NPR Music Tiny Desk Concerts

Buffy Sainte-Marie (2022x47)

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"Tiny Desk at home? I kinda live on the road!" the legendary Buffy Sainte-Marie exclaims one song into her high-spirited set recorded a few miles outside Toronto at the beginning of the 81-year-old's umpteenth tour. Sainte-Marie has always been a wandering soul with a fierce sense of direction. The four songs she performs here with her touring band span her nearly 60-year career, connecting her righteous protest songs – including "Universal Soldier," as relevant today as it was when it became an anthem during the Vietnam War – to the love songs that have soundtracked countless slow dances. This set is a kind of Sainte-Marie primer, touching on her early days as the 1960s folk revival's brashest innovator and her mid-career turns writing country and pop hits like this set's smooth closer, "Up Where We Belong," which won her an Academy Award for best original song in 1983.