17 Responses to “Nina Simone interlude”

1. Artfldgr Says:
   August 8th, 2011 at 2:20 pm

   i am assuming this is the royal we, where what me wants is projected onto everyone.. no? (just kidding)

2. AlanR Says:
   August 8th, 2011 at 2:33 pm

   I saw her twice in the late 60s in Philadelphia. She was incredibly intense. Her performances were incredible. Thanks for reminding me, and letting others know about her talent. It’s sad that she was so tormented, but I’ve learned to accept and appreciate whatever a talent has to offer.

3. Artfldgr Says:
   August 8th, 2011 at 2:54 pm

   Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.
   Nina Simone

   Slavery has never been abolished from America’s way of thinking.
   Nina Simone

   I believe that America is going to die, die like flies, just like the song says.
   Nina Simone

   The worst thing about that kind of prejudice… is that while you feel hurt and angry and all the rest of it, it feeds you self-doubt. You start thinking, perhaps I am not good enough.
   Nina Simone

   I think the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor. I don’t think the black people are going to rise at all; I think most of them are going to die.
   Nina Simone

   My job is not done. I address my songs now to the third world. I am popular all over Asia and Africa and the Middle East, not to speak of South Africa, where I’m trying to go to see Nelson Mandela.
   Nina Simone, Nina Simone Interview

   From the beginning, it has been a no-no for a black man to touch a white woman.
   Nina Simone, Nina Simone Interview
   [which is why shakespeare wrote about othello...]

   I do not believe in mixing of the races. You can quote me. I don’t believe in it, and I never have. I’ve never changed. I’ve never changed my hair. I’ve never changed my color, I have always been proud of myself, and my fans are proud of me for remaining the way I’ve always been. I married a white man one time, but he was a creep.
   Nina Simone, Nina Simone Interview

   I think the rich will eventually have to cave in too, because the economic situation around the world is not gonna tolerate the United States being on top forever.
   Nina Simone, Nina Simone Interview

   she is part of a large group who USED their talent and skills in music… arts, etc… to have a voice for communism…

   In my own country for nearly a century I have been nothing but a nig ger.
   W.E.B. Dubois

   In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
   Toni Morrison

   Racism as a form of skin worship, and as a sickness and a pathological anxiety for America, is so great, until the poor whites — rather than fighting for jobs or education — fight to remain pink and fight to remain white. And therefore they cannot see an alliance with people that they feel to be inherently inferior.
   Jesse Jackson

   The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line — the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.
   W. E. B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk

   The whites were really brutishly ignorant, blitheringly, so they killed people sometimes – just came into the African-American community and maimed people because they didn’t agree with God’s choice for the colors of the people’s skin.
   Maya Angelou

   We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.
   Huey Newton

   Eunice Kathleen Waymon has lots of comments…’

   When I was studying… there weren’t any black concert pianists. My choices were intuitive, and I had the technique to do it. People have heard my music and heard the classic in it, so I have become known as a black classical pianist.
   Nina Simone
   [she didnt look hard...]

   When Nixon grabbed the political end of the stick, on a campaign of ‘Law and Order’, widely understood to mean keeping down those who were already down, Nina was performing at benefits for Angela Davis, the Communist activist, and other left-wing figures, enemies of the powers that were. She was removed in the way the US government often removed troublesome people, hounded out of the country by the IRS for taxes owed to a government she did not accept as legitimate (given the hugely disproportionate number of young Black men sent to die in Vietnam and other issues, this was a common dispute at the time).

   the communist thought it was unfair that they take HER money in taxes..

   why not? as so much was going to go to welfare, and social programs…

   she HATES America, and so left it…

   like others
   Langston Hughes

   Known as one of the founding fathers of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes continuously fought for social justice and racial equality through his literature. To support himself throughout his early writing career Hughes worked odd jobs in West Africa, Paris, and Rome, before resettling in the U.S. in 1924.

   but langston changed sides late in life, and said he wished all his communist stuff was burned…

   here is ANOTHER (and a fav of mine)

   Richard Wright

   Best known for his autobiography, Black Boy, Richard Wright is regarded as an inspirational African-American author. Exhausted with communism and white American ideals, he traveled to Mexico before expatriating to Paris, where he became friends with Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. He earned his French citizenship in 1947, and continued to travel throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa for the remainder of his life.

   he wrote too smart to be a communist, about how the communists didnt want him… as he might catch on… which he did… how they appeared at night in his driveway, and lots more.

