![]() ![]() “Mississippi Goddam” was written in 1963, the same year as Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and provided a sharper expression of the mood among young civil rights activists. Her most famous song, however, was one that she composed herself. She did not so much interpret songs as take possession of them. Her repertoire was catholic-Gershwin, Ellington, Jacques Brel, Kurt Weill, Bob Dylan-but whatever she sang ended up sounding like a Nina Simone tune. Frustrated in her ambition to become a classical pianist, she smuggled Bach into the night club, combined his music with folk, blues, and jazz, and enforced recital hall rules: those who made any noise while she played could expect a cold stare or a tongue-lashing. This exchange appears early in Liz Garbus’s remarkable documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone?, and it’s a startling moment, for if Simone, who died in 2003, conveyed anything on stage, it was fearlessness. “I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear. Then, suddenly, an answer occurred to her. “It’s just a feeling,” she replied, seemingly flustered by the question. In 1968, an interviewer for New York public television asked the singer and pianist Nina Simone what freedom meant to her. ![]()
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