Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Alena Kadlčíková

Nina Simone’s lyrics as a reflection of African American culture Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A.

2018

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Alena Kadlčíková

I would like to thank Jeffrey Vanderziel for his time, patience and valuable advice. I would also like to thank my family, colleagues and friends for their support and encouragement, when I needed it the most. Table of Contents

1. Introduction ...... 1 2. ’s background and her beginnings as a piano player ...... 3 3. Performance and the use of the element of signifying ...... 8 4. Simone’s musical career and her work before the year 1964 ...... 14 5. “” ...... 18 The inspiration for the song ...... 18 Performing “Mississippi Goddam” for the first time ...... 21 6. The change of the artistic creation of Nina Simone after “Mississippi Goddam” .. 26 “Four Women” ...... 29 “Backlash ” ...... 30 “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” ...... 32 7. Conclusion ...... 34 Works Cited ...... 36 Resumé ...... 40 Summary ...... 41

1. Introduction

Nina Simone was without a doubt one of the most influential African American artists and fighters for civil rights of the second half of the twentieth century who lived and worked in the United States, Europe and Africa. Mainly during the 1960s and

1970s, she composed and performed countless songs that were pointing out the shortcomings in the American political and social system. As one of the women pioneers of the second wave feminism, she was not afraid to tell the unpleasant truth about the issues of racism out loud and fight for the rights of African Americans. Nina

Simone, along with many others, was trying to break down the boundaries set for the

African American people in the United States. Being the artist gave the purpose to her music and helped her with sharing her passion.

Born in the American South, to the family of an entertainer and a Methodist church minister, Eunice Kathleen Waymon (Simone’s original name) had always had the bar set high. Early in her childhood, she decided that she would become the first

African American classical pianist. That dream had changed, but she pursued her musical career and found her place amongst the greatest African American artists, civil rights activists and black feminists. Although Simone is often being referred to as a singer, blues singer, folk, soul or gospel singer, she never wanted to be put in just one category. Simone knew how to “mix and match musical forms as a way to break free of the racial and gender circumscriptions placed upon her in popular music culture”

(Brooks 176) and she was capable of using that gift in her and her people’s favor.

Simone’s attitude towards the music and towards her audiences had always been different from any other singer’s attitude. Her performances were difficult and often very demanding for both, Simone and for her listeners. She had always been very straightforward, strict and passionate when her performance was concerned. But in the

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1964, after the release of the song “Mississippi Goddam”, Simone’s attitude towards her work changed even more. She found the purpose for her music and she started to use it as a weapon in the fight for the African American civil rights.

This thesis seeks to summarize Nina Simone’s life work and to point out and demonstrate the significant changes of the thematic and the lyrical content of the songs that Simone composed and chose to sing after the events of 1963 and the first performance of the song “Mississippi Goddam” in 1964. It also shows, how her individual songs reflect on the happenings in the United States that concerned African

American people and their struggle and the African American history and culture.

Using the information from the autobiography , which Nina

Simone wrote in collaboration with freelancer Stephen Cleary, the thesis first provides the information about Simone’s family, background and her beginnings as a piano player. The second chapter is dedicated to Nina Simone’s performances themselves, it describes her technique, abilities, costumes and visage and it touches upon the hypnotic skills of Simone and the use of the element of signifying in her work. The following chapters describe Simone’s artistic creation before the 1964 breakthrough performance of the song “Mississippi Goddam” and the striking change in her approach to the music and politics after the 1964 concert in Carnegie Hall.

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2. Nina Simone’s background and her beginnings as a piano player

Nina Simone is the stage name of the African American singer, pianist, songwriter and activist participating in the American civil right movements mainly in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. She was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in the late winter of 1933. Nina Simone came from small town in the American South – Tryon,

North Carolina. Like the other southern places in the beginning of the twentieth century,

Tryon was segregated, but fortunately there was something different about it, “the town was physically more mixed than usual, blacks and whites took part in all sorts of activities together long before desegregation (…) it was just an easygoing small town with a council which existed only to ensure nothing happened to spoil the peaceful life the white folks led” (Simone and Cleary 4-5).

Simone’s family were Methodists, father John Divine Waymon successively made living as a barber, driver and a handyman. He worked until his health condition allowed him to do so. Simone’s mother, Mary Kate Waymon, was a housewife (as she stated in the birth certificate of Eunice) and a Methodist minister for whom Nina

Simone was the sixth child. Having seven siblings (five older and two younger), little

Eunice Waymon was used to sharing everything and helping others. Life in the house of the Waymons had fixed rules: “there was never liquor on the house and there was no profanity. A Christian household” (Simone and Cleary 5). Although they were very poor, the family never suffered from hunger and they always had a place to live.

Eunice started playing the piano when she was only 2 years old and strong enough to push down the keys. Since all kinds of events suggested that she was exceptionally gifted (she learned to play the simple tunes by herself, as a toddler she was capable of clapping hands along to the rhythm, …), the only explanation of her

3 talent for her parents and the people in the town was, that she “had received a gift from

God”, like every child of the Waymon family, Eunice was “expected to excel” (Simone and Cleary 15). It did not take a long time until the whole town started to call her the

“prodigy”.

At the age of 6, Simone was a regular church pianist and she could do what she loved the most, play from dawn to dusk. Although Simone’s mother would allow her to play just the church music, because the “real songs”, as she would call them, were not appropriate, Simone loved all sorts of music and wanted to know and play them all.

When she wanted to play other kinds of music, she would find a confederate – her father. He would alert her with a “whistle” if he saw “Momma coming down the road” while practicing the prohibited music (Simone and Cleary 17). The strong relationship between Simone and her father was what enabled the rebellious part of her to stand out and practice any kind of music she wanted.

There were times, when making living was real struggle, for a short time, the family was even forced to move out of Tryon. Simone’s father’s health got worse and he needed care and help, mostly from Eunice who, at that time, did not have to study or work. When they moved back to Tryon, Simone’s mother was working for Mrs. Miller, the “first white person [Simone] knew at all, to speak to”, who came to listen Eunice playing in the church and declared that “with the talent [Eunice] had it would be sinful if [she] didn’t have proper piano tuition” (Simone and Cleary 21). Because the Waymon family did not have the money to pay for the piano lessons, Mrs. Miller offered to pay for one year of Eunice’s tuition and if it was worth it, she would continue. That is how

Nina Simone met her tutor, the lady who showed her the beauty of classical music, Mrs.

