Busy, busy, busy

As you can probably tell from the date of my last updated, I've been busy. Teaching that summer music course for UVic's department of writing, yes, then smack into also teaching a fall course specializing in alternative media—but also filling in as acting editor for Monday Magazine . . . in addition to maintaining my position as Monday's arts editor . . . as well as teaching for UVic's University 101 program . . . as well as continuing to freelance for the likes of Yes Magazine, the Torch and another program essay for the Belfry Theatre (this time for their upcoming production of Urinetown: The Musical) . . . not to mention helping to raise my kids . . . and coming down with a case of laryngitis. The only thing I haven't been doing this fall is any DNTO sessions. (But soon, soon.)

Oh, and as you'll see from the article below, I also agreed to moderate a session with famed Canadian singer Buffy Sainte-Marie at the just-completed first annual Victoria International Arts Symposium. Fascinating stuff—although I'm just glad my voice came back for it.


Diplomacy drives artist
Buffy Sainte-Marie reflects on protest art
by Mike Devlin, Times Colonist (Sunday, October 29, 2006)

Take it from someone who knows. The corporate music industry and the U.S. government are both trying to sell you something you already have in your possession.
"Some will tell you that what you want really isn't on the menu," said veteran protest singer Buffy Sainte-Marie. "I say cook it up for them."
Sainte-Marie, a keynote speaker and panelist yesterday at the Victoria International Arts Symposium's Music & Activism session, asked the McPherson Playhouse crowd of more than 250 to think about the true nature of art.
When children play in a sandbox, or when a painter blindly slaps colour on a canvas, they don't know they are creating art. But they are, she said.
"Art is natural. The music business, the galleries, a professional career in the arts -- that's all different. Actually being an artist is fun, it's natural."
Sainte-Marie's vibrant hour-long speech began as a seething, polemical poem directed at the "investors in hate, your Saddams and your Bushes, your bin Ladens and snakes."
It was riveting stuff. Sainte-Marie's voice wavered in spots, as if she was overcome with emotion at those who "profit on war because there's less money in peace."
"War is never, ever, ever holy, it's just a slimy man's dream," she said, the intensity of her poetic diction increasing with each passing line. "And you two-faced crusaders, both sides are obscene. War is not made by God, it is made by men, who misdirect our attention while you thieves do your thing."
Wow. Sainte-Marie was joined later on the panel by local composer Wolf Edwards, Denman Island-based composer and author Ron Sakolsky, and Vancouver performance artist Cheryl L'Hirondelle. But the youthful shadow cast by the popular fixture on Sesame Street was too large for the trio to overcome.
Even when the session took a detour through the definition of music, Sainte-Marie scored big by drawing upon her pioneering 40-year career, which includes an Oscar, a Gemini Award and membership in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.
"Music is important -- that's why it exists," she said. "The reason why it lasts, the reason why there are classics, is the same reason why there are antiques in the world. There are some kinds of music that cross generations and that cross social groups and that cross the boundaries of nations and language. That's what art can do."
Sainte-Marie, who has a degree in philosophy from University of Massachusetts, recalled her decade-long banishment from the U.S. radio and television airwaves at the hands of then-U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. What she most regrets about that period in her life -- a time when her song, Universal Soldier, was a defining moment of protest in the Vietnam era -- was not being denied an audience, but "an audience being denied the thoughts of students like I was."
The panel discussion was clearly anti-mainstream. Moderator John Threlfall said it best when he called concerns over the commercial music industry a "military industrial entertainment complex."
Interesting as well was the considerable dialogue on music in indigenous communities. L'Hirondelle, who is of mixed-blood ancestry, performed a moving ghost dance passed-down to her by her ancestors. It was later revealed to be Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land, with lyrics adopted by L'Hirondelle to be more inclusive.
"This land here, our land together," she said. "This is our mother, this is our Earth."
Sainte-Marie revealed to the audience that in the Cree language, there is no term for artist. "Instead, we say, 'It shines through him,' or 'It shines through her.' And the 'it' is what's important. Because that 'it' that shines through art and through artists and through communicators of any kind, of any age, from any place, that sacred 'it' is creativity. And everybody has it. We don't have to point out this one or that one. Because we all do it."
Sainte-Marie said she was asked once to appear with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, but when she was told not to talk politics she declined their offer. For that, and many more political moves, Sainte-Marie has been called by those who protest the entertainment industry a true warrior.
But it's a word, it turns out, she is not at all fond of hearing.
"I take issue with the word warrior. It's being thrown around a lot at our symposiums. Please don't ever call me a warrior. I'm educated enough in the indigenous world to know that Crazy Horse was a warrior. Bless him. Sitting Bull was a philosopher. Bless him, too. We are not just maidens and warriors. I don't want to be a warrior, I want to be a diplomat."
Bless her for that.