Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Radio & Music >

Nina Simone

at the scarwash

12:25 / 22.04.03

Holy fucking shit. Nina Simone is dead.

The Return Of Rothkoid

13:56 / 22.04.03

Perhaps a link to an obituary would help? And some more commentary?

The woman was 70, and had been sick for a long time. It's not like it's a big surprise...

at the scarwash

14:19 / 22.04.03

Sorry. I haven't heard any news of her for three of four years. Had no idea she was ill. I really didn't know what to say other than what I did (all nighter for a paper I didn't write; feelin' kinda shakey). I just thought someone should say something. I'm not really qualified to deliver a eulogy. She was an artist who meant quite a lot to me. Her voice was a force of nature, simultaneously brutally harsh and insinuatingly smooth. Her piano style was impeccable, transcending both her classical roots as well as the jazz milieu that racism pushed her into. She seemed like an immeasurably strong woman, never afraid to say what she felt, or to call out an audience member for not paying attention. In her hands, the tiredest pop standard became a beautiful, terrifying contained explosion. Her take on "Pirate Jenny" captures the vengeful menace of the lyrics, underscored wonderfully by her sparse, beautifully nuanced piano accompaniment. She makes "Everyone's gone to the Moon" a wild-eyed, almost nihilistic epic. Mississippi god damn, indeed.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:55 / 22.04.03

I need to dig out my old Nina Simone tape and listen to it, out in the sunshine.

God, nobody did laid-back and giddily, stupidly happy like Nina ('My Baby Just Cares For Me', stuck in my head all today, for sure), or laid-back and uplifting ('Feeling Good'), or uplifting-despite-the-odds ('I'm Just A Soul Whose Intentions Are Good', 'Got My Life'), or sad and mournful ('Non Me Quitez Pas' - yeah, my bad French - or 'Strange Fruit' or 'Don't Smoke In Bed').

In the BBC obit, they refer to her association with "the controversial Malcolm X". This is Why We Fight: some people still think Malcom X is a 'controversial' figure...

Remember: don't call it jazz.

19:22 / 22.04.03

Its sad. I didnt actually know she was alive: I've grown up on her, and loads of other (sorry, i DO have to say it, flyboy) Jazzy stuff, almost exclusively from dead artists who my parents love, and i always liked her.

19:47 / 22.04.03

at the scarwash

20:07 / 22.04.03

I'll stand with Flyboy on this one. To call Nina Simone a jazz artist is to do her a disservice. This sounds like hyperbole, but Nina Simone was quite simply Nina Simone. Sure, she did jazz, she did blues, she did chanson, show tunes, R&B, whatever. But I think that she made them her own in a way that really took them outside of the constraints of genre. Her jazz standards were too earthy, her blues too sophisticated, her showtunes too sincere. In other words, she was just too much in every way. How do you classify "Nobody's Fault but Mine?" Sure, it's a basic 12-bar blues structure. But the minimalist piano and her completely in control out of control delivery make me think as much of Erik Satie as I do, oh say Robert Johnson.

Foust is SO authentic

17:05 / 23.04.03

Years ago, I heard the song Sinner Man on Homocide: Life On The Street. I didn't know what the title of the song was, and I didn't know who sang it. I loved it, but without anyway to track it down, it faded into memory.

I was at a used book store the other day, and Sinner Man was playing. Fell in love all over again. Asked the clerk who it was. I had heard that someone named Nina Simone had died, but no idea who she was.

Beautiful stuff.

Tryphena Absent

17:39 / 23.04.03

Mmm, Mississippi Goddam and Sinnerman, I love her version of Mood Indigo.

She wanted to train as a concert pianist but was refused funding by Juilliard (hope I spelt that right). Ridiculous when you take in to consideration all that testpattern has said above.

Regrettable Juvenilia

07:53 / 24.04.03

The 'don't call it jazz' thing was a reference to something Nina Simone said herself:

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

Also Known As The Scorpio Seven

08:42 / 24.04.03

I was fortunate enough to see her perform in San Francisco a couple years back. She needed someone to help her to her piano and anytime that she wanted to stand up to address the audience she needed help up.

That being said, she still performed with more attitude and fervor than most artists half her age.

08:43 / 24.04.03

a particular favourite of mine is a track called revolution, from the late 60s, absolutely blistering repsonse to the beatles song of the same name, using the same structure and some of the same lyrics, but a totally blazing call for the need for a revolution now to redress the oppressive racism that blacks in the US suffer, quite stunning in it's message that for them there was no 'count me in / out / in' ambivalence that the fab 4 had the luxury of, it was amatter of life or death
also cleverly incorporates some musical phrases from other beatles songs including the orchestral build up towards the end of a track on sgt peppers (day in a life?).

a wonderful and uncompromisingly brilliant artist, as a writer or truly inspired interpreter of others music
put a spell on you still sends shivers down my spine

andrew

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

02:10 / 27.01.06

Bump. Been listening to Nina a lot lately.

I don't believe "Four Women" has been mentioned in here but. But, well, the vengeance and strength in the way she declares/sings the final lines ... kicks my ass everytime I hear it.

07:57 / 27.01.06

Just found out that Nina Simone was a friend of Exuma (see other thread) and covered a couple of his songs, including 'Obeah Woman' and 'Dambala'. Exuma's version of 'Dambala' (the Great Serpent Lwa of Haitian Vodou )is amazing, it's a fantastic song. But Christ alone knows how extraordinary it would be in the hands of Nina Simone.

Hydra vs Leviathan

14:09 / 06.10.06

This is Why We Fight: some people still think Malcom X is a 'controversial' figure...

Well, to be fair i think some of his views on gender, sexuality and religion are still pretty "controversial"...

Nina Simone's one of the artists i massively admire but don't actually listen to massively often (tho i bought a compilation the other day and have been listening to it quite a lot the last few days)... there are some songs of hers ("Work Song", "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood") that i rank right up among what i consider to be the greatest ever recordings, but there are others which i find hard to listen to because of the theatricality* which i find hard not to read as insincerity...

* doesn't seem quite right to describe it as "camp", as Nina's music probably predates the concept, but the sort-of-like-a-stage-musical "mannered" (as opposed to raw) emotion of songs like "Mississippi Goddamn", "Four Women", "Little Girl Blue" etc...

there's something about that vibe that feels to me... maudlin? saccharine? "precious"? (groping slightly for words here)... that makes me feel sort of uncomfortable... the first minute and a half of "Mississippi Goddamn" has it particularly strongly... like it's almost taking the piss out of the emotions it's expressing by doing it so archly, ironically, rather than (what my ears/brain process as) "honestly"... but now, being as incoherent as i am being, i'm not sure if this critique is valid at all...

does anyone else know what i'm on about?

thinking about it a little more, it's almost as if some of the songs make me feel like i "should" like them, but feel a bit ashamed for not totally liking them... ?

then again, some of her stuff that many would probably consider the most "camp" (e.g. "Pirate Jenny"), is just so frigging mad that i just can't help loving it - and i definitely agree that she's one of the great spiky, passionate, weird, eccentric musical geniuses...

Saw her performing on one of those televised music award ceremonies (can't remember which one now, but maybe one of the "millennium" ones around 1999/2000), not long before she died - in one way it felt like a bit of a travesty, because she quite obviously had almost none of her amazing voice left, but she still had an incredibly powerful "presence"...