by Phyl Garland
She casts her spell with the fluid but frequently complex patterns of notes she etches on her piano and with the distinctive sound of her richly reedy voice. This voice of hers is not the finely honed tool of a trained singer, but it possesses something those other voices lack – an earthy naturalness, the compelling coarseness of a homemade instrument that might have been whittled by hand in the fields and then played with consummate artistry.
Yet the secret to her special brand of black magic lies beyond her sound in the message that always lurks somewhere in the lyrics of her songs and the way in which they are projected. For she speaks not only of love, but of the black man’s pain and passion whipped to a swelling rage, filling the sung phrases with her own spirit of rebellion. Always, when she does it, she is so for real and comes on so strong that she can make the unready squirm in the heat of the truth.
For Nina Simone, the “high priestess of soul,” music is not only an art, but an expression of life in all its verities. More than any other performer of the day, she has captured the essence of the black revolution and sings of it without biting her tongue. However, her stature as a versatile musician is considerable regardless of what she happens to be singing about, for this sorceress of song is an outstanding eclectic, a sort of one-woman summation of musical confluence. Though soul is the convenient label under which she is currently classified, there can be detected in her singing, playing and original compositions, the mark of all the major streams that have gone into the making of modern music.
There is the heavy flavor of black gospel music traceable to her beginnings as a little girl, then called Eunice Waymon, who was born in the almost infinitesimally small town of Tryon, NC, to a minister-mother and her handyman mate who shared a deep religiosity. It was in her hometown that her earliest fans, the townspeople, banded together and set up a fund in order to provide this musically gifted child with the classical training that lingers in the style of the mature artist she has become. Her pianism is laced with the techniques she learned as a student at Juilliard in New York and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. But the touches of Bachian counterpoint have been mingled with the improvisational approach of jazz and the modulations of the blues.
As a singer, she is a distinctive stylist who plays with and around the melody, manipulating the words to create a tone-portrait of dramatic intensity. She “sings” with her whole body, with her facial expressions, alternately wooing and chastising the audience with her words. And when her exaltation can no longer be contained, she jumps up from the piano and moves rhythmically about the stage in a nameless dance of joy. There is only one Nina and that one is truly something else.
The public-at-large first became aware of Nina Simone back in 1959 when her sensitive rendition of Gershwin’s I Loves You Porgy established her as a star and led professionals to compare her to the late Billie Holiday, a peerless stylist. During those days and even into the early sixties, so much emphasis was placed on her position as a supper club songstress for the elite that it came as somewhat of a shock to the black public when she reentered their sphere of consciousness as a purveyor of protest songs. This was in the late 1963 when her composition Mississippi Goddamn was widely broadcast with its beep-beep deletions of a so-called offensive word. It was more than enough to convince blacks that she was a true “soul sister” who had been with them all along. Otherwise, she never could have written a song of such bitter fury.
Mississippi Goddamn, which marks a milestone in modern protest music, was written by Nina just after four little girls were killed in the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama. This was the same year in which Medgar Evers, 37-year-old field secretary for the NAACP in Mississippi, was shot to death in front of his home in the capital city of Jackson. So it was that she wrote those memorable lyrics, accentuated by a furiously galloping piano:
“Alabama’s got me so upset;
Tennessee made me lose my rest;
And everybody knows about Mississippi-Goddamn!”
Thus she became established as the singer of the black protest movement, for she had given voice to the stifled rage of her compatriots of the skin. This reputation was consolidated in 1966 when she wrote and recorded a song entitled Four Women, based on the varying life styles and attitudes of four black women as linked to their skin colorings. It, indeed, struck a note of response in black women who heard it, for never had anyone expressed so eloquently and so openly that which had been their burden for centuries: a rejection of their own blackness, reinforced by the “fair-skinned, blue-eyed blonde” standards of the larger society.
Nina Simone who, herself, has abandoned the straight-haired image of her supper club days to wear a natural hairstyle, had it all there in her song Four Women – and a lot more, too. There is the black, wooly-headed “Aunt Sarah” of the first verse whose monumental strength has been drained into the unrelenting struggle to endure pain; the “high yellow,” straight-haired “Safronia” of the second verse who is the racially mongrelized product of a right white man’s forcible seduction of a black woman, which was the case throughout the dark night of slavery and the continually troubled dawn that has followed; the pretty, tan-hued “Sweet Thing” of the third verse who has sought a fleeting self-acceptance in the transient encounters of prostitution while using her inviting body to buy survival. Then there is the unruly, loud-talking, independent “Peaches” of the final verse, who comes closest to where so many black women of today stand, regardless of age:
“My skin is brown, my manner is tough
I’ll kill the first mother I see
My life has been rough
I’m awfully bitter these days because my parents were slaves
What do they call me? My name is Peaches.”
