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Post by ganews on May 1, 2022 8:33:30 GMT -5
The winner of the May tiebreaking coin-flip is Buffy Sainte-Marie, "It’s My Way!".
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repulsionist
TI Forumite
actively disinterested
Posts: 3,557 
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Post by repulsionist on May 2, 2022 16:04:13 GMT -5
Doomy folk music. In this awesome document I hear echoes of: Michelle Shocked's musical phrasing, many choruses from ESP-Disk freak folk, Ani DiFranco, and a host of others who've used sparing guitar chords to fill the space and draw space as contrast to strident lyrics. Hearing this for the first time today, I'm getting chills from "The Incest Song" and "Cod'ine". For something that's nearly 60 years old, this woman's 20-something year-old voice sounds much more mature than any pop music I'm accustomed to hearing on a radio. "Dance Monkey" this ain't.
Joni Mitchell and Buffy St. Marie in 2022? Wild year so far.
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Post by ganews on May 2, 2022 17:08:00 GMT -5
(Sorry for another slightly wrong YouTube playlist)
I had never heard of her or almost any of her work before this nomination. It's an interesting biography; not hugely successful but fairly influential, and a couple of her songs appear to have been extensively covered back in the day. All the YouTube comments are from people who approvingly saw her perform decades ago. Then she got blacklisted for the Indian protest movement, then she co-wrote and sang "Up Where We Belong" for an Oscar, then she seems to have settled into the role of respected artsy elder statesman. It's a powerful sound, one big voice and almost nothing else but here guitar. It seems like exactly what any layman would imagine folk music to be, if they thing of something other than a couple acoustic Dylan songs.
"Cod'ine" really grabs my attention, and I gather that's her most-covered song and relatively rare for the time in being about "drugs are bad".
I was wondering what "Mayoo Sto Hoon" could possibly be, being sung in presumably Native language. Turns out it's "a cover of a Hindi Bollywood song 'Mayus To Hoon Waade Se Tere" sung by the Indian singer Mohammed Rafi from the 1960 movie Barsaat Ki Raat'. Pretty sure I'm not the first white listener to make that assumption; I bet she had a lot of chuckles over that one. |
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Post by pantsgoblin on May 5, 2022 12:08:17 GMT -5
I’d never given much thought to Buffy Sainte-Marie beyond seeing multiple copies of Illuminations any time I’d shop used record stores before I read this article. I was fairly blown away by the account of her career, particularly the aspect that she’s a longtime early adopter of technology. The folk album Illuminations, from 1969, largely ran her vocals through a Buchla synth and was the first LP of any sort to employ quadrophonic recording; this is just four years after Dylan Shocked The World™ by going electric. The piece also describes her continued efforts to bring computers and other tech to underserved tribal nations. But this is a thread about It’s My Way! so let’s get to listening. I dug it. “Old Man’s Lament” is every bit as gorgeous as the Celtic folk standard “The Foggy Dew”, which it resembles. If we’d listened to her warnings about “Cod’ine” in 1965, maybe we wouldn’t be in this opioid crisis now (not really; money-makers gonna make money). “The Incest Song” is appropriately quiet and quietly devastating. While I didn’t love the blues-based numbers—largely due to my own aural biases—I appreciate the toughness she presents. Great choice, Record Club! |
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Post by Jean Luc de Lemur on May 27, 2022 15:21:25 GMT -5
I don’t know much about folk music, and what I do know mostly comes from Inside Llewyn Davis—often largely historically-rooted, spare, but warm (plus there was a cornier commercial branch). That’s the impression (the former, not Adam Driver going “outer…space”) you get from the cover (it looks like she’s wearing a black turtleneck, even). It’s mostly just her or with fairly minimal extra instrumentation, which also works well. Again, I don’t know much about the folk revival but I tend to think of it as centered around old-time music, though often rendered in a more minimal and progressive way. Even with that, though, it’s not necessarily my thing. Sainte-Marie’s more cosmopolitan than I’d expect, both from a folk perspective and from someone so associated with Native American movements. The album starts out in a very western way which makes a lot of sense (and in taste I guess I’m partial to western but not country), but makes turns into gospel and Bollywood, of all things. “Mayoo Sto Hoon” is a great example of how you can minimize something’s instrumentation while keeping its shape. Further along in the album the blues classic “You'll Need Somebody on Your Bond” is another highlight for me. Sainte-Marie’s versatility really impressed me, either showing me a new side of musical traditions I already knew or had dismissed. Folk qua folk though—she’s great at it and it’s still not my thing. “Cod’ine” is kind of an exception—it’s loud and unpleasant and doesn’t fit well within folk revival’s musical language (it’s really trying to break into rock). It all works for that reason but I appreciate it more than I like it. |
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Post by ganews on Mar 17, 2024 15:25:36 GMT -5
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