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Nina
Simone CDs
Forever
Young, Gifted & Black: Songs of Freedom and Spirit (2006)
/
Anthology (2003)
Nina: The Essential Nina Simone
(2000, 2003)
The Very Best Of Nina Simone, 1967-1972 : Sugar
In My Bowl (1998) /
The Blues (1968, 1991) /
Compact Jazz: Nina Simone
(1989-1991)
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Nina
Simone The Emotional Depths of the Spirit World
Emergency Ward Reviewed by Mtume ya Salaam & Kalamu ya Salaam
--from
Breath
of Life
These two songs are long-form Nina taken from
Emergency Ward / It Is Finished / Black Gold a 2-CD
collection of Nina’s last three LPs on the RCA label.
Both selections, each over ten minutes long, are stellar
examples of sustained intense expression done as only
Nina can. Like church service, Nina throws her all in
the pot as she conjures up a process that transform the
physical into the spiritual.
Although this style of singing has sometimes been
described as letting it all hang out or letting one’s
self go, there is a huge amount of discipline and
artistry required to successfully execute these kinds of
performances where the artist clearly becomes a vessel
ridden by some invisible force.
Over forty years ago, my younger brother Kenneth and I
were in Choir #3, the young people’s ensemble of my
grandfather’s Greater Liberty Baptist church located at
1230 Desire Street in New Orleans. This particular time
was not a Sunday service, but rather a week night
gathering. It may have been a Bible study session or it
may have been a reception for out of town visitors, or
perhaps a preacher passing through. In any case,
whatever the specific occasion, we were singing. Ms.
Cherie, the choir-master and master organist, had us
rocking. It got good. Church good.
Now when it gets church good, everybody knows—at least
everybody in that world knows—people be falling out.
Literally rolling on the floor, flailing about screaming
and shouting. As youngsters we used to think some, if
not all, of it was show, was people putting on or at
least acting out. In fact, we would secretly mimic and
make fun of some of the parishioners who were known for
what was called “catching the spirit.” It was as if “the
spirit” was some invisible force flying around the
church and these people could throw up their hands and
ensnare God’s spirit, snatch it clean out the air and
infuse it into their bosoms, and once they did, like
grabbing a live wire of electricity, these spirit
catchers would jerk uncontrollably, their whole bodies
simultaneously going stiff as a corpse on a cooling
board and writhing like a snake whose head has just been
cut off.
We’d seen it so often we could almost predict who was
going to go off. But it was never us. And because we
never were the ones thrashing about on the floor, we
used that lack of experience to suggest to us that there
was something artificial about other people shouting.
So we were up there rocking. I don’t remember the song.
I just remember the feeling. How time has no dominion
when it gets church good. How sight no longer becomes
reliable. How clearly in that moment, you hear the music
and only the music. That moment when it seems no one
else exists, nothing else matters. And like the
excruciating pleasure of biblical knowing, this feeling
hurts so good, you want the feeling to keep on, never to
end. You want to hold it in at the same time you need to
let it out. And when both feelings gets so strong that
it’s no longer possible to maintain both a holding on
and a letting go, that’s when you scream. Oh my God!
I believe Audrey was her name. She lived across the
street from the church. She was a tall teenager,
five-foot six or seven. Slender as a bean stalk. A
regular girl. No pretenses about her. Kenneth and I were
on the third row, she was in front of us. She sang alto.
We sang whatever no-singing young Negro males sing.
Suddenly it was like Jesus called her number and, bingo,
her lights went out. Like struck by lightening, she
collapsed to the floor. I don’t remember her foaming at
the mouth or anything like that. But I do remember that
neither Kenneth nor I, nor for that matter both of us
together, could hold her down. Between us, we probably
outweighed her three times over but we couldn’t hold her
down. I believe I was trying to hold her arms and
Kenneth had her legs, or maybe it was the other way
around. Neither one of us was able to achieve our aim.
We were futilely attempting to hang on to Audrey as if
we were trying to keep her from slipping off into some
invisible abyss. Meanwhile, the choir was steady
rocking. The music was rolling on. I remember looking up
at Kenneth. Neither of us could believe we couldn’t hold
down Audrey. That was the moment we knew the spirit was
real. Had to be. Had to be something greater than Audrey
cause we knew we could handle Audrey. But whatever this
was, it was something greater than us, greater than
lightweight Audrey, greater than husky Kenneth and husky
me.
Afterwards I don’t think we talked about it, but we
knew. We knew the spirit was real.