   its the ONE book that is almost impossible to find, like margaret sangers autobiography… they used to go into libraries to take out such books and then not return them… as a way to work for the cause and scrub history

   today they rework his Native son story as a communist one…

   \The Enduring Importance of Richard Wright
   by Milton Moskowitz
   http://www.jbhe.com/features/59_richardwright.html

   At the same time, he was writing furiously — short stories, poetry, a novel, political articles. He joined the Communist Party and much of his writing appeared in leftwing publications such as Anvil, Left Front, Midland Left, and New Masses. He moved to New York in 1937, becoming Harlem editor of the Communist newspaper, Daily Worker, and a contributor to the Federal Writers’ Project. His first book, Uncle Tom’s Children, established him as an important writer and authentic interpreter of the blighted life he and other African Americans had endured in the South. The four stories in this book were wrenched from the savage conduct of whites who regarded blacks as sub-human. Re-read today, these tales still pack a powerful punch. In “Long Black Song,” Silas, a black farmer whose wife has been raped and whose house is about to be burned down, says: “The white folks ain never give me a chance! They ain ever give no black man a chance! There ain nothing in yo whole life yuh kin keep from em! They take yo lan! They take yo freedom! They take yo women! N then they take yo life!” And in another of the stories, “Fire and Cloud,” a black minister, Dan Taylor, has these thoughts as he contemplated a hunger march planned by starving members of an African-American community: “Thas the way its awways been! Seems like the white folks just erbout owns this whole worl! Looks like they conquered everything. We black folks is just los in one big white fog.”

   i discussed this stuff here back in february

   http://www.users.muohio.edu/romanots/pdf/nativedarkness.pdf

   “my life as a negro in ameican led me to feel… that the prolem of human unity was more important than bread… for witohut a continous current of shared thoguht and feeling circulating through the social system, like bloo9d thorugh the body, there could e no living worthy of being human” wright

   from page 23
   write later denounced the communist party when he became frustratd with the rigid policies and stalins influence, and he became writing for the anticommunist anthology “the god that failed”

   Simmone never changed sides…

   despite the fact that in the US, the republicans have black politicians and such serving in the 1800s and technicaly in the revolution. where the first dem wasnt elected till 1930… and the first black to have office in russia, was last year…

   The God that Failed
   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_that_Failed

   The God That Failed is a 1949 book which collects together six essays with the testimonies of a number of famous ex-communists, who were writers and journalists. The common theme of the essays is the authors’ disillusionment with and abandonment of communism. The promotional byline to the book is “Six famous men tell how they changed their minds about Communism.”

   The six contributors were Louis Fischer, André Gide, Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, Stephen Spender, and Richard Wright.

   The book contains Louis Fischer’s definition of “Kronstadt” as the moment in which some communists or fellow-travelers decide not just to leave the Communist Party but to oppose it as anti-communists.

   Writers who subsequently picked up the term have included Whittaker Chambers, Clark Kerr, David Edgar, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Norman Podhoretz.

   you can even find articles that know this
   Obama, The God That Failed. By Paul Kengor.

   but i await to hear other explanations made up to wall paper over everything that might help.

4. Artfldgr Says:
   August 8th, 2011 at 3:00 pm

   When I was studying… there weren’t any black concert pianists. My choices were intuitive, and I had the technique to do it. People have heard my music and heard the classic in it, so I have become known as a black classical pianist.
   Nina Simone

   i said she didnt look hard…

   THIS DAY IN HISTORY:
   Mon, 1877-04-09

   On this date in 1877, Florence Smith Price was born. She was an African-American composer, concert pianist, and organist.

   Smith was the first Black woman composer to reach national recognition. From Little Rock, AR., Florence Beatrice Smith was the third child of Dr. James H. Smith, the first Black dentist in that city who was also a published author, inventor, and civil rights advocate. Her mother, Florence Gulliver was a schoolteacher, and businesswoman. Smith attended the New England Conservatory of Music from 1903 to 1906, graduating with an artist degree in organ music and a teacher’s diploma in piano.

   She taught at the Cotton-Plant Arkadelphia Academy until 1907 and Shorter College in Little Rock until 1910, later heading the music department at Clark University (1910-1912). After marrying Thomas Price, an attorney, she let go of teaching and set a private studio in her home. The intolerable racial climate of Little Rock caused them to move to Chicago in 1927, where Price established herself as a concert pianist and composer of national merit. Major publishers began contracting her works-Theodore Presser, G. Schirmer, Gamble, and Carl Fischer to name a few. In 1932, Price won the Wanamaker Music Composition Contest for her Symphony in E.

