I currently have The Best of Buffy Sainte-Marie on Hoopla. It's a compilation of two earlier "Best Of" albums and basically covers material from the sixties and seventies. To be honest, I've never listened to Buffy much other than her eighties and later hits. It's odd because she hits a lot of my buttons (talented female singer-songwriter with a unique voice).
One of the tracks is her setting of Leonard Cohen's "God is Alive, Magic is Afoot", a chapter from the novel Beautiful Losers that ranks as some of Cohen's finest writing IMHO. Strangely, I have never listened to Sainte-Marie's version before. It's more a musical recitative than a song, but it capture the life and energy of the passage nicely.
There's also some familiar Sainte-Marie material like "Universal Soldier" and some less familiar (to me, perhaps not to those who followed her in the early days) songs as well. I find it interesting that she seemed to start out as a country artist, at least from the sound of some of the early songs, even though I've always encountered Buffy as more indigenous folk-pop. Besides her own material, there's a crackling, energetic cover of Mitchell's "The Circle Game" that, like "God is Alive", I've never come across before. I am glad I finally decided to delve a bit deeper into the catalogue of this indigenous Canadian music legend.
And I can't resist even though I sure I've posted this before. Some modern Buffy from her Polaris Prize winning "Power in the Blood". I love this song. It's one of those songs I crank up when it comes on the radio in the car. The combination of veteran Buffy with relative newcomer Tanya Tagaq seems to energize things in a marvellous way.
