New York, NY (Top40 Charts) "On Power In The Blood, her first studio album since 2008, the 74-year-old firebrand defies categorization, as she has throughout a half-century of recording." - NPR Music
"The term 'folk singer' was attached to Buffy Sainte-Marie early, but those two words have never really done her justice. On her new album, Power in the Blood, there are moments of hard-edged industrial music, plucky country, trip-hop, and one very pretty lullaby sung in Cree." - Vogue
"'Not the Lovin' Kind' isn't a protest song, but the song's rockabilly feel and tale of a nasty breakup feel just a fiery." - TIME Magazine
"Five decades later, Buffy Sainte-Marie is still making powerful music." - Democracy Now!
"Sainte-Marie is one of the most creatively restless musicians of the 20th century and even now, she tours and records according to nothing but her own whims." - People Magazine
Fresh off the release of her new critically acclaimed album, iconic singer-songwriter, activist, educator, visual artist, and multi-award winner Buffy Sainte-Marie revealed today the compelling fan-produced video for the title track available exclusively on Billboard. The bold new LP, Power In The Blood, was released last month via True North Records - her first in six years - and is a reminder that, five decades on, Sainte-Marie is a voice as vital and significant as ever.
WATCH: Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Power In The Blood":
"Featuring images of oil spills, fracking, protests, tanks, and corporate interests run amok," says Billboard's Joe Lynch, "this clip is a tribute to Buffy, her political convictions and those protesting for a better world."
Power in the Blood is a sculpture of an artist ever-evolving and a statement of a life's work realized - challenging, empowering, and celebrating the listener with each and every song. Recorded in Toronto, Sainte-Marie enlisted three different producers, a first for her, to help shape the album; Michael Phillip Wojewoda (Barenaked Ladies, Rheostatics), Jon Levine (Nelly Furtado, K'NAAN), and Chris Birkett (SineĢad O'Connor, Bob Geldof). Featuring all but two original tracks, the album starts with a re-imagined version of "It's My Way," which premiered on NPR Music upon the album's first announcement. The song originally appeared on her acclaimed debut album and demonstrates how her work can transcend generations while still inspiring individualism and self-expression 50 years after it was written.
Two of the tracks featured on Power in the Blood are newly re-imagined versions of songs Buffy wrote during what she describes as "'blacklist years,' when I could get no airplay no matter what I sang about." TIME Magazine premiered one of them, "Not The Lovin' Kind," and writer Nolan Feeney explained "It wasn't until decades later that Sainte-Marie learned her outspoken views on the Vietnam War and Native American rights had made her the subject of campaigns by the Johnson and Nixon administrations to keep broadcasters from playing her (and other artists') music." In recent interviews with Vogue and People Magazine, she details tracking down and reading her FBI files.
Throughout her incredible half-century career each era has revealed new and distinctive shades of an artist revered for her pioneering and chameleon ways. There was no mold from which Buffy Sainte-Marie emerged; she created her own, ripened from experiences in both her head and her heart. Like so much of Sainte-Marie's work, it's universal.
Power In The Blood Track List:
01) It's My Way
02) Power in the Blood
03) We Are Circling
04) Not the Lovin' Kind
05) Love Charms (Mojo Bijoux)
06) Ke Sakihitin Awasis
07) Farm In the Middle of Nowhere
08) Generation
09) Sing Our Own Song
10) Orion
11) The Uranium War
12) Carry It On
