Day 25 - Nina Simone
She was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21, 1933.
She was who the world would come to know as Nina Simone, and the “High Priestess of Soul.”
Nina Simone began playing piano by ear at the age of three, and although she did not sing in church, she did play piano. Her mother, a Methodist minister, and her father, both a handyman and preacher, could not ignore their daughter’s talent. Simone had the ability to play virtually anything by ear. She studied classical music, developing a lifelong love of Johann Sebastian Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven, and Schubert.
A brilliant student, Simone graduated valedictorian of her high school class. Upon graduating, her community raised money for a scholarship to study at Julliard in New York City.
Musically, Nina Simone’s music comprised various musical styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop.
Simone attributed her consciousness on the racial and social discourse to playwright Lorraine Hansberry. The influence of Hansberry planted the seed for the provocative social commentary that became an expectation in Simone's repertoire. One of Simone’s activism anthems, "To Be Young, Gifted and Black", a play by Hansberry, was written after Hansberry’s passed.
Simone’s social commentary didn’t just center on civil rights activism. In "Four Women" exposed the eurocentric appearance standards imposed on Black Women in a(A)merica and explored the internalized dilemma of beauty experienced between four black women with skin tones ranging from light to dark. Well before her time, Simone stated that she wrote “Four Women” to inspire Black Women to define beauty and identity for themselves without the influence of societal impositions
If an artist’s duty is to reflect the times, then through her music, Nina Simone’s artistry was on display for us. When Nina Simone died on April 21, 2003, she left us four decades of her timeless treasure trove of musical magic.
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