The Songs of Nina Simone
Black musical expression, especially during the
Civil Rights Movement, is an expression centered around protest and resistance,
and one of the most outstanding members of this tradition of black protest
music is Nina Simone.
According to Simone, her first protest song which
she called her “first civil rights song” was Mississippi Goddamn which she wrote herself. Simone released this
song after the murder of the civil rights leader Medger Evans and also in
response to a racially motivated bombing that left four black children dead. Her
courage in releasing such an anthem in a time when protest and asking for
equality resulted in the loss of life, such as what Medger Evans and many
others experienced, is immediately striking. Another very interesting thing
about this song is the lyric, “Keep on
sayin' 'go slow'...to do things gradually would bring more tragedy. I find
this interesting because it challenges the argument at the time that things
would slowly get better, that arguing for incremental measures would be more beneficial
than protests and the rhetoric that Civil Rights leaders, especially Malcolm X,
were employing. Through this song,
Simone protests not only against the oppression that was rampant in that time
but also notions of changing race relations which she thought were
counterproductive, or perhaps even harmful.
Furthermore, I also think it is important to
state here the difference that having one’s emotions and thoughts articulated
in a speech has as compared to having them articulated in a song. The
importance and impact of the speeches and the interviews of Civil Rights
leaders cannot be ignored or downplayed. The consequences of their oration are
immense. But Nina Simone’s rendition of “Strange Fruit” evokes such a harrowing
image and such unmitigated feelings of tragedy and injustice that one is left
shaken. Especially when she sings;
“Black
bodies
Swinging in
the southern breeze
Strange
fruit hangin'
From the
poplar trees”
The intensity of feeling that Simone is able to create
is striking and lasting, and it can be argued that this gives voice to a
particular and specific feeling of helplessness experienced by African-Americans
of that time, and by articulating this feeling, Simone is able to allow her listeners
to articulate it as well.
While Simone’s song, “I’m feeling good” is not a
protest song, I thought it merited mention here. Throughout this course, we
have talked repeatedly about this idea of going home, of an after, and I feel that this song which
talks of
“It's a new
dawn
It's a new
day
It's a new
life for me, yeah”
“And this old world, is a new world
And a bold world, for me”
And a bold world, for me”
also puts forth this hopeful idea of a new bold world for “me”, which
can be interpreted to be a stand-in for those suffering under the white man.
What is striking then, ultimately, about Nina Simone is not only the particular
intensity and clear emotional articulation that she brings to her protest songs
but also the fact that she sang about the after
and while her protest songs, it can be argued, are aimed at the oppression
she and others faced, in “Feeling Good”, Simone sings to all those that face
such oppression and shows them a new day wherein they all will have a new life.
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