Buffy Sainte-Marie – Bluesfest Sideshow: CANCELLED

Academy Award-winning music icon Buffy Sainte-Marie is returning to Sydney, Melbourne and Cairns this April while she's in the country for Bluesfest Byron Bay.

Since her ground-breaking debut 'It’s My Way!' in 1964, Cree singer-songwriter Sainte-Marie has been a trailblazer, a tireless advocate for Indigenous people, an innovative artist, and a disruptor of the status quo. Buffy Sainte-Marie has spent her whole life creating, and her artistry, humanitarian efforts, and Indigenous leadership have made her a unique force in the music industry. In 1969, she made one of the world’s first electronic vocal albums. In 1982, she became the only Indigenous person to win an Oscar; she spent five years on Sesame Street where she became the first woman to breastfeed on national television.

She's been blacklisted and silenced. She's written pop standards sung and recorded by the likes of Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, Donovan, Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes. She penned 'Universal Soldier', the definitive anti-war anthem of the 20th century.

Recently coming off her critically acclaimed, award-winning 2015 album 'Power in the Blood', Sainte-Marie is now touring worldwide off the back of her latest studio album 'Medicine Songs'. Part rhythmic healing, part trumpeting wake up call, 'Medicine Songs' is the soundtrack for the resistance. In this timely nineteen-song collection, Buffy Sainte-Marie doesn’t sugarcoat the truth, nor does she shy away from hard realities concerning the environment, Indigenous realities, greed, and racketeering.

But her delivery never comes across as overwhelming or oppressive. Rather than making us feel smaller, sadder or more cynical, Sainte-Marie's 'Medicine Songs' inspires strength and makes us more capable of seeing the world around us clearly.

Says Sainte-Marie: "Protest songs are good, they’re important, and they talk about a problem, but there are other activist songs which don't have a label...they can enlighten and liberate, inform, motivate or otherwise encourage solutions."

Don't miss your chance to see the world’s foremost First Nations artist, Buffy Sainte-Marie, live this coming April.