ChickenBones: A Journal

for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes

   

Home  ChickenBones Store (Books, DVDs, Music, and more)

Google
 

  Nina was called the High Priestess of Soul and there is more than just mere admiration in

the title. . . . the term Priestess has a connotation of holiness attached to it.

 

 

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)

*   *   *   *   *

Remembering Nina

By Amin Sharif

 

Back when I was in high school, I was given an album of Nina Simone’s songs. And, I immediately fell in love with Nina. You see, at the time, young blacks who were really hip had stopped listening to R&B. The Temptations, James Brown, the Supremes were considered too commercial to have anything “real” to say to a generation of  blacks who were growing more and more militant. New icons were rising on a cultural landscape that was changing. The Blues, Cool Jazz, and Be Bop were in if you were “really” black. Miles Davis, the Jazz Messengers, Monk, Dizzy, Max Roach, Abby Lincoln and Coltrane and hundreds of others were making music that was centered in a new Black Consciousness.

All this Black Consciousness was fed by the Civil Rights and the Black Power Movement. Entertainers like Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poiter, Eartha Kitt and others who had for years suffered under an artistic version of Jim Crow rushed to put their prestige and their careers behind political movements for justice and equality. And right in the middle of it all was Nina Simone.

Nina, from the very beginning, presented something different visually and vocally for black audiences. First, she displayed the beauty of a real Black Woman. What I mean by that is that Nina wore her hair natural. She looked partly like an African Queen and partly like one of those fine Sisters a Brother might run into at a Cabaret. Was Nina sexy? Damn skippy. Her voice was sensual, raw, and illuminating. Her stage presence was awesome. When she performed a song she not only made it her own, but she also wrote the words of that song upon the very soul of the listener.

Nina wasn’t afraid of controversy. When she recorded her classic Four Women, a song which bespoke of the way skin color within the black community determined social status, many black radio stations refused to play it. But these same radio stations filled the air waves with her generational black anthem Young, Gifted, and Black.

Nina was called the High Priestess of Soul and there is more than just mere admiration in the title. Unlike the title Queen of Soul, the term Priestess has a connotation of holiness attached to it. The term Priestess of Soul is inscribed on a background of ancientness. And, for black people, the term Priestess is culturally charged. As a people of African descent, we probably had Priestess long before we had Queens. Nina, in posture and attitude, captured in the mind’s eye all that a Priestess should be. Her words and songs held a magic reborn, passed down from generation to generation, from slavery to freedom. She literally “cast a spell” on every person who heard her sing or gazed upon her womanhood. The spell remains. And it will remain as long as she will be remembered. And that will be a very long time indeed.

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)

*   *   *   *   *

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'."

*   *   *   *   *

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.

*   *   *   *   *

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)

*   *   *   *   *

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)

*   *   *   *   *

Ancient African Nations

*   *   *   *   *

If you like this page consider making a donation

online through PayPal

*   *   *   *   *

Negro Digest / Black World

Browse all issues


1950        1960        1965        1970        1975        1980        1985        1990        1995        2000 ____ 2005        

Enjoy!

*   *   *   *   *

The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan  The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll  Only a Pawn in Their Game

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery / George Jackson  / Hurricane Carter

*   *   *   *   *

The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg

The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804  / January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of Haiti 

*   *   *   *   *

*   *   *   *   *

 

 

 

 

 

update 6 July 2008

 

 

 

Home Amin Sharif  Table   Bio-Chronology   Tributes Obituaries Remembrances

Related files: The Emotional Depths of the Spirit World   Nina Remembers    Remembering Nina   Four Women   To Be Young, Gifted and Black  Well Done, Miss Simone   Music and Musicians  Chick Webb Memorial Index