Not Buffy The Vampire Slayer but Buffy Sainte-Marie, the Canadian-American singer songwriter, visual artist and activist. She was the reason I came to Sheffield for the very first time in the autumn of 1971. She appeared in concert at Sheffield City Hall, supported by Loudon Wainwright III.
I had just turned eighteen and I was obsessed with music - especially singer songwriters. In preceding months, I had listened to two of Buffy Sainte-Marie's albums over and over again. I knew that she had effectively been blacklisted by Presidents Johnson and Nixon for her involvement in the anti-Vietnam War movement.
Her style was simple and refreshing. Her voice trembled as she sang of injustice, of love and of memory. Though she came from very humble origins - born on a Native American reservation in Saskatchewan in 1941 - she refused to be unheard and clung fiercely to her originality and to the spirit of her ancestors.
Unlike Norma Waterson and Lata Mangeshkar, Buffy Sainte-Marie is still very much alive. She will be 81 next Sunday and I understand that nowadays she lives mostly in Hawaii. She wrote "Now That the Buffalo's Gone", "Universal Soldier", "Until It's Time for You To Go" (made famous by Elvis Presley) and she also co-wrote "Up Where We Belong" for the film "An Officer and a Gentleman". Of course there are many other songs in her canon of work.
Standing on the pavement outside The City Hall in October 1971, half an hour after the concert, I watched a black limousine approaching and there was Buffy sitting in the back. For a fragment of time our eyes connected and I waved. Of course I have always remembered that moment though she would have forgotten it almost instantly before moving on to the next British city on her tour schedule.
Her she is forty years later, at the age of seventy and still beautiful, recording for the BBC with Donovan Leitch on her right:-
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/fdIUyzp
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق