Honor Native American Heritage Month ***Once More Into The Time Capsule, Part Two- The New York Folk Revival Scene in the Early 1960’s-Buffy Sainte-Marie

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Buffy Sainte-Marie performing her classic tribute to her Native American culture, "My Country 'Tis Of Thy People You're Dying" on Pete Seeger's "Rainbow Quest".

CD Review

Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001

Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD. Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:

Disc Two: Dave Van Ronk on “He Was A Friend Of Mine” and You’se A Viper”, The Chad Mitchell Trio on “Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream”, Hedy West on “500 Miles”, Ian &Sylvia on “Four Strong Winds”, Tom Paxton on “I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound”, Peter, Paul And Mary on “Blowin’ In The Wind”, Bob Dylan on “Boots Of Spanish Leather”, Jesse Colin Young on “Four In The Morning”, Joan Baez on “There But For Fortune”, Judy Roderick on “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?”, Bonnie Dobson on “Morning Dew”, Buffy Sainte-Marie on “Cod’ine” and Eric Von Schmidt on “ Joshua Gone Barbados”.

Buffy Sainte-Marie on “Cod’ine”. One of the female folk singers that I did have in mind when I thought about doing a series on ‘not Joan Baez’ and their fates was very definitely Buffy Sainte-Marie. Her moth harp on “Cripple Creek” blew me away. Her “Until It’s Time For You To Go” was, at one point, something of a personal anthem in the stormy waters of young love. Of course the classic anti-war song, covered by Donovan and many other folk performers, is “Universal Soldier”. While I would disagree with some aspects of the song’s lyrics now since there are some fights, class war fights, left before we can leave fighting behind this song drove a lot of my young pacifist inclinations. As for Buffy’s fate, I gain have no clue except the liner notes in the booklet refer to the personal nature of this song as part of her own personal struggle against drugs. Sing on.

Note: Since this comment was originally written I have found out that Buffy is alive and well and has just produced a CD after many years. The "sing on" part stlill goes, though.

UNIVERSAL SOLDIER
Buffy Sainte-Marie
© Caleb Music-ASCAP

I wrote "Universal Soldier" in the basement of The Purple Onion coffee house in Toronto in the early sixties. It's about individual responsibility for war and how the old feudal thinking kills us all. Donovan had a hit with it in 1965.

He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years

He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you

And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way

And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls

But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on

He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.

Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon

By Seth Garth

I have been haunted recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the dearies at the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7^th Street entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow system which deprived them of their civil rights.

Those events galvanized me into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my surprise, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a dozen articles  I have done over the past few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word which needs no explanation which was the “term of art” in reference to black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)

In many ways I think I only survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going” steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S. Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had done that.         

The other recent occurrence that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where they deal with aspects of what amounts to the American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ as an anthem for our generation (and its revival of late in newer social movements like the kids getting serious about gun control). No question for those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to wherever we thought we were going.

I mentioned in that previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night worrying about the world and our place in the sun.

For a long time, probably far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison, shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin, hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man” (new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.  

So I’ll be damned right now if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem, or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer. Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this matter.         

***Not Joan Baez- The Roots Music Of Native American Singer Buffy Sainte Marie

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Native American activist and folk singer performing "My Country 'Tis Of Thy People You're Dying". My friends, this is powerful stuff even forty years later.


MY COUNTRY 'TIS OF THY PEOPLE YOU'RE DYING


Buffy Sainte-Marie
1966

Now that your big eyes have finally opened,
Now that you're wondering how must they feel,
Meaning them that you've chased across America's movie screens.
Now that you're wondering how can it be real
That the ones you've called colorful, noble and proud
In your school propaganda
They starve in their splendor?
You've asked for my comment I simply will render:


My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.


