An antidote to the frustrations of current politics, environmental degradation, and the struggles in our own individual and collective human lives--that can include sheer exhaustion from fighting and emotionally processing these forms of oppression--is music. Singing, and especially dancing, uplifts the human spirit and renews us in ways that few other experiences can. When songs are specifically written to address the very struggles we are engaged in, and remind us that we struggle together toward similar goals of social equity, global community and peace, and economic stability for all, it can downright uplift our resolve to get back in the fight, our vigor shining!
This is what Indigenous-Canadian of the Cree nation, Buffy Sainte-Marie, has been doing for the past 50 years! St. Marie became well-known for her activist peace song "Universal Soldier" in 1964 and was a headline act at many national venues in the 1960s. Her song, “Until It’s Time For You Go” has been covered widely, including by such greats as Elvis Presley, Cher, Roberta Flack and Glen Campbell. She had a million-selling theme song from the western, Soldier Blue, and in 1982, she won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a British Academy Film Award for Best Original Song for the theme song from the film An Officer And a Gentlemen, called “Up Where We Belong” that was sung by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes. St. Marie also had a stint on Sesame Street in the 1970s and she continued appearing on that iconic American children's show into the 1980s. In 2015, she won a prestigious Polaris Music Prize for Album of the Year for Power in the Blood.
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