   The premiere of this piece by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in June 1933 signaled Price as the first African-American woman to have an orchestral work done by a major American orchestra. During her career, Price wrote over three hundred compositions, including symphonies, concertos, chamber works, art songs, and settings of spirituals for voice and piano. Her best-known spiritual, My Soul’s Been Anchored in De Lord, has been performed by Ellabelle Davis, Marian Anderson, and Leontyne Price. WGN’s radio symphony orchestra recorded many of her songs in the 1930’s.

   Her instrumental music reflected the influence of her cultural themes such as dance music with the Juba expression in a classical form. She was one of the few who characterize the high point of the new Negro movement in the arts along with William Levi Dawson and William Grant Still. Florence Price died in Chicago in 1953.

   Reference:
   Black Women in America An Historical Encyclopedia
   Volumes 1 and 2, edited by Darlene Clark Hine
   Copyright 1993, Carlson Publishing Inc., Brooklyn, New York
   ISBN 0-926019-61-9

   nina was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003)

   but how many africans will look up and see the history they erased from them? NOT EVEN BLACK HISTORY MONTH BRINGS UP SUCH…

5. Artfldgr Says:
   August 8th, 2011 at 3:14 pm

   sorry. hit enter.

   they dont bring them up, as we only celebrate left communists…

   Florence Price just doesnt follow the narrative..

   the narrative that women were so oppressed they could not work that racism was so rampant no one could succeed.

   yet. over and over i keep bringing up people who should NOT EXIST… if the revisionist history we life, think and believe was true…

   Who founded the college that became the Bethune-Cookman University in Florida and founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935

   Mary Jane McLeod Bethune (1875 – 1955)

   but wait… how can a woman found a college if women werent allowed to attend college.

   after all, a feminist yelled to me once… did you know that until recently a woman could not earn a harvard degree!!!

   i said yup… she said that was an outrage, not to let women go to college…

   i said, then you have no idea about radcliffe?

   her ignorance is what allowes her to beleive then justify hatred, social justice, etc.

   i can spend all day listing people who violate their history but who we dont know..

   womens liberation was the 1960s…
   and race was segregatgd from wilson

   Who was the first black female newspaper publisher and editor in North America (in Ontario, Canada), and the first black woman to enroll in law school ( Howard University)?

   Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823 – 1893)
   http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/cary-mar.htm

   Who was the first woman bank president in America?
   Maggie Lena Walker (1867- 1934)
   http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/walker-ml.html

   Who is considered the first black woman journalist who advocated for women’s rights and the abolition of slavery? Maria Stewart (1803 – 1879)

   What African-American woman was born enslaved, gained her freedom in 1856, became a entrepreneur and philanthropist, and co-founded the first black church in Los Angles? Biddy Mason (1818 – 1891)
   http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/maso-bid.htm

   Her grandson, Robert Curry Owens, a real estate developer and politician, was the wealthiest African-American in Los Angeles at one time.

   but today with us all liberated.
   The most famous black woman is known for what?

   certainly nothing as good as the oppressed women..
   care to hear their poetry, their writings and quotes?

   here.. read yourself
   the coochie snorcher that could
   http://www.sacerdoti.com/jonathan/vaginas/coochie.html
   [the above is the new sanatized one in which being drugged and raped by a lesbian adult while underage is a 'good rape']

6. Parker Says:
   August 8th, 2011 at 5:37 pm

   I’m a Simone fan and enjoyed the videos. NS always puts “a little sugar in my bowl”.

7. Susanamantha Says:
   August 8th, 2011 at 10:18 pm

   My favorite Nina Simone album is “Little Girl Blue – jazz as played in an exclusive Side Street Club.” My aunt and uncle had the original vinyl album of this name; I listened to it over and over again when I babysat their wee ones in the early 60′s. I was 16 and bowled over by her voice and piano technique. No one else I knew had ever heard of her.

   Nina was a relative of Dionne Warwick. I don’t remember the details of their relationship. Dionne was a particular favorite of the powerhouse songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal Davis. They wrote many of Warwicks’s best songs.

8. neo-neocon Says:
   August 8th, 2011 at 10:36 pm

   Susanamantha: are you sure about the Nina Simone Dionne Warwick connection? I’d never heard that—but it is the case that Whitney Houston is a cousin of Dionne Warwick.