But she did not stop there. She has consistently included protest songs, hers and others, in her recordings and performances. One more recent number is I Wish That I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free, composed by the jazz pianist and lecturer Billy Taylor, with its resounding final lines:
“Say it clear, say it loud,
I am black and I am proud!”
But all of this might have been expected, for Nina Simone continually has reflected in her music the prevailing mood of black people, from the years of the 50s when she tried to track down an only reluctantly forthcoming acceptance by whites on their own standards and into the 60s when her utterance has been one of protest. And it must be noted that one of her latest records is entitled Revolution.
She is a slender, dark brown-skinned woman who carries herself with an ever-present, self-protective chip on her shoulder, as though telling the world, through her very stance, that it had better not mess with her. This shield of what might be called hostility is not directed exclusively at whites, for members of the working black press have sometimes pegged her as a difficult number. Yet others have lauded her for being “so nice and so cooperative.” Much of it might depend on the way in which she is approached and the mood she happens to be in at the time. She is at her best though, when met at the midtown Manhattan offices of Stroud Productions, the management and booking firm presided over by Andrew Stroud, a former police detective who has been her husband of nearly eight years. There all appointments for interviews are carefully checked, confirmed and reconfirmed by a secretary with a crisp, “white-sounding” voice, though she turns out to be black. Andy Stroud, a stocky, good-looking fortyish man with an easy-going manner and outgoing personality, takes a personal interest in setting up his wife’s appointments and speaks of his desire to build the firm’s production activities to the point where Nina Simone, its mainstay at the present, will be able to take long vacations and devote more of her time to composition and doing just what she feels like doing, particularly taking care of their six-year-old daughter, Lisa Celeste.
It is early afternoon of a brisk mid-winter day when Miss Simone arrives after a drive into the city from her suburban Mount Vernon home. She is wearing a fitted lightweight tweed maxi-coat that sweeps nearly to the floor. Beneath it is an above-the-knee-but-not-quite-mini-dress of semi-mod design, set off by beads, a bit of jewelry and the headband clasping her natural above her brow. From the moment she enters, there can be no question as to whether or not she is the star, but her manner is not overbearing. Guarded, might be the term one might use for it, and it is easy to overlook when one considers all the rebuffs and frustrations she must have encountered as a black girl from the South who had nerve enough to come North to the roughest city in the world, armed with nothing but a formidable talent and a whole lot of guys and, above all, to really make it.
“Now what is this for?” she demands brusquely with an unsmiling glance at the prospective interviewer, triggering with this affected iciness the first twinges of uncertainty.
The first timidly proffered questions, interspersed with a few nervous smiles intended to reaffirm good intentions, draw blunt “yes” and “no” answers leading to nowhere. But gradually the wall of ice begins to thaw and she comes to speak from out of her true self. There are even several broad smiles, so unexpected as to be dazzling and a spontaneous laughter that is almost musical. Then one realizes that she is no ogre, no pillar of glacial arrogance, but an artist who might have good reason to distrust those who prey upon celebrities. Similarly, she seems to understand that this is no voracious beast seated before her but simply a lover of music who greatly admires those who are masters of it. She is questioned about her use of protest material as compared to the more conventional songs of her earlier career. Has this switch been a deliberate one?
She answers:
“I suppose one might say that because, for the first six or seven years of my career, I mostly played night clubs and supper clubs. But during all those years, I had a quite a vast repertoire. So when I was in supper clubs and night clubs, I simply played the things that were applicable to those places. That was for about six or seven of the 15 years I’ve been in show business – since 1953. But now that my people decided that we’re going to take over the world (a knowingly affectionate and not at all condescending laugh), I’m going to have to do my part.”
From there on, the interview falls into a compatible groove, with G. being the author and S being Miss Simone.
G: You know, it seems to me that what you do in music is like preaching. You’re telling the truth and spreading the word, the way Baldwin has done it in writing, but you’re using music to do it.
S: That’s right. Um-hummmmm. I was told by H Rap Brown once – and I was highly complimented – that I was the singer of the black revolution because there is no other singer who sings real protest songs about the race situation that I know of. Oh, of course, a lot of guys are doing it now that it’s become a popular thing, but I mean to really mean it and to try to give inspiration to my people – I think I’m the only one. I like it! I like the idea.
