Dying for the Powerful

„Who’s responsible for war?“ Buffy Sainte-Marie held that this question demands our individual answer, our own responsibility. In 1964 the Vietnam War had already entered its 9th year, and since the early 1960s the „Gaslight Café“ in Greenwich Village in New York City had grown into a folk and jazz club. In the basement of the building at 116 MacDougal Street. People sang folk songs and their own songs that sounded like folk songs.

That was the spirit of the times and the inspiration; Bob Dylan had drawn his first attention there, and everyone was present, gave concerts at the Gaslight, and also listened to one another: Eric Andersen, Joan Baez, José Feliciano, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton and many others. Pete Seeger, of course, and also Buffy Sainte-Marie, black-haired with a long mane, an indigenous activist for equal rights, from Canada. John F. Kennedy was US President and the communist-baiters of the 1950s had lost a good deal of their influence.

Buffy released her song „Universal Soldier“ in 1964 on her debut album; she was 23 years old at the time.

From the Gaslight Café to the Newport Folk Festival people sang „Blowing In The Wind“ and also „Where Have All The Flowers Gone“, and then from Buffy the very similar but very direct message: if the soldiers did not go along with it, more precisely, if the universal soldier who is deployed for whatever power did not go along with it, the wars would end. Later, at the Easter Marches in Germany, it was also put this way: Imagine there is war and nobody goes.

Buffy Sainte-Marie said of the „little songs“: she takes snapshots like a photographer. And this song is a momentary image of the arguments a peace-minded student puts to a lecturer – he wishes the professor would change his opinion about the necessity of wars by following the crystal-clear arguments.

Buffy Sainte-Marie: “Universal Soldier”

And she said:

If you can say something in 3 minutes that someone else had to write a 400-page book for, then it is like this: the book disappears on the shelf, but the song can live forever.

In Donovan’s version the song became a worldwide hit in 1965, but the Vietnam War was 10 years old and went on for another 10 years.

Later some German versions followed, I made one too, we could put it to good use in the peace movement in the GDR. But from my point of view the best German re-rendering appeared in 1992 on a live album by Bettina Wegner. To this day, in 2023, we still give concerts together – and the song is always part of them.

And since last year there have been standing ovations every time – for this song, in the middle of the concert.

Shortly before the release in 1992 she once told me that everyone only ever knows the song about the little hands, but she has written much more, and this song, „Soldaten“, seems to her very successful. Especially the one verse: There I’m honestly a bit proud that I came up with it: