Features – Nina Simone – The High Priestess of Soul

Stay away from me cos I’m in my sin
Stay away from me everybody cos I’m in my sin
If this joint is raided somebody give my gin
Don’t try me nobody cos you will never win
Imbalanced, passionate, and irascible, few people walk away from a Nina Simone recording unaffected. It would seem she has written or adapted a song to apply to virtually any predicament. Her interpretation of any lyrics washed through her and passed through her vocal chords almost involuntarily; every incantation is a raw assault on the emotional core of the listener – her anger is passionate and her passion angry.

Pirate Jenny
A song that drained even Nina with the singing, those bastards will figure out sooner than later who their chambermaid is – and perhaps more importantly, who it ain’t. To quote Nina, “What do you know? You don’t have to do shit. You just use me like all the rest. You don’t care about me, nobody does. If I dropped down dead now no one would give a damn. Don’t tell me to calm down – they should know what the fuck to do by now. I ain’t no teacher. Everyone just wants a piece of me – sing this, do that, smile Nina – it’s all bullshit, you know.” Nina was nobody’s chambermaid.

You gentlemen can say, “Hey gal, finish them floors!
Get upstairs! What’s wrong with you! Earn your keep here!
You toss me your tips
and look out to the ships
But I’m counting your heads
as I’m making the beds
Cuz there’s nobody gonna sleep here, honey
Nobody
Nobody!

Mississippi Goddam
This is a show tune, but the show hasn’t been written for it — yet, Nina warns, as she opens the song she wrote directly after dynamite was thrown into the 16th Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963. Confronting the old guard with the consequences of their entombed and desiccated way of thinking, Nina cuts them to the bone and makes fools of them all between toe tapping piano melodies and well timed belts of “MISSISSIPPI GOD-DAYAM!” The words, Nina said, “erupted” from her. Nina also had this to say: “I was more than angry when I wrote ‘Goddam’ … I was violent. But I’m not violent all the time. Most of the time I’m the same as everyone. But I know my people need me and I won’t let them down.”
You don’t have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Four Women
A commentary on the self-image of four black women and “their ideas of beauty and their own importance” at odds with social mores and the opinions of other women. “Black women didn’t know what the hell they wanted because they were defined by things they didn’t control, and until they had the confidence to define themselves they’d be stuck in the same mess forever,” Nina explained. The song rings true for woman of any complexion, the song is about being judged while being honest, punctuated with Nina’s sardonic screeching of each woman’s name.
My skin is brown
And my manner is tough
I’ll kill the first mother I see
Cos my life has been too rough
I’m awfully bitter these days
because my parents were slaves
What do they call me
My
name
is
PEACHES
Never one to acquiesce to an unspoken rule, Nina never declined to speak the truth, the way she saw it. It doesn’t matter whether you can relate to her love life or civil rights activism, even postmortem, she will forever enflame your indignities and soothe your trampled heart with a salve of commiseration. Whatever you think you feel, Nina felt it first and her recordings will throw it back in your face with a force tenfold.

-Teri Bryant

~ by snarking on December 7, 2007.