Details
2013
Buffy Sainte-Marie
Brief Biography
Buffy Sainte-Marie is one of the giants of modern roots music and Mariposa is proud to have her as our Sunday night headliner for 2009.
ARTIST WEBSITE: www.creative-native.com
Buffy Sainte-Marie has been a giant in the entertainment field since the early Sixties, when all alone she toured colleges, reservations and concert halls, getting significant acclaim from audiences and record companies who expected Pocahontas in fringes, and instead were both entertained and educated with their initial dose of Native American reality in the first person.
Buffy Sainte-Marie has appeared all over Europe, Canada, Australia and Asia, receiving honours and awards. Her song "Until It's Time for You to Go", was recorded by Elvis and Cher, and her "Universal Soldier" became the anthem of the peace movement.
For her very first album she was voted Billboard's "Best New Artist." She disappeared suddenly from the mainstream American airwaves during the Lyndon Johnson years. As part of a blacklist which affected Eartha Kitt, Taj Mahal and a host of other outspoken performers, her name was included on White House stationery as among those whose music "deserved to be suppressed". Yet, she continued to perform and thrive, and her fame grew. Buffy Sainte-Marie continued to appear at countless grassroots concerts and other activist benefits.
She has made 18 albums of her music, three of her own television specials, spent five years on Sesame Street, scored movies, helped found the Aboriginal music JUNO Award (Canada's Music Awards), raised a son, earned a Ph.D. in Fine Arts, taught Digital Music as adjunct professor at several colleges, and won an Academy Award for the song, "Up Where We Belong". Most recently, in 2009 she was awarded the Aboriginal Album of The Year JUNO Award for "Running For The Drum", a collection of power and beauty: folk/roots, pow wow-rock, rockabilly and dance. Passionate as ever, Buffy uses her latest songs to cover an extensive array of commanding themes, including great loves and protest against environmental greed.
Buffy's concern for protecting indigenous intellectual property and her distaste for the exploitation of Native American artists and performers have kept her in the forefront of activism in the arts for forty years.