Muriel Massinovitch, whom she called “Miz Mazzy”.

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The piano lessons with “Miz Mazzy” were very beneficial, but Mrs. Miller could not pay for them forever, so the “Eunice Waymon Fund” was founded (Simone and

Cleary 24). Simone would continue studying the piano and she soon fell in love with

Johann Sebastian Bach and his music, she learned to be precise and disciplined, just like her teacher and her favorite composer. From that time on, Simone demanded the same discipline from her audiences and she would never play if she was not sure that the audience was completely silent and that they were ready to listen to what she had to play.

Nina Simone was raised to be a good, obedient Christian child. She was taught never to boast and always do what she had been told. The first time she broke that rule was when she was only eleven years old. She was asked to give a recital in her hometown, so that everyone could enjoy the skills of the “prodigy”. About this experience, she wrote in her autobiography:

I sat at the piano with my trained elegance while a white man introduced me,

and when I looked up my parents, who were dressed in their best, were being

thrown out of their front row seats in favour of a white family I had never seen

before. (…) Nobody else said anything, but I wasn’t going to see them treated

like that and stood up in my stretched dress and said if anyone expected to hear

me play they’d better make sure that my family was sitting right there in the

front row where I could see them, and to the hell with poise and elegance. So

they moved them back. (…) All of a sudden it seemed a different world, and

nothing was easy anymore. (Simone and Cleary 26)

Nina Simone was not the innocent little girl anymore. At that moment, she understood that the prejudice and racism are real and, like she expected, she would encounter them for the rest of her life.

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After the graduation from Allen High, young Eunice Waymon left for New

York. The plan was clear: she would attend Juilliard, take the piano lessons and continue her studies so she could become the first black classical pianist. Eunice had one and only goal and that was getting a scholarship to the Curtis Institute in

Philadelphia. When she heard from the Curtis Institute after the scholarship examination, it came as a huge surprise. She had been rejected. She was not good enough.

Although at first it seemed that she made up her mind and was “finished with music” (Simone and Cleary 43), she very quickly returned to it. For a short time, Eunice

Waymon would play the piano to accompany the students of singing lessons. The job did not pay well and because she decided she would take piano lessons to get to the

Curtis institute at the second attempt, she needed more money. On the advice of one of her students, she found a job for the summer – playing a piano at the Midtown Bar and

Grill in Atlantic City. To play at a bar, she had to stay incognito, for her mother could not find out that she was working “in the fires of hell” (Simone and Cleary 49). Eunice

Waymon had to find a way to stay invisible for her mother’s eyes, from that moment on, her name was Nina Simone. Nina from Spanish Niña, which means “little one” and

Simone because of the French actress Simone Signoret. That is how Nina Simone got her stage name and how she gave birth to the future pianist, singer and a lot more.

Major part of artists are the stars on the stage and “ordinary” people in their private life.

Nina Simone was the artist from that day, for every hour of her life.

Although at the bar, Simone only wanted to play the piano, she was forced to sing too. Nina Simone started to sing and compose her own music, she played her songs and it was a sensation. The songs “came out with Bach’s technique, but they were my songs, and I wrote new ones every night” (Simone and Cleary 52). Playing her own

6 music suddenly became more and more important. Eventually the idea of a career of classical pianist was gone, Nina Simone was a concert player.

Having the training of classical pianist, Simone demanded the proper behavior from her audiences. Not only in the glamorous concert halls, but even in the dirty, dark nightclubs, she would not play until everyone in the room was silent and responsive.

Simone had that special power over the people since the very beginning of her career and over time she learned to work with her gift and she would use it to hypnotize the whole world.

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3. Performance and the use of the element of signifying

The process of Simone’s musical creation and her performance style are unique in many ways. Some of her abilities are almost beyond understanding and many people can indeed explain them only as being given to her as a gift from God. But Simone had always been very disciplined and thanks to her determination and the musical education in classical music she had got, she became an artist who could connect and alternate even the most diverse musical styles, genres, rhythms and keys offhand. Her music is truly powerful and with her songs, Simone managed to connect the African American people in the fight for their rights and the search for their identity.

Although she did not want to be categorized, Nina Simone had mostly been referred to as a jazz musician, because jazz music meant black music and Simone wrote and sang the black music – “one of the most controversial forms of music, not only in its analytical, but in its philosophical and meta-physical aspects” (Byrd 30). Byrd, in his essay says, that “some people speak of it [black music] as excessive and socially dangerous” (30) and that is what Nina Simone’s music and actions meant for the white

American authorities in the 1960s and 1970s. Simone’s work was potentially dangerous because it empowered the African American minority in the US and gave them the needed self-confidence to resist and to demand the changes of the social and political system. Nina Simone was a black person proud of being one, she found a way of dealing with the differences and inequalities of the race and gender and encouraged others to try to do the same. While performing, she used many different tricks to conquer her audiences.

One of the most important parts of Nina Simone’s performances was, apart from her ability to capture the moment in the song lyrics, her ability to hypnotize the

8 audience with her voice and acting. The power she had over the public while performing was her most effective weapon. What Malik Gaines calls “quadruple- consciousness” is the essence of Nina Simone’s work and it is what made her so exceptional and powerful. It was mainly “her combinatory textual approach, along with her transformational uses of persona, costume, and voice” (Gaines 249) that enabled her to dazzle the audience and “put a spell” on them. Simone could switch between different voices and styles not only in course of one concert but even within one single song. The perfect demonstration of this gift of hers are the performances of the song about African American stereotypes, “Four Women”. Not only that every single performance of the song is different, but every woman in it has a different voice and individual personality expressed perfectly by Simone’s voicing and acting. During the

Harlem Cultural Festival in August 17, 1969, Simone played the song with great passion. This performance exactly illustrates her ability to play with her voice and her music. Starting with the calm and quiet confession of Aunt Sarah, the song gradually gains momentum with every single woman speaking. As the song goes, the beat intensifies, the piano line gets more complicated and somehow more disturbing. By degrees, the song gets to its peak. When the character of Peaches sings her part,

Simone’s voice is trembling with anger and after the line “I'm awfully bitter these days/ because my parents were slaves”, finally, her voice breaks in the scream of Peaches’ name. The piece “Four Women” is just one of many demonstrations of Simone’s combinatory approach. Her voice alone – the alternations of different moods, octaves and rhythms – is the tool for telling the story so that the listeners would believe her and so that they agreed with her story.