Now that the longhouses breed superstition
You force us to send our toddlers away
To your schools where they're taught to despise their traditions.
You forbid them their languages, then further say
That American history really began
When Columbus set sail out of Europe, then stress
That the nation of leeches that conquered this land
Are the biggest and bravest and boldest and best.
And yet where in your history books is the tale
Of the genocide basic to this country's birth,
Of the preachers who lied, how the Bill of Rights failed,
How a nation of patriots returned to their earth?
And where will it tell of the Liberty Bell
As it rang with a thud
O'er Kinzua mud,
And of brave Uncle Sam in Alaska this year?


My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.


Hear how the bargain was made for the West:
With her shivering children in zero degrees,
Blankets for your land, so the treaties attest,
Oh well, blankets for land is a bargain indeed,
And the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected
>From smallpox-diseased dying soldiers that day.
And the tribes were wiped out and the history books censored,
A hundred years of your statesmen have felt it's better this way.
And yet a few of the conquered have somehow survived,
Their blood runs the redder though genes have paled.
From the Gran Canyon's caverns to craven sad hills
The wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale.
From Los Angeles County to upstate New York
The white nation fattens while others grow lean;
Oh the tricked and evicted they know what I mean.


My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.


The past it just crumbled, the future just threatens;
Our life blood shut up in your chemical tanks.
And now here you come, bill of sale in your hands
And surprise in your eyes that we're lacking in thanks
For the blessings of civilization you've brought us,
The lessons you've taught us, the ruin you've wrought us --
Oh see what our trust in America's brought us.


My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.


Now that the pride of the sires receives charity,
Now that we're harmless and safe behind laws,
Now that my life's to be known as your "heritage,"
Now that even the graves have been robbed,
Now that our own chosen way is a novelty --
Hands on our hearts we salute you your victory,
Choke on your blue white and scarlet hypocrisy
Pitying the blindness that you've never seen
That the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory
They were never no more than carrion crows,
Pushed the wrens from their nest, stole their eggs, changed their story;
The mockingbird sings it, it's all that he knows.
"Ah what can I do?" say a powerless few
With a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye --
Can't you see that their poverty's profiting you.


My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

***The Not Joan Baez Female Folkies-The Music Of Buffy Sainte Marie

Click on title to link to "Boston Sunday Globe", August 16, 2009, article about the current whereabouts of Buffy Sainte Marie.

DVD Review

Buffy Sainte Marie: Up Where We Belong, Buffy Sainte Marie, CBC Production, 1996

Okay, okay I have had enough. Recently I received a spate of e-mails from aging 1960's folkies asking why, other than one review of Carolyn Hester's work late in 2008, I have not done more reviews of the female folkies of the 1960's. To balance things out I begin to make amends here. To set the framework for my future reviews I repost the germane part of the Carolyn Hester review:

"Earlier this year I posed a question concerning the fates of a group of talented male folk singers like Tom Rush, Tom Paxton and Jesse Colin Young, who, although some of them are still performing or otherwise still on the musical scene have generally fallen off the radar in today's mainstream musical consciousness, except, of course, the acknowledged "king of the hill", Bob Dylan. I want to pose that same question in this entry concerning the talented female folk performers of the 1960's, except, of course, the "queen of the hill" Joan Baez. I will start out by merely rephrasing the first paragraph from the reviews of those male performers.

"If I were to ask someone, in the year 2008, to name a female folk singer from the 1960's I would assume that if I were to get an answer to that question that the name would be Joan Baez (or, maybe, Judy Collins but you get my point). And that would be a good and appropriate choice. One can endlessly dispute whether or not Baez was (or wanted to be) the female voice of the Generation of '68 but in terms of longevity and productivity she fits the bill as a known quality. However, there were a slew of other female folk singers who tried to find their niche in the folk milieu and who, like Baez, may today still quietly continue to produce work and to perform. The artist under review, Carolyn Hester, certainly had the talent to challenge Baez to be "queen of the hill."

Well, as the short DVD concert performance under review, tastefully produced and interspersed with conversations with Buffy, will testify to, the Native American singer /songwriter and activist was also in contention, back in the days. I am not familiar with the current status of Ms. Sainte Marie (although see link above for recent "Boston Sunday Globe" article about her) as a performer. Nevertheless I can remember the first time I heard her in a coffeehouse in Cambridge doing her famous song, done here as well, "Until It's Time For You To Go" I got through many a traumatic romantic experience listening to that one, especially the "I was an oak now I am a willow, now I can bend" line.

