PHOTO : CHRISTIE GOODWIN PHOTO : DUSTIN RABIN
when I realized that I was going to make more than one record , I thought , ‘ Oh , geez , I better get it together ,’ so I started listening to myself as I sang .”
When it comes to writing those songs , the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee insists that she has no process to speak of . Like many songwriters , when something interesting comes to her , she ’ ll sing melodies or lyrical snippets into her phone .
“ I ’ m like other writers in that I can wake up with a Bob Dylan song in my head that somehow got addressed to me , and if I don ’ t write it down , I ’ ll forget it ,” she says . “ But I write songs on the airplane , I write songs walking down the street , and , you know , I just duck into a little shop and sing it into my phone , then keep going – or write down lines or whatever . I think it ’ s typical of many writers . I got fragments all over the place on Post-It notes and in file cabinets and books . I got a lot of stuff , so if I had to
BUFFY RECEIVING THE 2015 POLARIS MUSIC PRIZE 36 CANADIAN MUSICIAN make an album tomorrow , I could .”
She says it ’ s this scattershot style of writing and gathering ideas that explains why her songs are so stylistically diverse , often with divergent genres and vibes on the same album .
“ I don ’ t mean to make a statement , it ’ s just all I got !” she laughs again . Her late-career gem , Power in the Blood , is a prime example of Sainte-Marie ’ s disregard for stylistic continuity . It shifts from the rave-beats of the title track ( which is a cover of British electronic band Alabama 3 ), to the rock-meets-powwow of “ We Are Circling ,” to the easy-going folk of “ Farm in the Middle of Nowhere .”
“ I don ’ t really decide , ‘ I ’ m going to write an album and it ’ s going to be about this .’ Medicine Songs is the one exception . Medicine Songs is an album that I really wanted to make and I don ’ t think the record company was that interested in it ,” she says , mentioning her latest LP , released in 2017 , for which she rerecorded some of her favourite activism-oriented songs , such as “ Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee ,” “ Disinformation ,” and “ Fallen Angels .”
“ On all my albums , there are no two songs alike . It ’ s so diverse that it drives record companies crazy ,” she continues . “ It ’ s not like a Motown record where every song is pretty much the same . They use the same band , the same guys , same feel , the same singers , you know ? Not mine – they ’ re going every which way . That was just natural to me and we got away with it in the folk music days . But with Illuminations , I wanted each song just to be its own little movie .”
That sixth album in her discography , 1969 ’ s electro-folk-rock epic Illuminations , has undergone a remarkable critical reassessment in recent years . It seems it took a lot of people many years to catch up to its brilliance . In its popular Sunday series of reviews for old albums , Pitchfork gave it a 9 / 10 and wrote in February 2020 that Illuminations is “ astounding ” and “ trailblazing ,” noting the album made Sainte-Marie the first artist to use vocals processed through a Buchla 100 synthesizer and the first to make an album using pre-surround-sound quadraphonic technology .
“ Folkies just held their noses and ran . They just hated it !” Sainte-Marie of the album ’ s reception five decades ago . “ I had the help of Michael Czajkowski , who was loving his Buchla . And later on , I got involved with Jill Fraser who was using a Serge [ modular synth ] and I was using electronic instruments in movie scoring . So , if you listen to any of my albums , the only thing they have in common is that each one is just itself and that ’ s just the only way I know how to do it . Some people like that and some people don ’ t like that .”
Around the time of Illumination ’ s release in 1969 , something insidious was happening in the walls of power that would impact Sainte-Marie ’ s career in a manner that is impossible to measure . But she wouldn ’ t find out about it for 20 years . Because of the pacifist , anti-war messages of her music , as well as her songs and work that raised awareness of the genocide and continued exploitation of North America ’ s Indigenous peoples , she was blacklisted from U . S . radio . Having a hand in it were the presidential administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon , FBI Director J . Edgar Hoover , and influential Nashville radio disc jockey Ralph Emery , who ’ d taken issue with the anti-colonial lyrics of her 1968 album , I ’ m Gonna Be a Country Girl Again . At a time when radio was the way songs got heard and artists ’ careers were built and maintained , this blacklisting held her career back in untold ways .
“ I didn ’ t know about it at all . I just thought singers come and singers go . Even my lawyer , when he found out about it , he had to talk me into even pursuing it . He said , ‘ Well , let ’ s get your FBI files .’ I said , ‘ I haven ’ t got any FBI files ! I never broke the law . I never smoked pot on the White House lawn — nothing ,’” she laughs .