The Sundance Film Festival has wrapped for this year but one of the more memorable and impressive moments was the Stanley Nelson documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone. Today, we celebrate the music of the “High Priestess of Soul,” Nina Simone.
Simone (born Eunice Kathleen Waymon) was a singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music. She worked in a broad range of styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop.
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 voice. She injected as much of her classical background into her music as possible to give it more depth and quality, as she felt that pop music was inferior to classical. 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.
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While her arrangements on songs such as “Mississippi Goddam,” “Sinnerman,” “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,””I Put A Spell on You,””Feeling Good” and Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” are central parts of her canon, the true genius of Simone is on display on the classic song, Four Women” written by her from the 1966 album “Wild Is the Wind.” It tells the story of four different African-American women. Each of the four characters represents an African-American stereotype in society. One reviewer called the song “an instantly accessible analysis of the damning legacy of slavery, that made iconographic the real women we knew and would become.”
The first of the four women described in the song is “Aunt Sarah” a character who represents African-American enslavement. Nina Simone’s description of the woman emphasizes the strong and resilient aspects of her race, “strong enough to take the pain” as well as the long-term suffering her race has had to endure, “inflicted again and again.”
The second woman who appears in the song is dubbed “Safronia”, a woman of mixed race (“my skin is yellow”) forced to live “between two worlds”. She is portrayed as an oppressed woman and her story is once again used to highlight the suffering of the black race at the hands of white people in positions of power (“My father was rich and white/He forced my mother late one night”).
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The third character is that of a prostitute referred to as “Sweet Thing”. She finds acceptance with both black and white people because “my hair is fine”, but only because she provides sexual gratification (“Whose little girl am I?/Anyone who has money to buy”).
The fourth and final woman is very tough, embittered by the generations of oppression and suffering endured by her people (“I’m awfully bitter these days/’cause my parents were slaves”). Simone finally unveils the woman’s name after a dramatic finale during which she screams, “My name is Peaches!”
Unfortunately for many contemporary audiences they have forgotten one of the most distinctive and creative artists who crafted songs of pride and inspiration for her people.
Check out some of her classic work below: