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Show Review k Buffy Sainte-Marie Wows r Denver Folk Audience Sv ,N s x They draw her back umbilically. She sings her "Universal Soldier" and her face assumes the sterness of an Indian war mask. She explains her absent shoes. She was in Saskatchewan and her bags haven't caught up with her yet. While she waited in the Canadian Canadi-an Airport she wrote a song "A Pretty Good Man If You Ask Me". She sings it now and the good man's flowers bloom in the richness rich-ness of her voice. They will not let her go. They call her back again. She stands quietly, not wholly sure of what to sing. They have a hundred songs for her and hurl their requests. She lifts her left hand and shyly displays dis-plays a gleaming band. "I have a new ring," she says. Her eyes shine. "I'd like to sing a song for my husband, if you don't mind." And so she does. "And my smile will know your, joy, my love, And my eyes will know your tears. And your name through my heart will throb, And your life through my years." (Editors Note: This is a review re-view by Chronicle reporter Shar-let Shar-let on Lee Esplin, who was in the h audience during Buffy Sainte-;$ Sainte-;$ Marie's recent concert in Den-bi Den-bi ver, Colorado.) She stands lithe as a young sap-,,. sap-,,. ling, swaying gently with the melo-1 melo-1 dies that ripple her throat She .. hangs by her hair its midnight J length flows toward the ground, drawing her songs up from the 3 earth. High cheekbones fly to meet eyes framed with skybird brows that soar into the silky hair. "5 '1 love to sing, love the way it Jt feels, the sensual feeling of song rein my throat," she has said. And as you hear her, you know the t'.Vsensual feeling of song." She Vsings "life should be lived in the piney wood hills," and you can T only affirm. ! She is Buffy Sainte-Marie. She i u stands very small, very alone on a pt very large stage in the Auditorium --Theatre of Denver. But when she sings, she stands on a river bank, jor a Mexican fishing ship or the universal battlefield that is the ;in world. n)J Dignity of Wild Freedom to I She is a Cree Indian and remembers re-members her people and the sad-beness sad-beness of their time in her songs. esjShe wrote 'Now That the Buffalo's Buffa-lo's Gone," opening "Do you re-ljc,member re-ljc,member the time when you held "your head high?" and evoking the a(1. dignity of wild freedom when her 'people surged over the prairie in pursuit of the shaggy-haired one. Her guitar is with her its Ta trap catching her hair and puling puli-ng its fine length into fullness iround her face. Her only other iccompaniment is a mouthbow i dark piece of wood, curved in an irch and bound by a wire, which Produces startling twangs. She louthbows "Groundhog," forming trangely beautiful atonal harmon-2s harmon-2s with her voice "and the bow. " i Her voice, as she speaks between songs, is husky and vibrant, filled with the same vibranto that throbs through her songs. BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE . . . plays Denver She sings "Welcome, Welcome Emigrant" a song she wrote in a Manhatten cafeteria when she saw recently arrived "citizens" struggling to wrest food from the automat She comforts new immigrants immi-grants with the story of her forefathers, fore-fathers, who "spoke a foreign language lang-uage and labored with their hands, the same way you do, my friends." "Suzanne," a song by Canadian Leonard Cohen, fills the theatre with the fog of the waterfront. There's no need to be afraid of Suzanne, since "she touched your perfect body with her mind." Buffy lets the song lap against your soul, like the water laps against the river bank. She soothes with a tide of warmth no need to fear Jesus Christ, since "he touched your perfect body with his mind." She brings salt air from the Mexican Mex-ican Gulf as she sings of "L o s Pescadores (The Fishermen)." She : brings their exuberance with her full-throated account of naked feet and eyes turned to the ocean. Will Not Let Her Go The audience will not let her go. |