   I discovered Nina Simone when I was in high school. My high school boyfriend was a fan, and he played her records a lot. I loved her; she was so unique and wonderful! But the first time I heard the record (before I knew her name), for a few seconds I thought it was a man singing.

9. Don Carlos Says:
   August 8th, 2011 at 10:43 pm

   Once again I appreciate Artfldgr’s scholarship.

   Nina was a perpetually self-pitying woman; nothing was ever her fault or her deficiency, apparently. Always the Other, in her case, Whitey.

   That’s why my 40-year old Simone favorite for the past 30-plus years starts, “You can have him, I don’t want him…” A song about lying to herself…I’ve not found it on CD, and don’t play the vinyl anymore.

10. neo-neocon Says:
    August 9th, 2011 at 12:55 am

    Don Carlos: It was sometimes whitey, but it was by no means just whitey or always whitey. Nina Simone was bipolar and was angry at just about everyone, including many of the people who worked with her. She was pretty much an equal-opportunity blamer, as far as I can tell.

    The life may have been a wreck a lot of the time, but she was a great artist. The song you mention is one of her standards, and although you can find other renditions (for example, Shirley Bassey, Nancy Wilson) on YouTube, to my way of thinking Simone’s version is by far the best. The song was written by Irving Berlin, by the way.

    I don’t see it as a song about lying to oneself at all, though. It’s a song that starts with bravado in the face of rejection by a lover, and soon turns to a plaintive admission of how much the lover actually meant to the woman. It’s in the same genre as Hoagy Carmichael’s “I Get Along Without You Very Well,” in which the title is belied by most of the words. It’s someone whistling in the dark.

    I couldn’t find a video of Simone doing the Irving Berlin song. But here she is singing the Carmichael tune (I think the photo is of someone else; perhaps her daughter?):

11. Parker Says:
    August 9th, 2011 at 1:46 am

    “.. except when soft rains fall and drip from leaves I recall, the thrill of being sheltered in your arms. Of course I do, but I get along without you very well.”

    This phrase is heartbreaking. Her delivery is bittersweet, wounded, defiant, and in the end futile. “That should surely break my heart in two.” Egads, I’m too old to be so swept up in such melodrama, but NS pulls me into her realm as if I am an asteroid destined to orbit her gas giant.

    Thanks Neo for a distraction from the bigger, more deadly drama of our own days ahead.

12. SteveH Says:
    August 9th, 2011 at 6:39 am

    Obviously an artist in the realm of aquired taste. I’ll just say i couldn’t aquire it in the 3 or 4 minutes i gave her.

13. Gringo Says:
    August 9th, 2011 at 8:41 am

    The first Nina Simone song I was exposed to was My Baby Just Cares for Me. It was played a lot on the jukebox of the greasy spoon hippie hangout where I worked the counter while I was in high school. So, that song brings back memories.

    Nna Simone is not the only vocalist who was also a skilled pianist. Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan were also pianists.

14. Don Carlos Says:
    August 9th, 2011 at 8:59 am

    I was plum tuckered when I posted re Nina last night, and took short cuts-”lying”, and didn’t edit “40″ out. Indeed it is bravado, not lying.

15. Susanamantha Says:
    August 9th, 2011 at 9:19 am

    Neo:
    Yes, it’s Whitney who’s Dionne’s cousin. I knew that and got it wrong. Thanks for reminding me.

    Too bad Whitney let bad choices derail her career. She could have been one of the voices of the century. Her mother was Cissy Huston, one of the Sweet Inspirations.

16. Julia NYC Says:
    August 9th, 2011 at 10:14 am

    Nina Simone was such a great musician. I am enthralled by her talent. What a fantastic stylist, and in this day of particularly uninteresting singers, she seems even more special. The really fine classical piano chops with her low rumbly voice and exquisite phrasing just leave me in awe. Her troubled vibe has made it hard for me to listen to her though. Sometimes it’s best to not know much about an artist, so one can just appreciate their music. Which is probably the best part of them anyway.

17. neo-neocon Says:
    August 9th, 2011 at 11:25 am

    Julia in NYC: yes, her piano playing just seems so effortless, doesn’t it? The product of intense work, no doubt.

    I had stopped going to her performances after that one I mentioned, because she was so hostile and it was so uncomfortable being in the audience. But I never stopped listening to her; she was that good.

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