. Holy smoke it’s good! Ry Cooder, Randy Newman, Jack’s music, and my music. My songs were improvised – we called one Dyed Dead Red and the other The Hashisheen. I played mouth-bow and made funny noises and stuff.”
“I In that same period, with the Vietnam
War escalating at an alarming rate, the FBI secretly blacklisted Buffy, effectively spik- ing her career in the US.
“I only found out in the ’80s. I went to a regular radio interview and the broad- caster said “I would like to start by apolo- gising to Buffy Sainte-Marie for having gone along with these letters from the Lyn- don Johnson White House commending me for having suppressed this music that deserved to be suppressed’. It was the first time I’d ever heard of it, and after that he went on with the regular interview. I left 20 minutes later saying ‘what was that?’. I
used to come when I was mar- ried to Jack Nitzsche and he was recording with the Lon- don Philharmonic some of the movie scores he did as a
told my lawyer some time after, and he said ‘Why don’t we get your FBI files?’ and I said ‘There wouldn’t be any FBI files on me, I never committed a crime, and I’m not important enough to have somebody putting me under surveillance’. But sure enough! The FBI said ‘Yeah, we have files on her and she can come to look at them if she wants. And my lawyer said ‘No no no no – you can come to my office, and be pre- sent when she’s looking at them’.”
“Of course there was nothing incrimi- nating at all – page after page after page of redaction, where they take a big magic-marker and they black things out so you hardly know what you’re looking at. The only thing you can find out about me is that the FBI was following me around; J Edgar Hoover [director of the FBI for 37 years] had me in his sights, and there are letters from people who wrote to the FBI about this Buffy Sainte-Marie character – ‘Have you got files on her? And what does she do?’ And blah blah. They answer the letters, ‘Yes we do have files on her, and no we can’t tell you what’s in them’. It’s charming.”
“When that kind of stuff is going on, the usual comment all these years later from people is ‘Doesn’t that make you hate the United States government?’ And no, the government had nothing to do
with it. It’s a couple of guys who go in the backroom and make a couple of phone calls to their friends at the network that they talk to every day anyway. So it’s a very small act that can silence an artist for many, many years in a country like the US. And in showbusiness they only have to hold you under the water for four minutes and you’re dead forever in terms of air- play. I was making some great records in the late ’60s and ’70s – holee! – but whether it was a love song, a rockabilly song, a rock ’n’ roll song, whatever it was about, you could not get it played. I kept on writing songs, paying attention, and having a great career outside the US.”
“And I continued to develop electron- ic music, to work in computers, and to make paintings and songs and writings and teaching projects. You just keep on, you know, your life as an artist is more than your career. The real work goes on before it hits the career level. I’m in love with writing songs and when I want to go on the road I put out an album – that’s just not the way to do it, but it’s what I’ve always done, and it’s what I’m doing now with Medicine Songs.”
At the age of 77 Buffy Sainte-Marie remains on the frontline as artist, activist, and healer, telling it like it is.
buffysainte-marie.com F
Photo: © Judith Burrows
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