The Truth is Angry

For a lot of us, music is a sign of self-expression. More often than not, for many of us, we tend to find solace in music when nothing else works. Its like you can let it all out without having to say anything. The understanding comes from the soul in your music more than from the words. Music is a form of self expression that is also a form of protest. And it has remained so for many years. The black man in the field who was rendered speechless by his master found comfort and consolation in his songs. Fast-forward and we find this expression still present in what we term now as “protest songs”. One of the most prominent figure of the music of protest is without doubt Nina Simone. Hearing the gloom in Nina Simone’s voice as the words to Strange Fruit rolled from her tongue sent shivers down my spine. With each line, a haunting image starts to emerge in your mind. The break after every line is long enough for you to absorb the essence of it, the anger and the melancholy in Miss Simone’s voice. She isn’t asking for your sympathy, she’s asking you for your humanity and for your understanding. This song didn’t arouse a feeling of sadness but it aroused a terrifying realization of what has the world done. A question; how could we? How did this happen?

More than anything else what intrigued me in her ‘protest songs’ was the anger. Be it Strange Fruit or Mississippi Goddamn.  Im not even sure if anger is the right world to describe her feelings; every word reeks of so petrifying emotional turmoil. It’s like there is this storm inside her, which is threatening to break out. In her live performance of “Star”, with every stroke of her finger on the piano, with every word that slips out of her mouth, with every gaze that follows, there is a chilling anger. A sad anger for not being seen as a human, as an individual, as someone who has had her entire life crippled for merely showing the white people a mirror. From a dreamer who was denied entry into her dream school just because she’s black to one of the biggest name in Jazz who’s worth is reduced to singing in bars for a few hundred dollars only because she chose to speak. Nina Simone lived in a world where the white man tried to tame the black man through an invisible leash but she wasn’t having any of it. She refused to bow. She refused to live a lie, a façade. Her strength is in her truth.  She gave up everything for that truth. And truth is angry because the lies have done too much damage. Miss Simone said “I'll tell you what freedom is to me: NO FEAR!” And she felt that freedom in her singing, and we felt that hope for a freedom in her songs. As a performer, that’s what she truly was, a free woman. And that’s what her songs will forever represent; freedom.