Simone’s impact on her audience was almost unreal, Danielle C. Heard refers to her performances as being “hypnotic” and compares them to Haitian folk magic called

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“hoodoo” (1065). Using the verbal and non-verbal means of communication of black culture, Simone with her work demonstrates her African roots and very often also the contrast of those with the white American society. Shocking the audiences with the constant change of her voice and behavior, she keeps the listeners’ attention and creates a certain feeling of curiosity in them. She “stages with extreme contrasts” (Heard 1075) and mixes the “black vernacular idiom with an ambiguously European accent and bourgeois colloquialisms, to the range of conflicting emotions through which she abruptly takes her audience” (Heard 1075), as in the case of her music, Simone blends together seemingly non-combinable parts of speech and makes them fit together.

Demonstrating the black culture, Simone’s work contains the omnipresent element of African American expression known as signifying. Signifying originally

“functioned as a type of code that prevented non-blacks from understanding communications which blacks desired to conceal” (Butler 18-19) and it still is an important part of black culture. Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his book The Signifying

Monkey cites Roger D. Abrahams’ definition of it:

Signifying seems to be a Negro term, in use if not in origin. It can mean any

number of things; (…) it certainly refers to the trickster’s ability to talk with a

great innuendo, to carp, cajole, needle, and lie. It can mean in other instances the

propensity to talk around subject, never quite coming to the point. It can mean

making fun of a person or situation. Also it can denote speaking with the hands

and eyes, and in this respect encompasses a whole complex of expressions and

gestures. (Gates 54)

In the case of Simone’s work, the signifying allows to create a sort of a game. It is a game she plays with her and her audiences. Signifying is not just an ordinary recitation/singing of the line, being “accompanied by appropriate pauses-for-effect,

10 syllabic emphases on key words, emphases on key phrases, a practiced delivery cadence, a well-modulated voice tone and facial and other physical expressions” (Butler

23), it creates a completely different point of view on the song – the signified. Simone uses her voice as a tool to bend and remodel the lyrics of the song as such:

She seems to mispronounce words often, inventing her own non-standard

emphases and intonations. As she makes up bridges, codas, and reprises for her

songs, the piano and melody can move out of synch with the words that won’t

come quickly enough, necessitating unusual vocalizations. In these instances,

language and meaning are fully estranged as Simone seems to be singing in

tongues, or perhaps inventing her own Afro-Carribean language. (Gaines 263)

All kinds of diverse screams and moans led to the development of free jazz, the fact that

Simone uses those so often might have led to categorizing her as a jazz singer.

Signifying creates the tension that gives the space to the creativity and imagination of the listener: Simone with her expression only implies the true meaning of her work and it is up to the audience to interpret the message. An apparent example of this signifying game is without a doubt the song “” with lyrics by the

German Marxist playwright Bertold Brecht. The song originally sounded in the 1928

Three Penny Opera composed by German composer Kurt Weil. During the 1964 performance in New York, Simone, in the role on Jenny sensibly tells the narrative:

You people can watch while I'm scrubbing these floors And I'm scrubbin' the floors while you're gawking Maybe once ya tip me and it makes ya feel swell this crummy Southern town In this crummy old hotel But you'll never guess to who you're talkin'. No. You couldn't ever guess to who you're talkin'.

The song was originally a socialist artwork directed against the capitalist system in the

1930s Germany, Simone borrowed it and used it as a protest directed against the white

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American society in the 1960s. In the song, the character of Pirate Jenny sings about her endless duty of scrubbing the floors while being stared at and yelled at by the people sitting around. But she knows about a ship “The Black Freighter/ With a skull on its masthead” that is coming her way to rescue her and to help her to get rid of her oppressors. Simone does not just sing, what she does is a theatrical performance. She whispers, raises her voice, accelerates the pace and sometimes, to add the unbearable tension, she slows the music so dramatically that the listener almost has a need to ask for her to continue.

Simone uses the song as a sort of an alarm for the white America and as a way of telling the white Americans that the change is coming and that it is inevitable. This kind of expression can be described with Kermit E. Campbell’s definition. In his opinion, signifying means “the use of language or discourse to affirm cultural identity and community in the face of the imposition of cultural dominance and oppression”

(463). Using the signifying elements, Simone returns to her roots, uses the black culture’s means of expression and relies on the listeners’ susceptibility and their awareness of the presence of them in her work. This is possible, because the listeners, like the “early African Americanists” are capable of “piecing together highly mediated

(and thus politicized) fragments of the past” (Bassard 853) and use them to understand the message contained in the song. With the end of the song approaching, when Simone almost whispers the line: “Kill them now, or later?” the tension in the audience greatly grows. After asking, Simone “pauses with such intensity as to suggest she is really quite seriously pondering the question” (Gaines 256).

The same compelling and convincing effect as changing the verbal content of her songs, is enabled by the variation on Simone’s visage and costumes. During her career, Simone went from the classical pianist, dressed in evening gowns with hair

12 smoothly combed in the Flipped Bob (short, ironed hair), to embracing her African

American self, she “wore her hair in dramatically different styles from one performance to the next, including straight-haired wigs; but as early as 1961 these included a natural

Afro style (…) a change in Simone’s physical presentation signaled a change in her musical repertoire” (“The World Was On Fire” 27). During a performance of a 1969 concert in a Morehouse College gymnasium in Atlanta, her “band wore dashikis, while

Simone wore an elegant black suit, made fashionably militant with high black boots and a large afro hairstyle, accessorized with silver jewelry, Cleopatra-style eye makeup, and a corsage” (Gaines 250).

Simone makes use of mixing and matching different styles, both musically and visually. Her performance is never just about singing the song, but about the overall impression of it and the impact it has on the audience. The change of voice, appearance and attitude all play very important role in defining Nina Simone’s work. With the use of screams and moans she refers to her origins, her “vocalizations and improvisations which are are also estranging, resonate deeply in black music history” (Gaines 263) which she uses to make her music as authentic as possible.

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4. Simone’s musical career and her work before the year 1964

Apart from the many others, one of the designations of Nina Simone is a soul singer, she was even called the “”. Like jazz music, gospel music and R&B, with which Simone often is associated, soul music is connected to black culture and Simone did a great job in blending all the genres together with classical piano accompaniment and transform them into one unique style.

