Nina Simone is amongst the remarkable musicians and performers, who contributed to the creation of history and thus themselves became historical figures. Although her style can be barely characterized, as her songs had obvious elements of jazz, soul his hop, R&B, folk and gospel, Simone received Grammy awards fifteen times for the unique contribution to the enrichment of our musical legacy. The central argument of the present paper is that Simone’s music is based greatly on her own experience, in particular on the involvement in the civil rights movement, combined with her African American identity, so it is possible to say that the musician was “living black” and “singing black”.
Nina Simone was actually born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina in 1933, to a large family of eight children. Due to the fact that her parents were affiliated with Methodism, she began playing the piano in the local Methodist church, where great attention was paid to every person with music and vocal gifts. Simone’s mother, Mary Kate Waymon, was a Methodist minister, whereas her father worked as a barber and had serious health problems, so the girl since her early years learned the pattern of female leadership. Although the family was affected by poverty, each of the eight children received enough parental attention and support; Simone’s talent’s were nurtured and developed as well. At the age of ten, she first participated in a classical music concert. As Hampton writes, “During her performance, her parents, who had taken seats in the front row, were forced to move to the back of the hall to make way to white people. Simone refused to play until her parents were moved back. This incident contributed to her later involvement in the civil rights movement” (Hampton, p. 39). Simone’s mother, a community activist, who also worked as a maid, convinced her employer to invest in Eunice’s talent, so the girl received an opportunity to take piano lessons. Later, the community fund, organized by Mrs Waymon, allowed the young prodigy to study at the Julliard School of music in New York (Feldstein, p. 95; Simone and Cleary, p. 42). At the age of seventeen, Simone was expected to support her family financially, so she moved to Philadelphia, where she lived on her own, taught music and accompanied singers. Further, she tried to enter the Curtis Institute to continue her education but was rejected for being a woman of colour, as she believed. This further made her a radical opponent of institutional racism, which was an American reality of the 1950s-1970s. In the 1950s, she was forced to perform in nightclubs to earn her living; as her employer demanded, she played the piano and sang blues and jazz. In order to prevent her mother from learning about her occupation, Eunice took the stage name “Nine Simone”. “Nina” can be translated from Spanish as “little girl”, whereas the surname “Simone” was taken after famous French actress Simone Signoret (Simone and Cleary, p. 49; Brooks, p.122).
In the year 1958, Simone’s life drastically changed after she recorded a cover of George Gershwin’s “I Loves You, Porgy”, which became a Billboard Top 40 hit of the United States. Her album of blues works entitled “Little Girl Blue” followed very soon and was a great social, but not a commercial success, as the young and inexperienced musician sold the intellectual property rights for $3000 to Bethlehem Records, failing to consider the subsequent $10 million of royalties. “I Loves You, Porgy” from the opera “Porgy and Bess” was performed by Simone at Carnegie Hall, Town Hall and the Newport Jazz festival. “Combining Bachian counterpoint, the improvisational approach of jazz and the modulations of the blues, her talent could no longer be ignored, Other characteristics of Simone art are her original timing, the way she uses silence as a musical element and her often understated live act, sitting at the piano and advancing the mood and climate of her songs by a few chords” (Brooks, p.123). Thus, in 1958, Simone signed a contract with label Colpix Records, whose major requirement was an entitlement to control the content and genre of her works. As she sought desperately to raise funds and provide for her large family, Nina Simone didn’t care about this condition, until the advent of the equal rights movement in 1960. When she made friends with poet Langston Hughes and playwright Lorraine Hansberry, the musician became aware of the violent oppression of racial minorities in the country and subsequently changes her label to the Dutch Philips. Her texts also reflected her deepened understanding of the inequality issues: In the songs “Brown Baby” and “Zungo”, she communicated to her people the issues of African American identity. When four minority children were killed in the bombing of the Birmingham Methodist church, the musician created and performed “Mississippi Goddam”, a blatant and bitter truth about government-driven racism. As Bell-Scott and Smith write about her unique manner of improvisation, “Sometimes her voice changes from dark and raw to soft and