Nina Simone

Nina Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon, February 21, 1933 in North Carolina. The sixth of eight children, she began playing the piano at the age of three and showed extreme talent for classical music. Due to the poverty of her family, her mother worked as a maid. Nina showed her talent to her mother’s employer, who recognized her great ability and started a fund to pay for Nina’s piano lessons and early education. When she was twelve she performed a classical piano recital. Her parents had

Nina Simone was born on February 21,1933, in Tryon, North Carolina. Her birth name was Eunice Kathleen Waymon, but later in her life Nina decided to change it to make a living. This was done to disguise herself from her family members as she had chosen to sing the style of jazz which was known as “the devil’s music”. Nina began her musical carrier at the age of 3 by learning to play the piano. Early on in her life Nina’s musical training emphasized classical songs like Beethoven and Brahmas. After

Nina Simone’s 8th studio album, Pastel Blues, is an album featuring a fusion of sistering genres: blues, jazz, soul, folk, and gospel. Nina, being the brilliant arranger she was, is known for her ability to blend these genres into her signature sound. A sound most struggle to classify due to its avant garde nature. She got her start in music by playing the piano in church. One evening her church had a recital where her talents were recognised. Which lead to her starting piano lessons. Nina and her

this notion, she decided to take a stage name. She chose Nina – an affectionate term that an ex-boyfriend used to call her meaning girl in Spanish – and Simone – after Simone Signoret a French actor, because she though it sounded sophisticated. With her new stage name, she got a job in a small bar and grill off the boardwalk. At first she just played the piano, but her boss told her that she had to sing or she could not keep the job. Nina began to put her own style – a mixture from her background

of a full realization of Black freedom a century after the Thirteenth Amendment. [1. Sound of the Break: Jazz and the Failures of Emancipation Bridget R. Cooks American Quarterly (June 2016) no. 2 330http://muse.jhu.edu/article/622084] It took Nina Simone an hour to write “Mississippi Goddam”, which is a song based on the place names of oppression. It was written immediately in the wake of the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, where four African American girls, none older than fourteen

dominant sources of leadership and influence. Nina Simone led an influential and successful life as a musical artist, especially during the civil rights movement. Her music fused genres of classical, soul, rhythm and blues, and jazz to create a completely unique, uncategorizable style of music. Her contralto voice and distinguished musical style made her easily recognizable and popular to a diverse, global audience during the 60s and 70s. Although Simone is often omitted from historical recounts of

The play Nina Simone: Four Women accentuates the importance of individual responsibility to evoke change. Throughout the piece the viewer can see the theme of power introduced as an act of standing up for what you believe in, putting aside how difficult or impossible it might seen. Saffronia and Peaches have decided to fight for their identities in two very distinctive ways. In comparison to Aunt Sarah and Sweet Thing these women have taken a step against the system that is oppressing them, rather

captivating people with her raspy voice and beautiful music training. As a devoted Civil Rights activists, Ms. Simone used her platform as a singer to fight the cause. She was known for songs such as “Mississippi Goddam," "Young, Gifted and Black" and "Feeling Good”. She didn’t feed on fame, she used it to expand the work that others were doing. Before she would be known as Nina Simone, on February 21, 1933, in Tryon, North Carolina, Eunice Kathleen Waymon was born. As a young girl, playing piano

or best known as Nina Simone has captured many events and has proved loyalty to the civil right movements beginning in the 1950s. Ironically, my need to be listening to different music everyday made my ear become sweetened by the voice of Nina Simone and caught my attention by her powerful lyrics. With just a few words and listening carefully to her words, she became a motivator and an individual who has inspired me greatly every time I put my headphones on and play Nina Simone on my Pandora as

performance. Nina Simone is perhaps the most politically significant figure of the latter group, as she not only actively participated as a proponent of civil rights efforts, but became a pioneer in black power and feminist ideology. Nina Simone transcended the typical ideas of blackness through her music, and used this position of respectability to further more radical, advanced ideas of black liberation that would make up much of the rhetoric for the 1970s and beyond. Before Nina Simone was an activist