STRIKING A CHORD
Sainte-Marie, RSO team up
Canadian musical icon and social activist Buffy Sainte-Marie is joining the Regina Symphony Orchestra on a project aimed at opening up the conversation around truth and reconciliation.
“I appreciate the fact that the RSO wanted to be involved in something for reconciliation,” said Sainte-Marie.
“Every bit helps ... just to acknowledge that we’re all here together today trying to make a better world.”
The project will include a Regina-based concert this October, followed by a tour to three First Nations communities across southern Saskatchewan in the spring, with a focus on Treaty 4 land — where Sainte-Marie’s home reserve, Piapot First Nation, is located.
“It involves a lot of people. It involves a lot of goodwill.
“And hopefully everybody will have a great time on both ends,” said Sainte-Marie.
A selection of Sainte-Marie’s greatest hits has been adapted for the orchestra to play alongside Sainte-Marie and her band. The concert will take place at the Conexus Arts Centre on October 11, preceded by a screening of the residential school documentary Where the Spirit Lives (for which Sainte-Marie wrote the music) on October 10 at First Nations University.
In the spring, the orchestra will travel with Sainte-Marie to three First Nations communities not only to perform for them, but to also collaborate and play music together.
“The calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission really apply as much to institutions as they do to individuals in this country,” said RSO music director Gordon Gerrard. “We’re hoping that we can offer a platform to Indigenous people and their culture so that they are given an opportunity to show what they have to offer.”
He said the collaboration is also a chance to share the RSO’s music with rural communities which might not otherwise have the opportunity to experience it, emphasizing that the project is about cultural exchange, not an imposition of a particular type of music on another culture.
“It’s really more about discussing what together we can present, instead of us prescribing what we think it should be like,” he said.
Gerrard said Sainte-Marie will begin by talking with the communities, especially the youth, then have the communities share the music they would like to incorporate into the show.
“The reserves in Saskatchewan are richly blessed with traditional musics of all kinds,” said Sainte-Marie.
Having performed once before with the RSO, Sainte-Marie is excited to share her music yet again, but made it clear that audiences will have more to listen to than just her songs.
“In my concert you not only get to hear the music, but I have a few things to say,” said Sainte-Marie.
“The problems are much, much bigger than only residential schools.
“Residential schools is the one that we’re talking about now, but the problems that we need to solve together in collaboration are many — are big.”
Sainte-Marie and the RSO will perform songs like Moonshot — which deals with how we will treat the native people of other planets during space exploration — and No No Keshagesh — about environmental greed.
But she said it isn’t going to be all protest songs, and will include plenty of upbeat, motivational and inspiration music as well.
“Music is one of those great things that transcends all these limitations that we have, especially when it comes to communication,” said Gerrard, who is happy to have the RSO aid in spreading Sainte-Marie’s message.
For Sainte-Marie, she sees this partnership as a step in the right direction.
“I think that reconciliation is going on in hearts, in minds, in actions and in communication all the time, and we have to continue it,” said Sainte-Marie.