Nina Simone would improvise and change keys in the middle of a song, weave together classical, jazz, gospel, soul, and folk. Watch the What Happened, Miss Simone? Trailer Those songs are still shockingly relevant today, but they don’t capture the full range of her output. Her work during this period became some of her best-known. By the mid-’60s, she became a political firebrand, standing alongside radical minds like James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry as they rallied behind civil rights and against segregation. In need of money, Simone turned to jazz, performing in nightclubs and restaurants where she incorporated contrapoint and other techniques usually reserved for classical music into her style. It was her first real taste of racism in America.
She had the skills for admission but not the right skin color.
Her ambitions were thwarted when she was rejected from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She was a classically trained pianist who dreamed of becoming the first black woman to perform as a soloist at Carnegie Hall. Nina Simone knew intuitively that she could be anything she wanted to be - damn if anyone tried to stop her.Īnd they did. One of my favorite moments from Netflix’s new Nina Simone documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone?, is when she boldly calls herself a “rich black bitch.” The way she says it speaks to her timelessness, her free-thinking attitude, and her ability to anticipate trends long before being a “ bad bitch” became a total thing. Photo: David Redfern/Redferns Ltd/Getty Images