Buffy Sainte-Marie
Illuminations
Album · Singer/Songwriter · 1970 · Vanguard Records
When Buffy Sainte-Marie first released her sixth album, Illuminations, in 1969, the response was unequivocal. As the Cree singer/songwriter later said, “Folk music people held their nose and walked the other way.” It took decades for the album to get its due as one of the most boldly innovative works by any major artist of the ’60s.
Breaking away from the conventional folkie trappings of “Universal Soldier” and the former Greenwich Village regular’s other earlier hits, Sainte-Marie utilized then-new technology—including the Buchla synthesizer that she often uses to layer and splinter her piercing soprano—to radically transform her songs. Eerie results like “Mary” and “The Vampire” seem to emerge from alien, proto-ambient soundscapes before dissolving back into the ether. On the hypnotic “Adam” and more beatific “The Angel,” lush orchestrations are subverted by the presence of disquieting sounds more readily found in the early electronic compositions of Morton Subotnick.
Just as spellbinding is Illuminations’ opener, “God Is Alive Magic Is Afoot,” which Sainte-Marie adapted from an excerpt of Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers in a single improvised take. Later covered by Morrissey, “Suffer The Little Children” may initially seem familiar thanks to the sound of Sainte-Marie’s fervent strumming on her acoustic guitar. But it may be even more bracing than Illuminations’ more experimental songs due to the rage that fills her attack on the twin evils of conformity and global capitalism. While her righteous anger could have been another reason that the hippies and folkies were scared away when Illuminations first appeared, it adds another level of intensity to the album’s thrilling fusion of folk-first principles and avant-garde ideas, a combination that points the way toward the many equally iconoclastic albums Sainte-Marie made over the decades to come.
Breaking away from the conventional folkie trappings of “Universal Soldier” and the former Greenwich Village regular’s other earlier hits, Sainte-Marie utilized then-new technology—including the Buchla synthesizer that she often uses to layer and splinter her piercing soprano—to radically transform her songs. Eerie results like “Mary” and “The Vampire” seem to emerge from alien, proto-ambient soundscapes before dissolving back into the ether. On the hypnotic “Adam” and more beatific “The Angel,” lush orchestrations are subverted by the presence of disquieting sounds more readily found in the early electronic compositions of Morton Subotnick.
Just as spellbinding is Illuminations’ opener, “God Is Alive Magic Is Afoot,” which Sainte-Marie adapted from an excerpt of Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers in a single improvised take. Later covered by Morrissey, “Suffer The Little Children” may initially seem familiar thanks to the sound of Sainte-Marie’s fervent strumming on her acoustic guitar. But it may be even more bracing than Illuminations’ more experimental songs due to the rage that fills her attack on the twin evils of conformity and global capitalism. While her righteous anger could have been another reason that the hippies and folkies were scared away when Illuminations first appeared, it adds another level of intensity to the album’s thrilling fusion of folk-first principles and avant-garde ideas, a combination that points the way toward the many equally iconoclastic albums Sainte-Marie made over the decades to come.
Illuminations
Buffy Sainte-Marie
When Buffy Sainte-Marie first released her sixth album, Illuminations, in 1969, the response was unequivocal. As the Cree singer/songwriter later said, “Folk music people held their nose and walked the other way.” It took decades for the album to get its due as one of the most boldly innovative works by any major artist of the ’60s.
Breaking away from the conventional folkie trappings of “Universal Soldier” and the former Greenwich Village regular’s other earlier hits, Sainte-Marie utilized then-new technology—including the Buchla synthesizer that she often uses to layer and splinter her piercing soprano—to radically transform her songs. Eerie results like “Mary” and “The Vampire” seem to emerge from alien, proto-ambient soundscapes before dissolving back into the ether. On the hypnotic “Adam” and more beatific “The Angel,” lush orchestrations are subverted by the presence of disquieting sounds more readily found in the early electronic compositions of Morton Subotnick.
Just as spellbinding is Illuminations’ opener, “God Is Alive Magic Is Afoot,” which Sainte-Marie adapted from an excerpt of Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers in a single improvised take. Later covered by Morrissey, “Suffer The Little Children” may initially seem familiar thanks to the sound of Sainte-Marie’s fervent strumming on her acoustic guitar. But it may be even more bracing than Illuminations’ more experimental songs due to the rage that fills her attack on the twin evils of conformity and global capitalism. While her righteous anger could have been another reason that the hippies and folkies were scared away when Illuminations first appeared, it adds another level of intensity to the album’s thrilling fusion of folk-first principles and avant-garde ideas, a combination that points the way toward the many equally iconoclastic albums Sainte-Marie made over the decades to come.
Breaking away from the conventional folkie trappings of “Universal Soldier” and the former Greenwich Village regular’s other earlier hits, Sainte-Marie utilized then-new technology—including the Buchla synthesizer that she often uses to layer and splinter her piercing soprano—to radically transform her songs. Eerie results like “Mary” and “The Vampire” seem to emerge from alien, proto-ambient soundscapes before dissolving back into the ether. On the hypnotic “Adam” and more beatific “The Angel,” lush orchestrations are subverted by the presence of disquieting sounds more readily found in the early electronic compositions of Morton Subotnick.
Just as spellbinding is Illuminations’ opener, “God Is Alive Magic Is Afoot,” which Sainte-Marie adapted from an excerpt of Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers in a single improvised take. Later covered by Morrissey, “Suffer The Little Children” may initially seem familiar thanks to the sound of Sainte-Marie’s fervent strumming on her acoustic guitar. But it may be even more bracing than Illuminations’ more experimental songs due to the rage that fills her attack on the twin evils of conformity and global capitalism. While her righteous anger could have been another reason that the hippies and folkies were scared away when Illuminations first appeared, it adds another level of intensity to the album’s thrilling fusion of folk-first principles and avant-garde ideas, a combination that points the way toward the many equally iconoclastic albums Sainte-Marie made over the decades to come.
