How Nina Simone Captivated a Generation - Rolling Stone
From a high-profile 4:44 documentary by Jay-Z, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Nina Simone is a bottomless pit of cultural renaissance
Nina Simone is died 17 years ago. But judging by her influence, you could say she never left. Many have paid tribute to him in music. Jay-Z's "The Story of O.J." (from the album 4:44) incorporates a moment from Simone's "Four Women" and the accompanying video depicts a "cartoonish" version of the singer. To this track are added other contemporary hip-hop titles, which sampled Simone; like “Blood on the Leaves” by Kanye West, “Understood” by Lil Wayne, and “New Day” by West and Jay-Z (a big fan).
Nina Simone's celebration peaked at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In music, as on the big screen. Four years ago, Liz Garbus' documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? was nominated for an Oscar. Lana Del Rey took the opportunity to request a special screening, and the director even heard that Beyoncé loved the film. "I knew how much people in the music business loved Nina," Garbus said. "She wasn't like Aretha, who made more commercial artistic choices, like going to sell her music to talk shows. Nina chose not to. So there's a lot of respect for Nina and the feeling that she didn't get what she deserved in her lifetime."
A woman of great complexity and unwavering authority, Simone, who died of breast cancer aged 70 in 2003, rewrote the norms of what it means to be a woman on the show business. “Four Woman,” by the way, that 1966 track about a quartet of African-American women (a prostitute, an activist, an interracial woman, and a slave girl), was banned in Philadelphia and in other cities, just like "Louie Louie Louie" at the time.
In 1977, during a concert at a recording industry conference, she commented on the actions of its leaders: "Most of you are crooks", before being booed by the public . "I'm not meaner or more capricious than anyone else (…) it's just that I'm more sensible," she told Newsweek in 1963. "I do it in public."
“Nina Simone was more rock & roll than anyone celebrated in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” says folk artist Rhiannon Giddens, who also covered “Tomorrow Is My Turn” on her album of the same name. “If you mean rock & roll is angry music, so Nina Simone is rock & roll”.
The rediscovery of Nina Simone has been gradual since Tracy Chapman and the late Jeff Buckley. Since then, his songs have also been covered by Muse, Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill, Usher, Feist, John Legend… This list of astonishing eclecticism actually reflects the variety of his work. Simone left behind one of the most remarkably diverse bodies of work in pop history. A journey into the evolution of popular music itself.
In tune with the times
Totally in tune with the musical upheaval of the late 60s, the Simone of that time was confronted with funk, wah-wah ("Funkier Than a Mosquito's Tweeter”, 1974.) She could be as festive as she was cathartic (“Ain't Got No/Got Life”). Then come the more pop hits, from George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" to Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again (Naturally").
Yet what has made Nina Simone endlessly relevant is the fact that she has lived in the world of Black Lives Matter. Rarely has this connection been as deep and striking as it has been with her. While gathering archival footage for her biopic, Garbus was struck by videos of clashes from the 1960s under civil rights. “We had started the project before the expansion of Black Lives Matter. You could see things hadn't changed."
Born Eunice Waymon, Nina Simone experienced racism from birth. In North Carolina, she was barred from using restrooms in her white-dominated city and had to reach the downtown “black” business district. After a year at Juilliard, where she studied to be a pianist, she enrolled at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, but wasn't accepted...for reasons she's always felt to be because of her skin color. skin. The seeds of his anger towards the system were thus planted.
To lighten her bills, Eunice, then 21, began performing in Atlantic City in 1954, taking the name Nina Simone in honor of actress Simone Signoret. His atypical career began with a rendition of Gershwin's "I Loves You, Porgy," that sad love song that became an unlikely pop hit in 1959.
In 1960, Simone appeared on stage at the Village Vanguard, singing standards, wearing a gray chiffon dress and a wig. Later, the wigs and dresses of her early career disappeared, replaced by Afro caftans; his repertoire has thus expanded to include more socially “conscious” songs; such as "Young, Gifted and Black" and "I Wish I Knew How It Would Would Would Knew How It Feel to Be Free". His piano playing was sober and dignified. But his voice – lush, emotive, quivering – was earthy, almost masculine. She jumped from the most intimate and feminine whisper to a hoarse and passionate cry, sweating indignation, sadness and fury. Until her last bow, she remained the mirror of the social evolutions of the African-American population.
“She opened a lead. She came out as a black woman and talked about black women's issues, before Beyoncé! “, ends Rhiannon Giddens. “As a woman of color, I think of her and say to myself: I have no excuse not to do exactly what I want to do”.