The label of soul singer is very appropriate when it comes to Simone’s earliest work, because like many other soul songs, Simone’s work in the early 1960s consisted mainly of songs about love and the struggle connected with it. Emily J. Lordi in her essay quotes the definition of soul music as formulated by Geneva Smitherman, who describes soul as: “the essence of life; feeling, passion, emotional depth – all of which are believed to be derived from struggle, suffering, and having participated in the Black

Experience. Having risen above the suffering, the person gains soul” (56).

Many of Simone’s “songs featured romantic love, motherly love, and Black self- love” (Mena and Saucier 255) and unfulfilled love was the main source of struggle and suffering for Nina Simone in her early days as an artist. Before she started to use her music to help black people in their fight for civil rights, it served her mainly as a way of sharing her pain with the public.

Simone’s Little Girl Blue, recorded in 1956 and released two years later, is very accurate demonstration of her art of combining different styles. Probably the most famous song on this album is a piece that got Simone to the public awareness. It is a song by Ira and , called “I Loves You, Porgy”, which “received considerable airtime on the radio; it reached number 2 on the rhythm and blues (R&B) charts and the top 20 in the summer of 1959” (“Nina Simone, Culture, and Black

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Activism” 1354). By singing the song, she ensured the listener’s affection and their love, quite a few men wished that their name was Porgy and that they were loved and taken care of by Nina Simone. The song was inspired by the version sung by Billie

Holliday and Simone recorded it several times. It occurs on four of her : Little

Girl Blue (1958), Nina Simone And Her Friends (1960), (1964) and Nina Simone with Strings (1966), probably because it was one of Simone’s top 40 hits. All the verses of the song are alternations of the first one that reads:

I loves you, Porgy Don't let him take me Don't let him handle me and drive me mad If you can keep me I wanna stay here with you forever and I'll be glad

The song is an open confession of a loving woman that expresses her only wish, she needs her man to be with her, keep her and do not let others do her any harm. Maybe because Simone identify with the song, it was so easy for her to perform it so smoothly and passionately.

Part of the album is a song of the same name which is the proof of her combinatory approach. The song “Little Girl Blue” begins with Simone playing the melody of “Good King Wenceslas” which she is developing for almost a minute like it was some sort of a classical piano composition. The melody reappears several times throughout the song. After playing the prelude, Simone starts singing the first verse of the lullaby-like song. The whole song smoothly flows and with the solos and chants characteristic for the classical music, Simone creates feeling of very calm, serious piece of work that almost sounds like religious composition.

Another song from the album Little Girl Blue with the theme of love, is the jazz standard written by Walter Donaldson, “My Baby Just Cares for Me”. It is “an example of an implied message supportive of Black beauty (…) her lyrics are in line with an

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Africana womanism perspective as evidenced by the prominence of messages against race-based oppression for the betterment of Black men, women, and children alike”

(Mena and Saucier 261). Simone sings about her “baby”, who does not like the standards of white beauty, he likes her and her African features:

My baby don't care for shows My baby don't care for clothes My baby just cares for me My baby don't care for cars and races My baby don't care for high-tone places

Liz Taylor is not his style And even Lana Turner's smile Is somethin' he can't see My baby don't care who knows My baby just cares for me

The simple, upbeat melody and elementary double bass and piano accompaniment allow the swing-like version of the song to stand out and become very memorable and catchy. The song is one of those that the audience cannot get of their minds.

Simone’s lifelong struggle was finding the right partner; not only in her private, but also in her professional life. She had very difficult personality and it was not easy for everyone to understand her. She had always picked up her band members and the musicians she worked with very harshly, she was very straightforward and perfectionist and when it concerned her music, she was uncompromising and almost never willing to step back. Nevertheless, Simone always acted with the best intent. Her biggest fear was that there might be people who misinterpret her behavior, “to be misunderstood was one of Simone’s unvarying fears and sources of personal struggle” (Heard 1058).

Simone in her work relied on people’s comprehension and the correct understanding of the conveyed information, “the project for Nina, then, is not a need to be understood, to be fully known in the name of some narcissistic hunger for fame.

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Rather it is a project to not be misunderstood” (Heard 1079). The hook and the third verse of the song sum up the message of it and at the same time they express Simone’s wish:

I’m just a soul whose intentions are good Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood

If I seem edgy I want you to know I never mean to take it out on you Life has its problems And I get more than my share But that's one thing I never mean to do Cause I love you

This song, like the majority of the songs Simone had sung before 1964, expressed her personal feelings, fears, desires and expectations. With more and more frequent attacks on African Americans in America, Simone’s personal life blended with the life of the other black people and slowly but surely, she started to change her approach to music and to her life itself.

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5. “Mississippi Goddam”

It was in 1964 that Nina Simone recorded the song “Mississippi Goddam”. It was this song that changed Simone’s attitude to performing and made her the fearless artist and fighter for African American rights everyone knows her to be, she became one of the artists who “rejected the notion of art for art's sake and instead chose to reflect the times and occurrences around them” (Clark 16). The song first appeared on her album

Nina Simone in Concert, recorded in Carnegie Hall in March and April 1964.

The song “Mississippi Goddam” is a work of art, skill and passion, that inspired and drove countless people around the earth and gave them the hope for change. It also introduced the issues of racism and inequality to the listeners that had never heard about such problems before and made them think about the racial and gender inequality. “The song is addressed precisely to those who are numb and sleeping through the tyranny of history, the assassination of NAACP field secretaries, and church bombings that murder little girls; they are deaf, dumb, and blind, Simone' s song asserts, to the American catastrophe at hand” (Brooks 186-187). Simone herself referred to this song as her “first civil rights song.” Later it became a hit and a civil rights anthem.

The inspiration for the song

Until the events of 1963 Simone’s career was relatively normal and the main purpose of her playing and singing was to earn enough money to continue her classical piano training. Although she already recorded five albums, the album Nina Simone in

Concert was the milestone that ended the era of Nina Simone – the classical pianist to be, and began a new one. The events of 1963 gave birth to new personae, Nina Simone

– the fighter for the civil rights. She entered “the most political period of her life, 1964 to 1970” (Heard 1058). It was not only her performance, but her whole approach to

18 music, audience and society that changed. The album “In Concert offers a framework for understanding the intersections of gender and music, art and activism in Simone's career both before and after the album's release” (“Nina Simone, Culture, and Black

Activism” 1362).

