What a perfectly sweet and glowing little day it has been today. Perhaps it was the cool freshness of the dawn rain coupled with the surprising gifts of a sublime morning, but my internal soundtrack has been all about Nina Simone's blissful "Feeling Good" ~ which I am kindly resisting from re-posting on facebook as I tend to overpost there and underpost here.
A few moments ago, however, while still caught in the torn throes of trying to decide whether or not to sic more music on my poor, beleagured friends, fb automatically reloaded and a fresh entry popped up, catching my eye and making me laugh at yet another one of life's little jokes. Ironically, delightfully, my favourite independent local radio station posted ~ at just this very moment ~ a link on Simone, today's featured artist in their wonderful "Sirens of Jazz" documentary series.
In the midst of listening to the short programme, YouTubing some of her recordings, and reading up on her in Wikipedia, I came across this stunning clip. A child prodigy who eventually went to Juilliard for her senior year of high school to study classical piano, Nina Simone ~ born Eunice Kathleen Waymon ~ detested the name "jazz" given to this genre of music, and once proclaimed: "To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt and that's not what I play. I play black classical music. That's why I don't like the term, 'jazz,' and Duke Ellington didn't like it either. It's a term that's simply used to identify black people." Indeed, one can certainly hear the undeniable contrapuntal influence of Bach piano Fugues in the bridge of "Love Me or Leave Me." Although she was never allowed entry into college because of her race, she still managed to reach stratospherically lofty heights with her phenomenally warm voice, indomitable spirit, intense passions, and outspoken activism. She even taught piano.
In every right and definition, Nina Simone is Legend.
Here she is, displaying her mightily persuasive touch on the piano, lost in the telling of her tale, and defying any man ~ black or white ~ to pin her music down with a label.
I remembhe er my sister and I discovering Nina Simone when we were in high school and she completley blew our minds. She is the reason I started getting into jazz and blues heavily, for certain.
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