Nina Simone
(Netflix)
(Netflix)
Student Newspaper of The University of Michigan
Published July 1, 2015
Unlike most singer-musicians today, Nina Simone never focused on
creating or maintaining stage presence. She didn’t always make eye
contact with audience members, her eyes flitted around when she played
the piano; when she addressed the audience, she sometimes sounded as if
she were speaking to herself. Simone, as a performer, never had to aim
to capture attention — her voice did it for her. When she became an
activist, she didn’t need to work to get people to listen to her — her
revolutionary and startling songs and the voice with which she conveyed
her unadulterated passion did it for her.
“What Happened, Miss Simone?” is a Netflix documentary, directed by
Liz Garbus, that explores Simone’s story through old performance
footage, diary excerpts, newspaper articles and interviews with the
people in her life, including her abusive ex-husband Andrew Stroud and
her daughter Lisa Simone Kelly.
Born Eunice Waymon, Simone began playing piano at an early age and
planned to become the first famous black concert pianist. She began
performing late nights in bars and assumed a stage name so her mother
wouldn't know. Thus, Nina Simone was born.
“Sometimes I sound like gravel, and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.”
Part of Simone’s appeal was that she was a woman who could easily
reach tenor and baritone pitches. People flocked to hear her sing; they
were drawn to the husky yet airy lightness to how she carried the melody
in “I Love You Porgy,” or the playful hopping from note to note in
“Love Me or Leave Me.” The unique, smoky timbre of her voice and her
incredible skill as a pianist earned her a spot among the greats in
jazz, blues and soul.
But though people loved Nina Simone, the singer, people did not
always love Nina Simone, the black woman — a cultural sentiment that is
unfortunately, glaringly familiar even now. The documentary features
footage of her singing “I Love You Porgy” on Hugh Hefner’s show “Playboy
Penthouse” surrounded by wealthy white people, and it highlights the
contrast between entertainment and real life.
“I was a black girl, and I knew about it,” Simone says. As the Civil
Rights movement grew, so did Simone’s involvement with it during the
60’s. Her song “Mississippi Goddam,” which she wrote after the murder of
Medgar Evers and the church bombing in Birmingham, was revolutionary,
and Lisa Simone Kelly says that due to how passionately she sang it at
Selma, her voice broke — she lost an octave afterwards. Being black and a
woman gave her a unique courage that startled those who saw it. In the
words of Dick Gregory, “What she was doing was different. There’s
something about a woman. If you look at all the suffering that black
folks went through ... Not one black man would dare say, Mississippi
Goddam … We all wanted to say it. And she said it: Mississippi, goddam!”
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