Along with the song “Mississippi Goddam”, the album contains recordings of six other songs. The love song “I Loves You Porgy” with words by opens the album. She recorded it for the first time in 1957, at that time it became an instant hit and it gained her the affection of her listeners. Opening the concert and the album with this song was a good way to attract the attention of the audience, to prepare them for the further listening and to improve their perception. Simone gradually made the atmosphere more serious with songs “Old Jim Crow” and “Pirate Jenny” culminating with the aggressive message of the last song.

In the summer of 1963 two events took place that aroused the passionate part of

Nina Simone’s personality. Early in June, the African American civil right activist

Medgar Evers was shot to death by a white supremacist and Klansman in Jackson,

Mississippi. The assassination of a member of the National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was “the match that lit the fuse” (Simone and Cleary 89). In September of the same year, Simone was preparing for the upcoming performances in her apartment when she heard the news on the radio: Four little girls had been killed in Alabama. Klansmen had thrown dynamite into the 16th Street Baptist

Church on the morning of Sunday, September 15. That was a moment of an awakening for Nina Simone. As she later wrote in her autobiography, “I suddenly realized what it was to be black in America in 1963, (…) [the song] came as a rush of fury, hatred and determination” (Simone and Cleary 89). The day of the bombing, Simone sat down at her piano and in less than hour she wrote the words of “Mississippi Goddam”. The song

19 just came out of her at one piece as a reaction to all the killings of blacks in the US. It was a message for (not only) the white America. The issues of the racial inequality already concerned the whole region, “all the major cities in the US were being shaken by black rebellion” (Russel 5). And it was not even nearly the end of Simone provoking

America and the whole world.

Nina Simone with her work tested the limits of music and very often she crossed the boarders of what was considered the appropriate performance. In the documentary

What Happened, Miss Simone?, Dick Gregory talks about the song and its message and he, like many others, admires Simone’s courage and vigorousness: “We all wanted to say it, she said it. Mississippi Godddam!” The song is a “black revolt directed equally against Southern terror and (Northern) American socio-political apathy” (Brooks 187).

Because of the daring, maybe even audacious name and content, the song was “banned in Mississippi and other Southern states” (Brooks 188). Simone in her book mentions, that “a dealer in South Carolina sent a whole crate of copies back to our [their] office with each one snapped in half” and that in some states the distributors changed the title of the song and released it as “Mississippi #**#!” (90).

Although Simone had always had the activist in her (for the first time it was clear when she was only 11 years old, as was mentioned in chapter 1), the 1960s made her the “participant in” the civil rights movements, rather than “a supporter” of them

(Heard 1059). Simone’s relationships with numerous African American artists, activists and writers played perhaps the most important role in her involvement in the civil rights movements.

Simone credited her friends in the African-American intelligentsia for

facilitating her political education in the 1960s, offering a set of African-

American strategies for critical analysis of the cultural situation. Prominent

20

among them were other socially engaged writers and Women & Performance: a

journal of feminist theory 249 dramatists: Langston Hughes, , and

Lorraine Hansberry. (Gaines 250)

It was not only the “political education” that Simone got from her friends. In contrast with the feeling of alienation Simone had in her childhood and adolescence, she finally felt like she belonged somewhere. The long and deep friendship with dramatist Lorraine

Hansberry gave her the idea to compose the song “To Be Young, Gifted and Black”, inspired by Hansberry’s unfinished play. The song was later “declared the ‘National

Anthem of Black America’” (Simone and Cleary 108) and for Simone herself, it was very empowering to see how significant impact she had on the audience. Another important relationship was the one she had with her friend, Langston Hughes. The

African American poet, social activist and writer composed the poem to which Simone added music and thus created the political song called “Backlash Blues”. Nina Simone no longer felt separated from the movements, she was a part of them and she contributed to them in every way possible.

Performing “Mississippi Goddam” for the first time

The lyrics and performance of “Mississippi Goddam” in 1964 showed the shift in her approach to the fight for civil rights. She composed the song “with both [black and white] audiences in mind” (Heard 1065) and it worked. The moment Nina Simone announced the song and she and her band started playing the “show tune”-like melody, the (mostly white) audience was captured. In her essay, Danielle C. Heard examines the comic aspects on Simone’s performance and of the “Mississippi Goddam” she says that

“perhaps the most remarkable effect of the rhetorical structure of "Mississippi Goddam" is the way in which its comic opening carves a space for ethical listening and an unobstructed encounter with the raw emotion of the singer” (1064). What Nina Simone

21 did with this song, was that she created a satire of race relations, a tool to be used for making people listen and truly hear what needed to be heard. Brooks in her essay says that “[Simone’s] work dares audiences to see and hear “America” differently” (182).

When performing the song “Mississippi Goddam” for the first time at Carnegie hall Simone introduces it with two simple sentences. “The name of this tune is

Mississippi Goddam. And I mean every word of it.” Then, to the optimistic melody, she starts to sing: “Alabama's gotten me so upset/ Tennessee made me lose my rest/ And everybody knows about Mississippi, goddam.” Simone’s assumption is very clear.

Everyone knows about Mississippi. Everyone knows, what is happening in the US and she is aware that she needs to do something about it and make all the listeners to feel the same way.

With this song, Simone “does not aim to accurately describe the situation in a literal way, but rather to communicate her reaction of surprise to the situation” (Heard

1064). What Nina Simone does is creating a surprised reaction of her audience to make

“a space for ethical listening and an unobstructed encounter with the raw emotion of the singer” (Heard 1064). In other words, the initial surprise of the audience allows the singer to break into the minds of the listeners, to “catch them off guard” (Heard 1071), hypnotize them and make them perceptive and able to see and hear all about the struggle. After the first section, she directly addresses the listeners:

Can't you see it Can't you feel it It's all in the air I can't stand the pressure much longer Somebody say a prayer

After repeating the first section, Simone interrupts herself, as she usually does, to connect with the audience, educate them and to create the needed atmosphere: “This is a show tune, but the show hasn’t been written for it yet.” A few people laugh, but the

22 song only begins and the audience, now prepared for listening to it by the singer, suspects that the song is not a comedy but a serious reference to the current America’s problems:

Hound dogs on my trail School children sitting in jail Black cat cross my path I think every day's gonna be my last

Here, “the lyrics, along with Simone's voice, escalate to a tone of desperation, foreboding and ominous doom” (Heard 1067). None of the listeners can now think that the song as a comedy or a joke. It is clear now, the message is much more serious.

