So, this one goes out to our loyal reader Jodi!
Our feature today is, obviously, Nina Simone. I’m going to skip all of the early life information and go right to why she was way more then just a musician.
Nina Simone musically became influential in the early 1960’s. After a few years of teaching piano in Philadelphia, she quickly became popular by performing in Atlantic City bars and night clubs. From there, she was signed by a record label and recorded her breakthrough song “I loves you Porgy” in 1958. The song did extremely well and propelled Simone into musical popularity at the start of the new decade.
Nina Simone wrote songs that defined the times. Many of her recordings evoke singular moments during the civil rights movement and are historically important akin to the popular anti-war music of this era. For example, Simone wrote “Mississippi Goddam” in response to the bombing of a Baptist church in Alabama killed four children and the assassination of Medgar Evers. This and many other songs by Simone were adopted by the civil rights movement and encapsulated the thrust of emotion behind the social movements that were changing the landscape of the US.
Mississippi Goddam (sorry folks, the html link was broken)
In addition to the civil rights movement’s inspiration on her music, the women’s movement was also attracted to Nina Simone and her message heavy lyrics. “Four Women” became a largely popular song for the emerging second wave.
In a 1969 interview Simone stated “There’s no other purpose, so far as I’m concerned, for us except to reflect the times, the situations around us and the things we’re able to say through our art, the things that millions of people can’t say. I think that’s the function of an artist and, of course, those of us who are lucky leave a legacy so that when we’re dead, we also live on. That’s people like Billie Holiday and I hope that I will be that lucky, but meanwhile, the function, so far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times, whatever that might be."
thank ye, thank ye.
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