From The BUST Archives: Buffy Sainte-Marie Discusses Her 2009 Album “Running For The Drum,” Feminism, The 1960’s, and Breastfeeding On “Sesame Street?”
The History and Science of Your Favorite Slumber Party Games: Bloody Mary, Light as a Feather Stiff as a Board, and the Ouija Board: You’ve said that you grew up “a tan girl in a white community.” What was it like growing up with your adoptive parents in Massachusetts in the ’40s and ’50s?It was bad. There were predators in the neighborhood. There were predators in the house. Sexual predators and bullies. So I kept to myself. When I first saw a piano when I was about three, that became my toy.
The early ’60s were about coffeehouses. They made it possible for students to go out at night and hear each other’s music. The scene had everything—Joan Baez was singing genuine folk songs, Bob Dylan was writing his own songs. Then there would be flamenco players and blues players, so it was everything at once.