Lord have mercy on this land of mine We all gonna get it in due time I don't belong here I don't belong there I've even stopped believing in prayer

Don't tell me I tell you Me and my people just about due I've been there so I know They keep on saying ‘Go slow!’

But that's just the trouble ‘Too slow’ Washing the windows ‘Too slow’ Picking the cotton ‘Too slow’ You're just plain rotten ‘Too slow’ You're too damn lazy ‘Too slow’ The thinking's crazy ‘Too slow’

Where am I going What am I doing I don't know

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I don't know

Using the call and response musical pattern and references to tasks such as picking the cotton or washing the windows, Simone knowingly enhances the impression of the

African American musical expression and slave life. With the song, Simone gradually makes “turn towards a critique of non-violence” (Heard 1067) and she furiously and most genuinely expresses her feelings about the segregated America and the government policy in the US. After singing the next verse, she interrupts herself once again: “I bet you thought I was kidding, didn’t you?” This question reassures the audience of Simone’s seriousness, now she has them prepared for the major part of the song, Heard says that the second verse is “the tragic bottom of the song” (1067):

Picket lines School boy cots They try to say it's a communist plot All I want is equality For my sister, my brother my people and me

Yes, you lied to me all these years You told me to wash and clean my ears And talk real fine just like a lady And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie

Oh, but this whole country is full of lies You're all gonna die and die like flies I don't trust you any more You keep on saying ‘Go slow!’ 'Go slow!'

Singing this part of the song, Simone shouts at the top of her lungs. It is the most earnest way of sending her message. After the lines “I don’t trust you anymore/ You keep on saying ‘Go slow’” her voice breaks and then she and her band repeat the call and response chorus.

24

Towards the end of the song, Simone “sings her fury with ventricular and pressed phonations” (Heard 1067) and with the last lines, she conveys her principal request: “You don't have to live next to me/ Just give me my equality”. She finishes the song with a scream “That’s it!” It does not only mean the end of the song but also the end of the concert, the album and of one period of Simone’s life.

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6. The change of the artistic creation of Nina Simone

after “Mississippi Goddam”

After releasing the album In Concert, Nina Simone found out what it was to be the committed movement artist. She was driven by the spirit of the revolution. Apart from the other events, the concert at Carnegie hall “added to her reputation as a musician worthy of that location and as committed to the movement” (“Nina Simone,

Culture, and Black Activism” 1360).

Simone was now one of the faces of the black revolution, she performed at many places at various occasions, promoting the ideas, requirements and the policy of the

African American society. Although “showing up was clearly a risky political choice that Simone made, she did more than perform her standard ‘supper club’ music at political events. The lyrics to the songs she wrote also changed and became more explicitly political” (“Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism” 1362). Along with the content of the songs, Simone changed her approach to the performance as such.

There are several songs Nina Simone composed and chose to sing that illustrate how significantly she adjusted her manners. Those are works such as: “Four Women”, “To

Be Young, Gifted and Black”, “Backlash Blues”, “Sinnerman”, “Work Song”, “Ain’t

Got No … I Got Life”, “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” and many others. I am going to examine some of these songs in the upcoming chapter and illustrate the change of Simone’s work on their lyrics.

Being an African American woman, Simone fought not only for the rights of black people in the society led by whites, but she also fought against the idea of the subordinate status of women in the society led by men, “rejecting any singular definition of African American womanhood was part of the album's racial politics and remained central to Simone's participation in black activism beyond In Concert” (“Nina

26

Simone, Culture, and Black Activism” 1363). Nina Simone’s advantage consists of the

“vocal quality that can be quite androgynous” and that with her voice, she “can trick the ears of the uninitiated listener” (Malik 261). This unique kind of androgynous performance is perhaps the most noticeable in the 1969 version of the song “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” recorded at the Philharmonic Hall, New York City, featuring Simone’s guitarist Emil Latimer. Because Latimer sings his part of the song in the same octave as Simone, it is almost impossible for the listener to tell if the song is being sung by a man or a woman.

Using her performative abilities and the “focus on sexuality and gender allowed her to put women at the center of multiple struggles for civil rights” (“Nina Simone,

Culture, and Black Activism” 1365). Simone did what no African American woman singer had never done before. Through her songs, she could tell her truth in the way so that people would listen to it. It had been “suggested that part of what made such songs as ‘Mississippi Goddam’ so powerful was that they sounded as if they should have been written by ‘some disciple of the caliber of Leroi Jones or Stokely

Carmichael’” (“Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism” 1368). And when it came to the combination of the daring lyrics and Simone’s androgynous voice, the camouflage was impeccable.

After 1965, Simone’s recordings as well as live performances changed radically.

Now that she discovered her African American self, she “used her body, her music, and her words to forge links between Africa and African Americans and disseminated ideas about black freedom” (“Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism” 1373). The album

In Concert, and especially the song “Mississippi Goddam”, opened Nina the door to the world of influence. Although her lyrics “revealed awareness of, and experience with emotional and psychological issues (e.g., love, stress, and resilience) possibly

27 destigmatizing emotional and psychological pain and suffering” (Mena and Saucier

247) since the beginning of her career, after the Carnegie hall Simone made all new kind of noticeable political engagement. She used her hypnotic techniques to influence those who came to her concerts and what is more, even those who listened to the recordings of her songs, “Simone was aware of her ability to captivate her audience and chose to be an activist as well as an artist” (Mena and Saucier 248).

In the late 1960s, when the eyes of the whole world were fixed on her, Nina

Simone could send her message with the certainty that everyone would get it. And although she had very difficult relationship with her audiences, they admired her, gave her respect and looked up to her. A description of Simone’s relationship with her audiences can be depicted by the documentary by Frank Lords, Nina Simone, the legend, where her former bodyguard talks about a situation that had occurred after one of Simone’s concerts when she wanted to attack a woman asking for her autograph. He says that they figured out why there were bodyguards: “To protect the public from her, not to protect her from the public!”.

Despite her uncontrollable temper and her difficult nature, the world adored her.

Not only the artists, but all the African Americans, on the stage and in the audience, were fighting for the change. Her work connected different people and somewhere deep inside, possibly even the white part of the audience knew, that what she had said was justified and right.

Knowing what she was capable of and embracing it, she began to educate the audience even more intensively, “more than any of her predecessors, she was able to fuse ideology and art” (Russel 4) and so she used her art to educate her listeners socially and politically and to help African Americans in the fight for their rights. In the documentary film by Liz Garbus, What Happened, Miss Simone?, there is a recording

28 of an interview with Nina Simone in which she declares that she “could sing to help

[her] people and that became the mainstay of [her] life”. That was what pushed her forward and gave the long needed purpose to her work.

