Petra acker nina simone biography
Nina Simone’s Life in Music and Activism
Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images
By , jazz musician Nina Simone already had an established music career.
Petra acker nina simone biography Want to read. Inside Chanel. National Women's History Museum. Simone said she "tried to kill him" but "missed.But two events that year permanently altered her direction. The first was the murder of NAACP activist Medgar Evers on June Simone said that “while Medgar Evers’ murder was not the final straw for me, it was the match that lit the fuse.”
That fuse burned until it reached a powder keg: the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama on September When she heard the news of four dead Black girls, she grabbed tools and scrap from her garage and tried “to make a zip gun, a home-made pistol.” After calming down, she instead sat at her piano, and in an hour, produced her first civil rights song, “Mississippi Goddam.”
The song exploded in popularity and launched Simone’s activism.
It captured the tumultuous obstacles civil rights activists faced at the time, but also vented her fury at American racism. Organizations such as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) reached out, and Stokely Carmichael later designated her the “great civil rights singer.”
Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Alongside a transformation in her music, Simone changed her appearance.
In her early years, she kept her hair straightened and in a traditionally white-woman’s style, as seen in the image above. As time went on, she sported her hair either braided, pinned up, or in an afro, as seen in the photos below.
No song better describes Simone’s thinking regarding her race, gender, sexuality, and its public perception than “Four Women” ().
As Nadine Cohodas succinctly wrote, “the song compressed two centuries of Black history into four compact verses.”
Simone describes four different Black women—an enslaved woman, a multiracial woman born from rape, a prostitute, and a woman ready to kill out of bitterness.
Each verse shows how Black women must navigate misogynoir—that racially infused misogyny directed towards Black women—in their daily lives, even within the Black community.
The demands of race and gender exhausted Simone. “By the time the sixties ended,” she admitted, “I’d look in the mirror and see two faces, knowing that on the one hand I loved being black and being a woman, and that on the other it was my color and sex which had fucked me up in the first place.”
The assassination of Dr.
Martin Luther King, rattled the entire nation, and Simone too was devastated. With the entire Civil Rights Movement reeling, she felt increasingly discouraged. “SNCC was dead in the water,” she said. “CORE was going the same way. The SCLC was still trying to recover after losing Martin.” People were in denial, “but the plain truth was we were in retreat.&#;
Despite these setbacks, Simone did not give up hope.
Nina simone biography book Discography [ edit ]. After the success of Little Girl Blue , Simone signed a contract with producer Hecky Krasnow at Colpix Records and recorded a multitude of studio and live albums. During that same period, Simone recorded " My Baby Just Cares for Me ", which would become her biggest success years later, in , after it was featured in a Chanel No. Unfortunately, the tantrums followed her to Nijmegen.She supported the rise of the Black Power movementand touted the Black Power manifesto. Because they were willing to fight for the cause, Simone thought the Black Panthers showed Black kids what the fight for racial justice would take.
Her song “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,” written in memory of her deceased friend Lorraine Hansberry, was recorded and released in , and, unlike her other civil rights anthems, which were full of anger, this one was a joyous celebration of Black youth.
While Simone understood that being a Black woman had extra barriers compared to Black men, she inspired the entire Black community.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Simone’s disappointment in the Civil Rights Movement eventually overpowered her hope and, in , she moved to Monrovia, Liberia hoping to find respite.
When she settled in Africa, she felt that she had been released from the prison that was America and had found home. She was ready to stay “forever, if everything worked out.”
The Liberian coup and start of the Liberian Civil War forced her out after six years, however, and for the rest of her life, she never returned to live in the United States.
Simone’s personal life and career were notoriously turbulent (she was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder), but to emphasize these difficulties diminishes the enduring power of her music.
Her music speaks directly to contemporary activist movements.
Petra acker nina simone biography wikipedia Only three of 72 applicants were accepted that year, [ 28 ] but as her family had relocated to Philadelphia in the expectation of her entry to Curtis, the blow to her aspirations was particularly heavy. Rate this book. August 16, She wrote "Mississippi Goddam" in response to the assassination of Medgar Evers and the Birmingham church bombing that killed four young African American girls.For example, the lyrics in “Mississippi Goddam” need only be partially modified for them to apply to the Black Lives Matter movement. “Four Women” stands as a testament to the continued misogynoir Black women face decades after the song’s release. “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black” continues to tell Black youth to celebrate their skin color and never be ashamed of who they are.
Photo by David Redfern/Redferns
Learn More:
“Four Women.” Track 2 on Wild is the Wind.
Philips Record, Nina Simone. Released
Lambert, David Brun.
Nina Simone: The Biography. London: Aurum Press Ltd,
“Mississippi Goddam.” Track 7 on Nina Simone in Concert. Philips Records. Nina Simone. Released
Simone, Nina and Cleary, Stephen. I Put A Spell On You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone. New York: Da Capo Press,
Thomas, Katherina Grace.
Petra acker nina simone biography film netflix Retrieved August 14, Martin Luther King, Jr. Watch Next. In other projects.“Nina Simone in Liberia.” Guernica Magazine, June 19,
“To Be Young, Gifted and Black.” Track 7 on Black Gold. RCA Victor, Nina Simone. Released