BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE

Medicine Songs 7/10

there are few more gratuitous exercises than artists re-recording their classics, but at 76, Buffy sainte-Marie has not only earned the right but pulls it off in a way that breathes new life into past glories. Not that songs such as “soldier Blue” and “universal soldier” (which she wrote way back in 1961) need much updating, for their message remains chillingly contemporary. there are compelling new compositions, too, including “You Got to Run (spirit Of the Wind”), recorded with the brilliant Canadian indigenous singer tanya tagaq, and “the War Racket”, a potent modern protest song.