Breaking the Mold
Nina Simone included social commentary in her work. At the time, very few musicians sang about social injustices. Chubby Checker’s “The Twist,” Neil Sedaka’s “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” and the Four Seasons’s “Sherry” focused on fun, love, and romance. As a black woman living in a world that socially and legally believed that she had no place in modern society, Nina Simone refused to keep social commentary out of her performances.
On June 12, 1963 a member of the White Citizen’s Council murdered a Second World War veteran and the Mississippi field secretary of the NAACP, Medgar Evans. Three months later, four black girls were killed when a bomb exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Civil rights activists were enraged. Since the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education that separate was not equal, whites had protested with violence to keep black students out of their schools. The killing of Evans and the four black girls was a watershed moment for Simone.
In 1964, Simone released perhaps her most controversial song, “Mississippi Goddam.” Proclaiming that she means every word, Simone plays an upbeat cadence on the piano and states, “This is a show tune, but the show hasn’t been written for it yet.” The next line she sings is “hound dogs on my trail, school children sitting in jail, black cat cross my path, I think every day’s gonna be my last.” The song was a critical critique on the lack of law and order applied to preventing and prosecuting the hundreds of crimes committed against black Americans that were fighting for voting, education, and equal rights. Radio stations the South refused to play the song, with some even going as far as destroying their entire Nina Simone recordings.
Simone did not care about the boycotts against her music. She continued to record and relate her own arrangements that included black social commentary. Two of her songs, 1965’s “Four Women” and 1969’s “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” were sued in protest movements. When recounting her years as an activist, Nina Simone stated that “she felt more alive” because she “was needed” and that she could “sing something to help my people.” She believed that all races were equal but supported a violent revolution, aligning herself with Malcom X and the Black Nationalist Movement.
By the late 1970s, Nina Simone had left the United States living in Barbados, Liberia, and finally France. Throughout her career she was prone to fits of rage and violent outbursts. iN 1985 she attempted to kill a record company executive and shot at her neighbor’s son for interrupting her concentration. Simone died of breast cancer in April 2003. Only after her death was her diagnosis of bipolar disorder made public. In April 2018, Nina Simone was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“The Devil’s Music: 1920s Jazz.” The TV Series & Beyond on PBS. February 2, 2000.
“Bio of Nina Simone.” The Nina Simone Estate.
“Four Women”. Songwriter Nina Simone, Producer Hal Mooney. Recorded in 1965.
“Medgar Wiley Evans”. Wikipedia.
“List of Billboard Hot 100 Singles of 1960, 1961, and 1963.” Wikipedia.