G: I think you really began to get through to all of us when you did Mississippi Goddamn! So many of us felt the same way.
S: Yes, I can understand that, but I’d like to clear up one thing. I hope the day comes when I’ll be able to sing more love songs, when the need is not quite so urgent to sing protest songs. But, for now, I don’t mind.
G: Because of the sort of material you use, it seems that you might be the sort of person who believes that the artist should reflect the time in which he or she lives.
S: It has to be that way, my friend. I live that. There’s no other purpose, as far as I’m concerned, for us except to reflect the times, the situations around us and the things that 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.
G: I guess that means the unfortunate state in which so many things are today, racially and otherwise, I mean.
S: Yes, but in many ways, it’s a good time to be alive. I feel more alive that I ever have and this is true for many of the black people. Let’s face it. It’s a struggle and a big fight, but I would rather be fighting for something that I know is going to make a better person out of me and to make me feel like I’m alive, more that to be like we used to be – just accepting and going along.
G: I remember seeing you perform in Chicago shortly after the assassination of Dr. King and you seemed to project an image of defiance and courage. I believe that you let your true feelings come through that night, but, at the same time, your range of materials is so great that you seem to be expressing, simultaneously, the universality of human feelings. Is this also what you attempt to do through your music?
S: Yes I am. Music is one of the great forces in the world and ever since I can remember, I’ve loved music and I’ve been interested in all kinds of music. From the beginning, I’ve been singing all kinds of music and I want to continue to do that. Of course, again, the most important thing these days is to make certain that I make some statement on the stage about how we feel as a race. That’s more important than anything. But I love all music from all lands.
G: I think I’ve read somewhere that your training in classical music was your earliest major influence.
S: Let me clear that whole thing up. When I was three years old, I played by ear, I traveled with my mother who gave revivals, so I was playing gospel and jazz and blues for about five years before I started to play classical music. I started studying music when I was eight, but before then, I was playing what was real swinging. I mean like what they have in Holy Roller churches. So I want to clear that up because some people think that first studied classical music and switched to jazz. I played for revivals and I was colored long before that!
G: I can detect gospel influence in your music in general and particularly in numbers like Take Me To The Water.
S: Yes (with an exceptionally broad smile), you know where that comes from! My Mama had us all baptized, way way before. Some of my most fantastic experiences – experiences that really shake me, not that I think of them – happened in church when we’d have these revival meetings. I’d be playiNnNnNnNnNng, boy! I’d really be playing. I loved it! Folks would be shoutin’ all over the place. Now that’s my background!
G: I can feel that in your music. Would you say that this gospel background supplied one of the key elements into your musical style?
S: Yes! (She breaks into a rhythmic chant of words repeated for effect of the sort black ministers employ while delivering their sermons.) That’s the power! That’s the power! That’s the power! And I’m grateful…I’m grateful.
G: It seems to me this fire, this intensity to be found in gospel music has been carried over, into the area they now call soul music.
S: Right!
G: It even sounds very much the same.
S: It is the same. (A shared burst of hearty laughter at mutual recognition of a black phenomenon.) It is the same, I mean really! (The last word, commonly used by blacks for emphasis, is always shot out quickly with a heavy accent on the first syllable.) The more you listen now to the radio – there are about five or six groups I can point out that came straight out of the church, I mean really, I mean the feeling. It’s the same! But they just call it soul music. (Another laugh.) It bridges that gap. You know my people…my parents have a way of looking at it – I always give them a hard time about it because I have never believed in the separation of gospel music and the blues. Gospel music and the blues have always been the same. It’s just that Mama and them were so religious that they wouldn’t allow you to play boogie-woogie in the house, but would allow you to use the same boogie-woogie beat to play a gospel tune. (She cracks up behind this.) I just don’t agree with it because our music crosses all those lines. Negro music has always crossed all those lines and I’m kind of glad of it. Now they’re just calling it soul music.
G: But this music is the way that we have expressed ourselves ever since we’ve been here.
S: Really!
G: And I’m happy to see people taking pride in it instead of pushing it into the background.
S: Oh, it is time. It’s after time. Oh-Lord!
G: Getting back to your own music, I’ve read somewhere that in your early years you listened to the late Billie Holiday and were influenced by her style.
S: That’s not exactly right, because I knew who she was, but I never heard her sing at all until 1953 when I came to New York. I was just a country girl (a light chuckle), you have to understand. I came from North Carolina and them music I knew was the gospel music and the blues music that we did in church. Mama didn’t even allow me on the other side of town where “the sinners was.” (A bigger chuckle.) And there was the classical music. But when I came North in 1953, I met someone who introduced me to most of Billie Holiday’s records, at which time I fell so in love with her that I learned Porgy, which was my first hit. So I didn’t do any studying of her when I was small. I didn’t even know the woman, but I think I was just about in my late teens when I heard her.
