AFRICA DEFINE YOURSELF: KNOW YOUR AFRICAN HISTORY IN RESPECT OF EXTRAORDINARY HUMAN BEINGS, NINA SIMONE IS ONE OF THEM By Senzo Scholar Credit: Adrien Heckstall Nina Simone, is an extraordinary human being, who was born on February 21, 1933 and passed on April 21, 2003 Theres no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were. --Nina Simone Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon, better known by her stage name Nina Simone, she was an extraordinary Black American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music. Born the sixth child of a preachers family in North Carolina, Simone aspired to be a concert pianist. Her musical path changed direction after she was denied a scholarship to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, despite a well-received audition. Simone was later told by someone working at Curtis that she was rejected because of the color of her skin. When she began playing in a small club in Philadelphia to fund her continuing musical education and become a classical pianist she was required to sing as well. She was approached for a recording by Bethlehem Records, and her rendering of I Loves You Porgy was a hit in the United States in 1958. Over the length of her career Simone recorded more than 40 albums, mostly between 1958 — when she made her debut with Little Girl Blue — and 1974. Her musical style arose from a fusion of gospel and pop songs with classical music, in particular with influences from her first inspiration, Johann Sebastian Bach, and accompanied with her expressive jazz-like singing in her characteristic contralto. She injected as much of her classical background into her music as possible to give it more depth and quality. Her intuitive grasp on the audience–performer relationship was gained from a unique background of playing piano accompaniment for church revivals and sermons regularly from the early age of six years old. After 20 years of performing, she became involved in the civil rights movement and the direction of her life shifted once again. Simones music was highly influential in the fight for equal rights in the US. In 1964, she changed record distributors, from the American Colpix to the Dutch Philips, which also meant a change in the contents of her recordings. Simone had always included songs in her repertoire that drew upon her Black American origins (such as Brown Baby and Zungo on Nina at the Village Gate in 1962). On her debut album for Philips, Nina Simone In Concert (live recording, 1964), Simone for the first time openly addressed the racial inequality that was prevalent in the United States with the song Mississippi Goddam, her response to the murder of Medgar Evers and the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four children of African descent. The song was released as a single, and was boycotted in certain southern states.Old Jim Crow, on the same album, addressed the shameful Jim Crow Laws. From then on, a civil rights message was standard in Simones recording repertoire, becoming a part of her live performances. Simone performed and spoke at many civil rights meetings, such as at the Selma to Montgomery marches. Simone advocated violent revolution during the civil rights period, rather than Martin Luther Kings non-violent approach,and she hoped that Black Americans could, by armed combat, form a separate state. Nevertheless, she wrote in her autobiography that she and her family regarded all races as equal. She covered Billie Holidays Strange Fruit, a song about the lynching of black men in the South, on Pastel Blues (1965). She also sang the W. Cuney poem Images on Let It All Out (1966), about the absence of pride she saw among Black American women. Simone wrote Four Women, a song about four different stereotypes of Black American women, and included the recording on her 1966 album Wild Is the Wind. Simone moved from Philips to RCA Victor during 1967. She sang Backlash Blues, written by her friend Langston Hughes on her first RCA album, Nina Simone Sings The Blues (1967). On Silk & Soul (1967), she recorded Billy Taylors I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free and Turning Point. The album Nuff Said (1968) contains live recordings from the Westbury Music Fair, April 7, 1968, three days after the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. She dedicated the whole performance to him and sang Why? (The King Of Love Is Dead), a song written by her bass player, Gene Taylor, directly after the news of Kings death had reached them. In the summer of 1969 she performed at the Harlem Cultural Festival in Harlems Mount Morris Park. Together with Weldon Irvine, Simone turned the late Lorraine Hansberrys unfinished play To Be Young, Gifted, and Black into a civil rights song. Hansberry had been a personal friend whom Simone credited with cultivating her social and political consciousness. She performed the song live on the album Black Gold (1970). A studio recording was released as a single, and renditions of the song have been recorded by Aretha Franklin (on her 1972 album Young, Gifted and Black) and by Donny Hathaway. In 1993, Simone settled near Aix-en-Provence in Southern France. She had suffered from breast cancer for several years before she died in her sleep at her home in Carry-le-Rouet, Bouches-du-Rhône on April 21, 2003. Simones ashes were scattered in several African countries. She left behind a daughter, Lisa Celeste Stroud, an actress and singer, who took the stage name Simone. Musicians who have cited Simone as important for their own musical upbringing include Van Morrison, Bono, Cat Stevens, Peter Gabriel, Lauryn Hill and Jeff Buckley to name a few. Musicians who have covered her work (or her specific renditions of songs) include Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, David Bowie, John Lennon and Jeff Buckley. Simone received two honorary degrees in music and humanities, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Malcolm X College. She preferred to be called Dr. Nina Simone after these honors were bestowed upon her. Only two days before her death, Simone was awarded an honorary degree by the Curtis Institute, the music school that had refused to admit her as a student at the beginning of her career. Simone was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009. In 2010, Tryon, North Carolina erected a statue in her honor along Trade Street. Slavery has never been abolished from Americas way of thinking. --Nina Simone
Posted on: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 22:26:08 +0000
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