In these performances you can feel Nina roaming through
the spirit world, her song a night-black-mare of
emotions galloping full out, powerful and fleet, but
also immense and deliberate. If you’ve never had the
experience of catching the Holy Spirit, this is some of
what it feels like.
The first selection improbably merges “My Sweet Lord,” a
song by George Harrison of the Beetles and “Today Is A
Killer,” a poem by Gylan Kain of the Original Last
Poets, except this gospel arrangements sounds nothing
like the Beetles and Nina’s reading of the poem sounds
more like an improvised statement of determination
rather than a reciting of poetry. Not just anybody can
do this, can go on for nearly twenty minutes of singing
and shouting, holding notes impossibly long, stuttering
and twisting syllables into abstract symbols
communicating both resignation and relief, uttering both
shouts and sighs. Oh my God!
“Isn’t It A Pity” is more like a prayer, a plea when
everything seems hopeless. A heartfelt laying down of
burdens at the feet of the Lord. Clearly this is a song
that is sung when conditions come forth that are beyond
our abilities of comprehension. So we fling our
incomprehension out into the universe and hope we hear
back a communication from God, a sacred word or feeling
that will let us know that what seems so hopeless is not
totally lost cause.
All of the above and much more is what these examples of
Nina’s song makes me feel. She reaches into the depths
of me, stirs up memories decades old, describes
deliberations I made yesterday looking upon the disaster
that is post-Katrina New Orleans. How could she have
been there in another century when I was teenager in a
little church in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward and yet be so
right-on here and now in my senior years dealing with
the aftermath of the drowning of a metropolis?
I don’t know if I’ve helped you, dear reader, understand
Nina Simone (or understand me) but hopefully, like the
realness of another world that Kenneth and I recognized
in Audrey writhing uncontrollably on the church floor,
hopefully, you recognize there is another world and
hopefully, as it does for me, hopefully for you this
music is the vehicle for an all too brief visit (or at
least fleeting sighting/sounding) into the emotional
depths of the spirit world.
—Kalamu ya Salaam
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A category of one
If you let me use
both hands, I can count for you the number of times I’ve
set foot in a church, mosque or synagogue. It’s just not
my thing. That said, I know a little bit about the
spirit Kalamu is describing. If you listen to much black
music, you can’t help but hear it. (Aretha Franklin’s
mighty, mighty sixteen-minute performance of "Amazing
Grace" comes to mind right away, but there are countless
other examples.)
On a different
note, given that Nina Simone is the most frequently
posted artist here at Breath of Life, it should
be obvious that both Kalamu and I are completely taken
by her work. This time around, I want to comment on one
specific aspect of Nina’s style, and that is her
spontaneity. Or maybe I should say, "her apparent
spontaneity," because there is nothing I know of that
proves that the spontaneity of hers wasn’t planned.
I’m referring to the way Nina tends to deviate from the
literal text of the song. Sometimes it’s an ad-lib,
adding something that isn’t ’supposed’ to be there.
("We’ve been programmed that way!" - Around 9:15 of
"Isn’t It A Pity.") Sometimes, it’s unexpected silences.
(They’re all over the place. Just listen.) Sometimes,
it’s the odd way Nina holds or bends a note or word.
("Everything is plas…tic…kuh." Right near the end of
"Pity.") Most amazing about Nina’s deviations is that
she does it all while sounding completely natural and
self-assured. It never sounds gimmicky or forced. If you
didn’t know any better, you’d swear that both of these
recordings were made in Nina’s living room with her
holding court at her piano, cigarette and drink within
reach, her only audience a small group of close friends
and associates.
It’s both curious and oxymoronic that Nina often sounds
so casual and unstudied. The extraordinary ease with
which she performs belies a highly dedicated and very,
very intense performer. If you’ve ever read or heard an
interview of Nina’s, you know that she takes both
herself and her music very seriously. Almost to a fault,
I’d say. The woman never suffered a fool, gladly or
otherwise. It wasn’t uncommon for her to interrupt an
interview to inform an ignorant interviewer as to the
exact breadth and depth of his or her ignorance.
Thinking about it now, we might say that Nina’s
well-practiced unaffectedness is ‘Ali-esque’ in both its
impudence and effectiveness. Whether in the studio or on
stage, the woman is honestly in a category of one: the
greatest.—Mtume ya Salaam
posted 12 February 2007
Ain't Got No...I've Got Life
(video) /
Four Women (video) / / Feelings (video)
Harlem Festival, Part 2 (video) /
Harlem Festival, Part 3 (video) /
Harlem festival, Part 4 (video)
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 6 July 2008
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