G: One thing that has impressed me is how so much of our music forms a continuous stream, moving from one generation to the next without losing its basic characteristics.
S: Isn’t it wonderful? Some of the same songs, the same source. And I’m so glad. (She breaks into another chant.) Oh I’m so glad! Oh, I’m so glad we haven’t changed things. We can’t help it though. (A knowing laugh.) My mother told me when I was a kid, she said, ‘I gave all my children back to God,’ she said, and what she meant was that there is a thing inside of us. We’ve had it since before…our forefathers, our ancestors from Africa. There’s a thing that we have that makes the essence of us and I don’t think it has anything to do with a choice. We’re just the way we are, as a people. Who invents slang?
G: Everybody’s saying “MAAaan’ now.
S: We came up with that. (Mutual smiles.)
G: And what about the use of words in speech to lend to a certain rhythm to a sentence?
S: RHYthm! (She sings out the word.) It’s the truth, really! It goes all the way though us.
G: And the way we move?
S: It’s the truth! Rhythm!
G: And I don’t need any anthropologist to tell me these things. I just call it black soul.
S: Really. Yes it is!
G: But what is your opinion of some of the new music being created by young white artists?
S: You mean rock?
G: Yes.
S: Well, I’ll tell you. Some of these white kids are trying very, very hard to imitate colored people and they’re doing it very well. Some of them actually have got some real fire and I don’t know what price they’re paying for it, in the sense that I don’t know how much drugs they have to take; I don’t know how far out they have to go in their heads, but some of the music that comes out of some of these rock groups has got some real fire. It’s like, they’re trying to hard to get that soul that I think some of them have got a hold of it, yes I do. Like I said, I don’t know what price the they’re paying, because of the kids I know about who really sing good hard rock, which is the equivalent, as far as I’m concerned, of Holy Roller revival music, most of them are hooked on drugs and I mean really out there, and that’s a big price to pay to sound colored. Most of it is junk, but a lot of them are good and there’s one guy I’d like to speak of who’s not like us at all and doesn’t try to sound colored. But he has his own thing, and I respect him and I really admire him and that’s Bob Dylan. The man is his own man, has his own statement to make and makes it. He’s a universal poet. He’s not trying to be white or colored. The man is just a great poet. And I admire him very much.
G: I certainly agree with that and do respect all who are developing their own things, but what about these young white soloists and groups who seem to pop up overnight and, before you know it, they are on the Ed Sullivan Show or some other television show, doing a song originated by a black artist or group that has never even been on television.
S: Oh, I resent that! I deeply resent that. It makes me very bitter and very mad and it has for years, but I like to think that, you know, our music is leading the parade now, all over the world, so it really doesn’t mean too much, as far as I’m concerned. I mean, I still resent it, but I think it’s just a matter of time before we take over television too, I mean just take it all over, I really do.
G: But meanwhile what can be done to help some of the young black groups and artists get wider exposure?
S: We have to work on that. I don’t know how because I know that, say a little group will get up a hit tune and then some white group comes along and takes the dress, the songs, the style and next thing you know they’re featured on television. Now, we have to put an end to that. I don’t know hooooow. This might
Sound contradictory to what I said before about us not having to worry about them, because we do have to worry about them, because if you get a hundred white groups like that and they get exposure, they have actually gotten the advantages that a hundred black groups could have gotten who created the music. I don’t know how to put an end to that, but the young black kids have got to get the advantages. They’ve got to stop the white ones from stealing our stuff, getting the money and then influencing a thousand other white kids to think these were their ideas. That’s also what they do. They sing songs and then white kids who don’t know any better think they did them. I know we’re slowly moving along , but I know that with all this fighting and going on, especially in the colleges, I think the young kids’ll get it all together.
G: Do you think that this spirit of rebellion and demand for change to be found among young people of both races might lead them to alter white attitudes in general and to influence the establishment for the better?
S: I have no idea, because, I’m going to tell you the truth. I distrust the establishment so much and so deeply that I don’t even think in terms of their giving us our rights. I don’t even THINK about that. All I think about is this, and this is the essence of me, what I want for the rest of my life. I ready it in a book, and I don’t recall which one, some black book. It’s a four line poem and it said: “Brothers, brothers everywhere…and not a one for sale.” And I think that says the whole thing.
G: Amen!