That theme and, in addition, several more inward searching tracks, make this a very representative Sainte Marie effort. Needless to say here the stick outs are ant- war “Universal Soldier" made famous by Donovan , the eerie Native American-flavored "Cripple Creek" and "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" and the title track "Up Where We Belong".

"Until Its Time For You To Go" -Buffy Sainte Marie

You're not a dream
You're not an angel
You're a man

I'm not a queen
I'm a woman
Take my hand

We'll make a space
in the lives
that we'd planned

And here we'll stay
Until it's time
for you to go

Yes we're different
Worlds apart
We're not the same

We laughed and played
at the start
like in a game

You could've stayed
outside my heart
but in you came

And here you'll stay
until it's time
for you to go

Don't ask why
Don't ask how
Don't ask forever
Love me now

This love of mine
had no beginning
It has no end

I was an oak
Now I'm a willow
Now I can bend

And though I'll never
in my life
see you again

Still I'll stay
until it's time
for you to go

Don't ask why
Don't ask how
Don't ask forever
Love me now

You're not a dream
You're not an angel
You're a man

I'm not a queen
I'm a woman
Take my hand

We'll make a space
in the lives
that we'd planned

And here we'll stay
Until it's time
for you to go.

Universal Soldier Lyrics

He's five foot-two, and he's six feet-four,
He fights with missiles and with spears.
He's all of thirty-one, and he's only seventeen,
Been a soldier for a thousand years.

He'a a Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain,
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew.
And he knows he shouldn't kill,
And he knows he always will,
Kill you for me my friend and me for you.

And he's fighting for Canada,
He's fighting for France,
He's fighting for the USA,
And he's fighting for the Russians,
And he's fighting for Japan,
And he thinks we'll put an end to war this way.

And he's fighting for Democracy,
He's fighting for the Reds,
He says it's for the peace of all.
He's the one who must decide,
Who's to live and who's to die,
And he never sees the writing on the wall.

But without him,
How would Hitler have condemned him at Dachau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone,
He's the one who gives his body
As a weapon of the war,
And without him all this killing can't go on.

He's the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame,
His orders come from far away no more,
They come from here and there and you and me,
And brothers can't you see,
This is not the way we put the end to war.

*Update on Leonard Peltier From The Partisan Defense Committee

Click on title to link to Leonard Peltier Defense Committee web site for updates on this long and sordid case against a central leader of the Native American struggles (and ours as well). Free Leonard Peltier!!!

This information concerning Leonard Peltier is passed along from the Partisan Defense Committee.

Freedom Now for Leonard Peltier!

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

A parole hearing for class-war prisoner Leonard Peltier was held on July 28, with a decision still pending. We print below a June 29 letter by the Partisan Defense Committee sent to the United States Parole Commission.

The Partisan Defense Committee joins with those supporting the release of political prisoner Leonard Peltier. A prominent member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), Mr. Peltier is in prison only because of his courageous activism on behalf of Native Americans, the victims of centuries of genocidal terror.

Between 1973-1976, hated Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) agents and FBI-trained thugs terrorized Indian activists at the Pine Ridge Reservation, carrying out over 300 attacks and killing at least 69 people. In June 1975, 250 FBI and BIA agents, SWAT policemen and local vigilantes descended on the reservation and precipitated a shootout. Two FBI agents were killed. Mr. Peltier and three others were charged. All charges were dropped against one AIM activist, and two others were acquitted in a separate trial in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Jurors at that trial stated that they did not believe the government witnesses.

Mr. Peltier’s 1977 trial was moved to Fargo, North Dakota. The judge ruled out of order any evidence of the documented government violence against Native American activists at Pine Ridge. The prosecution concealed ballistics tests that showed that Peltier’s gun could not have been used in the shooting. As Mr. Peltier said at his sentencing, “I’m not the guilty one here; I’m not the one who should be called a criminal.”