sweet. She pauses, shouts repeats, whispers and moans. Sometimes piano, voice and gestures seem to be separate elements, then, at once, they meet” (Bell-Scott and Smith, p.137). With no mercy Simone unmasks in the song the lies of “Big Brother”, the condescending arrogance of the white society and frames into which African Americans are forced. Class issues are also addressed in Mississippi Goddam”, as the poet and singer note that the dominant group constantly repeat to African Americans that they “go slow” (Simone and Cleary, p. 89) and keep within their social class. In fact, no one else before Simone dared to reveal the truth about these boundaries and restrictions in such an offensive way, so the song was even boycotted in some of the southern states (Feldstein, p.98). When her message was caught by the most disadvantaged (in other words, minorities), the white population striking back and questioning “Why?”. Simone managed to prepare a rhymed answer to this question by writing “Pirate Jenny”. According to Bell-Scott and Smith, “She took a song originating in English light opera, adapted by German socialists Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill to comment on life in pre-Fascist Germany, and transformed it to apply to the anti-colonial revolutionary spirit growing in the American South, the Caribbean, South Africa, and situations south of every border” (Bell Scott and Smith, p.138). “Pirate Jenny” is actually an anthem of African American feminism, as this half-ballad narrates about a courageous woman with revolutionary inclinations, who violently revenges for being reduced to an animal in terms of civil rights and entitlements. In fact, Simone took the right approach to inspire her peers from the racial group, as any sociopolitical transformation of such a huge scope required, first and foremost, the change of minorities’ conscience and the elimination of “slave ideology”. Simone was the first performer, who positioned African Americans as equal to the privileged majority, as opposed to the earlier representations of non-whites as beggars who appeal to pity asking for minor benefits or welfare from the government.
For more than fifteen years, civil rights were a recurrent theme in Simone’s creative works. She participated in a number of civil rights meetings like the Selma Montgomery march. Moreover, she promptly responded to all policies and racist events, which were directly related to the fate of her people. In “Old Jim Crow”, she criticizes Jim Crow’s discriminatory legislation; in “Pastel Blues”, Simone depicts the lynching of black men. As it has been noted, the musician also focused on the experiences of female African Americans. In particular, her song “Images”, based on W.Cuney’s poem, conveys the message about the absence of pride and dignity in non-white women, whereas “Four Women” reflects four common stereotypes of Black female – the slave, the prostitute, the woman of mixed race, who is torn in two by the opposing and clashing worlds, and the woman of age, deeply embittered by the burden of painful memories (Simone and Cleary, p. 126). It needs to be noted that the persecutions of African Americans were also Simone’s personal experience, as, upon the assassination of Martin Luther King, she was forced to live in an uneasy and ambivalent environment, which threatened her life and safety. Therefore, in the mid-1970s, she fled from the United States and wandered around the world, visiting Barbados, Liberia, Switzerland and finally settling down in France. At that time, her husband, who worked as her manager as well, arranged a divorce lawsuit and “privatized” her belongings, leaving only unpaid taxes for her. In France, she made music with little political background and lived a much calmer life. In 1993, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, from which the singer died in 2003.
As one can conclude, Nina Simone’s inimitable expression and sincerity in live performances and recorded works were associated with personal experience of involvement in the equality movement and her perception of the world with African American identity and self-respect. The uniqueness of her contribution consists in the expression of a radical attitude towards racism and discrimination when the African American population was influenced by Martin Luther King’s non-violent strategic perspective. Her resistance inspired a number of women of colour to become activists and struggle for equality and leadership in all social and interpersonal dimensions of life.
Works cited
- Feldstein, R. “I Don’t Trust You Anymore: Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism in the 1960s”. Journal of American History, 91(2005), 94-108.
- Hampton, S. Break Down and Let It All Out. London: Sactuary, 1994.
- Simone, N. and Cleary, S. I Put a Spell on You. New York: Da Capo Press, 2003.
- Bell-Scott, P. and Smith, B. All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us are Brave: Black Women’s Studies. Feminist Press, 1982.
- Brooks, D. Grace. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005.