“Four Women”

Nina Simone herself knew well, that there is never just one point of view. It was

W. E. B. Du Bois, who in his essay, published in 1897, described the concept of

“double consciousness”. For him, the “double consciousness” was the “internal conflict in the African American individual between what was ‘African’ and what was

‘American’” (Bruce 301). For Nina Simone, the consciousness was not just double, it was multiple. In his essay, Malik Gaines refers to something he calls the “quadruple consciousness”. If the “double consciousness” is “‘two-ness’ of being ‘an American, a

Negro; two warring ideals in one dark body’” (Bruce 299), then Simone’s “quadruple consciousness” is depicted the best in her song “Four Women”.

The song, recorded in 1965 and released one year later, shows “the diversity of black women’s lives” (Heard 1072) and what more, it depicts the inner division of

Simone’s mind as a black woman: “Between two worlds/ I do belong.” Simone does not only have the internal conflict between what it means to be African and/or American, but also between what it means to be a woman and what more, to be a black woman of other than purely black complexion.

The women in the song are black, but their skin tones range from light to dark

and their ideas of beauty and their own importance are deeply influenced by that.

All the song did was to tell what entered the minds of most black women in

America when they thought about themselves: their complexions, their hair –

straight, kinky, natural, which? – and what other women thought of them.

(Simone and Cleary 117)

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Simone wrote the song “to bring critical commentary to black vulnerability to white standards of beauty” (Tsuruta 56), although it was forbidden to play the song by some radio stations, because “they said it ‘insulted’ black women” (Simone and Cleary

117) people became aware of it very quickly. Aunt Sarah, Saffronia, Sweet Thing and

Peaches were all different, yet all the same, Nina Simone sang about them to point out the prejudice and the injustice of it. Every African American woman could somehow relate to one of the four women.

With this song, Simone gave the voice to the women who were otherwise silent, or even muted by the society. Every performance of the song is different and Simone

“inhabits each of these roles with transitory but committed determination” (Gaines 258).

The most significant voice belongs to the last one of the quaternion, Peaches, who, through the voice of Simone, shouts out her dissatisfaction with her (and other black women’s) situation: “I’m awfully bitter these days/ Because my parents were slaves.”

“Backlash Blues”

Another song that Nina Simone recorded after the turning point in 1964, is

“Backlash Blues”. It is an adaptation of the poem by Langston Hughes, Simone’s friend, mentor and educator, whose work “gave her material for documenting racism, appreciating the beauty of his adventures, and educating herself generally about history”

(Tkweme 508). For Simone, Hughes was the friend and the guide, about whom she talks in her autobiography: “I was guided by Langston, who sometimes gave me books he thought I should read, but more often simply sat me down and told me what I should know” (Simone and Cleary 96).

The “Backlash Blues” is probably one of the most straightforward disapprovals of the American social system as such. As W. S. Tkweme says in his essay, “the lyric issues a defiant challenge and prophecy to a white supremacist government and society”

30

(508). It is a song addressed directly to the US government, or “the power-holding white” (Heard 1073), in this case “Mr. Backlash”:

Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash Just who do think I am You raise my taxes, freeze my wages And send my son to Vietnam

You give me second class houses And second class schools Do you think that all colored folks Are just second class fools

Mr. Backlash, I'm gonna leave you With the backlash blues

Hughes, in the poem and Simone, in the song, openly express the dissatisfaction with the order of things in the United States and the discrimination of the non-white citizens.

Like in “Mississippi Goddam”, the main purpose of the song is to point out the inequality between white and black people and to demand changes of the system.

The song touches upon the problems that colored people had during the twentieth century in America. African Americans often could not find an employment and when “seeking [it, they] were met with ‘a white backlash’” (Tkweme 509). As the lyrics read: “All you got to offer/ Is your mean old white backlash”. In other words, searching for job was almost impossible for colored people, because the prejudice and racism were ubiquitous and African American effort was always met with reprisal.

During the live performance in Paris, 1968, Simone added one more verse to the song:

When Langston Hughes died, he told me many months before He said Nina keep on working till they open up the door One of these days when the doors are open wide Make sure you tell 'em exactly what’s happenin’ so they'll have no place to hide So I’m tellin’ you, oh, I’m tellin you, warnin’ you, tellin’ you now, oh I'm gonna leave you with the blues, yeah

31

By this addition to the song, Simone points out the importance of the influence of

Langston Hughes on her work and life at that time. “Backlash Blues” took its place right next to the hits like “Mississippi Goddam” and “Four Women” and it continued the fight for the colored people’s rights.

“To Be Young, Gifted and Black”

Another of the songs that marked the change in Simone’s life and work is “To

Be Young, Gifted and Black”. A song that instantly became an anthem to the National

Association for the Advancement of Colored People and paid tribute to Lorraine

Hansberry and her work. Hansberry was one of the best friends of Nina Simone.

Simone wrote about her in her autobiography and she described her as being “the person who first took [her] out of [herself] and allowed [her] to see the bigger picture”

(Simone and Cleary 86-87). Unfortunately, Hansberry died of cancer, aged 34.

Lorraine Hansberry was young African American writer and a playwright who had been working on a new play, before she died. Nina Simone used the name of the play and composed a song inspired by the title of Hansberry’s work. By writing the song, Simone kept a piece of Hansberry and her ideology alive, “Simone’s original song

‘To Be Young, Gifted and Black’ reflects the politicization of her music and performances, and the influence of Hansberry” (Gaines 250). It later became one of the most important songs of the civil rights movement in the US, during the 1960s and

1970s.

In the web article “Young, Gifted, and Black: On the Politicization of Nina

Simone”, by Malik Gaines, there is a mention of what Hansberry herself said about her play, Gaines says that she “wrote the term ‘young, gifted, and black’ into an address to the winners of a United Negro College Fund writing contest. In her comments,

Hansberry adds, ‘in the month of May in the year of 1964, I, for one, can think of no

32 more dynamic combination that a person might be’”. Having this statement and the message of Hansberry’s in mind, Simone sat at the piano and wrote the song.