One court proceeding after another has laid bare the evidence of his innocence and of massive prosecutorial misconduct. In a 1985 appeals hearing, the government’s lead attorney admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents.”

In 1986, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the trial jury could have acquitted Mr. Peltier if records improperly withheld from the defense had been made available.

In November 2003, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals stated, “Much of the government’s behavior at the Pine Ridge Reservation and in its prosecution of Mr. Peltier is to be condemned. The government withheld evidence. It intimidated witnesses. These facts are not disputed.”

In 2001, in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act and lawsuits, the U.S. government admitted it had withheld a staggering 142,579 pages of evidence of its secret COINTELPRO efforts to persecute and convict Mr. Peltier.

The long trail of injustice against Leonard Peltier has been documented in the film Incident at Oglala, narrated by Robert Redford, and the book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen. He has been framed up for crimes the government knows he did not commit. Millions worldwide have demanded his freedom.

It is an injustice that Mr. Peltier was ever incarcerated at all. The more than 33 years of unjust imprisonment have not only robbed this honorable man of a majority of his lifetime. They have taken a devastating toll on his physical well-being as he suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure, partial blindness and a heart condition. We call for the immediate and unconditional release of Leonard Peltier.

***Damn It- Free Leonard Peltier Now-He Must Not Die In Jail!

Click below to link to Leonard Peltier Defense Committee site.

http://www.leonardpeltier.net/

Commentary

This entry is passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee. I need add little except to say that this man, a natural leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), should never have spent a day in jail. Free him now.


Savagely Beaten in Prison

Free Leonard Peltier!

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

In January, Leonard Peltier, a leader of the American Indian Movement who has been in prison for 33 years for a crime he did not commit, was outrageously put in solitary confinement after having been savagely attacked when he was transferred to the United States Penitentiary in Canaan, Pennsylvania. In a January 20 statement, Betty Peltier-Solano, Peltier’s sister, stated: “We feel that prison authorities at the prompting of the FBI orchestrated this attack and thus, we are greatly concerned about his safety.” We print below a January 22 protest letter from the Partisan Defense Committee to USP Canaan warden Ronnie R. Holt. The PDC is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League.

It has come to our attention that soon after his transfer to your prison, political prisoner Leonard Peltier was placed in solitary confinement and allowed only one meal a day. This is an outrage. Given this courageous man’s medical conditions, your actions put his life at risk.

Mr. Peltier had asked that he be transferred to a facility near his family and home in the Dakotas. Instead he was vindictively sent far away to USP Canaan. Shortly after his arrival he was set upon and brutally beaten, reportedly by prisoners he did not know. He sustained numerous bruises, a large lump on his head, discoloration and swelling to his hands as well as pain in his chest and ribcage. This incident is the supposed pretext for his being thrown into solitary.

Mr. Peltier is an innocent man who has been unjustly incarcerated for nearly 33 years because of his activism in defense of the rights of Native Americans. During that period his health has seriously deteriorated. He suffers from high blood pressure, a heart condition, failing eyesight and diabetes. As he is at risk for kidney failure, blindness and/or amputation, it is critical that Mr. Peltier be released from solitary confinement immediately and afforded all necessary medical treatment.

We, along with millions of others, do not believe that Leonard Peltier should have been incarcerated at all. We demand his unconditional release from prison.

*Free Leonard Peltier Now!

Click on title to link to Leonard Peltier Defense Committee web site for updates on this long and sordid case against a central leader of the Native American struggles (and ours as well). Free Leonard Peltier!!!


I proudly add a link to the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. I would hope his case needs no motivation at this point. You can read the story at the website, in any case. I do have one very important question that I asked last year when good old boy "Scooter" Libby was getting his pardon from George Bush. Where is Leonard Peltier's pardon? Appparently Leonard Peltier cannot count himself among the favored tribe of Muffys, Buffys, Scooters, Hobeys and that ilk that the President feels free to release at a whim. That, my friends, is a very different tribe indeed. The class war goes on. Enough said.