During the 1970 performance of the song, in New York, before Simone started to sing, she introduced it and explained that it is not primarily for the white part of the audience, but for her people: “For my people need all the inspiration and all the love they can get.” Then, accompanied by the band, she started:

To be young, gifted and black Oh, what a lovely precious dream To be young, gifted and black Open your heart to what I mean

In the whole world you know There are billion boys and girls Who are young, gifted and black, And that's a fact! The lyrics claim that “to be young, gifted and black” is “lovely precious dream”.

Despite the struggle of the African Americans, Simone tried to encourage them and raise their confidence. Malik Gaines describes the song as “an exercise in black pride, directed at motivating the coming generation” (250). Although majority of African

Americans could relate to the lines “There are times when I look back/ And I am haunted by my youth”, with the song, Simone paved the way for all the of them and helped them to increase their confidence. Michelle Russel calls Simone the one who

“used her music to revive our [African American] roots, to internationalize the terms of our [African American] self-determination, and to develop the cultural dimension of armed struggle” (4).

Nina Simone’s performances became more passionate and they were targeting specific parts of the audience. After 1984, the content of her songs became more political, expressive and activist. Her music, as well as her approach to civil rights movements became even stronger and more genuine than it had ever been before.

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7. Conclusion

In this thesis, I analyzed Nina Simone’s work, her music and performance, and pointed out the changes in her artistic creation and the lyrical content of the songs she composed and chose to sing before and after the first performance of the breakthrough song “Mississippi Goddam” in 1964. Being one of the most active participants of the civil rights movements in America, Simone has greatly contributed to the change of the

American political and social system. Her social circle allowed her to get the needed political education and create the music that connected the African Americans and encouraged them to participate in the civil rights movements themselves.

Although the today’s public knows Nina Simone mostly as the jazz singer who sang the energetic jazz songs like “Sinnerman” or the song “Ain’t Got No, I Got Life”, that sounded in the movie Hair, this thesis shows her in a different light. It reveals the part of Nina Simone which fought for civil rights and for equalization of women’s and men’s rights. Thanks to her background, even after she became famous, she was able to sympathize with even the poorest of African Americans and motivate them to try and change their destiny. Although the majority of the artists and performers had to decide whether to continue in being an artist and entertainer, or to end with that career and be a civil right activist, Nina Simone managed to do both. While performing for thousands of people, she continued fighting for civil rights and what more, she managed to connect singing with politically educating her listeners. Simone found a way to use her political beliefs in her music and vice versa. With her work, she did what others had been trying to do for a long time – she got many people involved in different civil rights movements and she made them to care about the situation of African Americans in the US.

The first chapter of my thesis provides a brief overview of Simone’s childhood and the beginnings of her career. It explains, how a black girl from the American South

34 managed to work her way up to world’s most prestigious stages. It is followed by a chapter dedicated to Simone’s performances, the means of expression and the non- verbal communication she used when conveying the messages hidden in her work. The same chapter deals with the use of the phenomenon of signifying and the impact of

Simone’s roots on her work. But most importantly, in the following chapters, the thesis shows how significant changes Simone’s opinions and her work had undergone in response to what was happening in the US in the 1960s and 1970s.

In order to demonstrate the change in Simone’s work, I provided brief analysis of several individual songs and their performances from the periods before, and after the

1964 release of the album Nina Simone In Concert. To support my statement, I provide opinions of several experts on African American culture.

35

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Resumé

Tato diplomová práce se zabývá uměleckou tvorbou a životem Afroamerické textařky, zpěvačky a pianistky, Niny Simone a tím, jak se v ní odrážela historie a kultura Afroameričanů v Americe. Poskytuje krátký popis jejího života před tím, než se stala hvězdou světového formátu se jménem, pod kterým ji všichni znají.

Hlavním cílem této práce je poukázat na změny v její umělecké tvorbě a na jednotlivých příkladech je demonstrovat. Nina Simone byla velmi citlivá a ctižádostivá umělkyně s citem pro rytmus a pro jazyk. Jemné nuance v její tvorbě zaručují, že se odlišuje od ostatních jak Afroamerických, tak Amerických, či Evropských umělců. Tato práce poskytuje krátký popis života Niny Simone před tím, než se stala světoznámou zpěvačkou. Dále popisuje rysy její tvorby a verbální i neverbální prostředky, jichž

Simone ve své tvorbě a v průběhu svých vystoupení používala. Na jednotlivých písních poté demonstruje rozdíly těchto rysů. Zlomovým bodem v tvorbě Niny Simone byl rok

1963, během kterého se znásobil počet útoků na členy rozlišných hnutí za občanská práva Afroameričanů a také následný koncert v koncertní síni Carnegie Hall v New

Yorku, v roce 1964. Poté, co v srpnu roku 1963 členové Ku Klux Klanu bombardovali kostel v Alabamě a zabili při tom čtyři dívky školního věku, Nina Simone už nesnesla jen dál nečinně přihlížet, ale rozhodla se, že se svou tvorbou aktivně zapojí do boje proti rasismu a diskriminaci Afroamerických občanů Spojených Států Amerických. Svou tvorbou podporovala nejen boj proti Americkému sociálnímu systému, ale i posílení sebedůvěry Afroameričanů v jejich nelehké životní situaci.

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Summary

This diploma thesis deals with the artistic creation and life of the African

American songwriter, singer and pianist, Nina Simone. It also shows how it reflected the history and culture of African Americans in America. It provides a short description of Simone’s life before she became the star of a world-wide format with the name everyone knows.

The main aim of this work is to point out the changes in Simone’s artistic creation and to demonstrate them on individual examples. Nina Simone was a very sensitive and ambitious artist with a sense of rhythm and language. The subtle nuances of her work ensure that she differed from other African American and European artists.

This work provides a short description of Nina Simone's life before she became a world-famous singer. It also describes the features of her work and the verbal and nonverbal means that Simone used in her work and during her performances. On different songs the thesis then demonstrates the differences of these features. A breakthrough in Nina Simone's production was the year 1963, during which the number of attacks on members of the various African American civil rights movements increased. It was mainly the subsequent concert in Carnegie Hall in New York in 1964, that separated the two different eras of Simone’s life and work. After August 1963, when members of Ku Klux Klan bombed the Alabama church and killed four school- age girls, Nina Simone could no longer just stand by and watch the situation. She decided to actively engage in the fight against racism and discrimination against African

Americans in the United States of America. With her work, he supported not only the

African American struggle against the American social system but also strengthened

African Americans' self-confidence in their difficult life situation.

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