Nina and Amy, Part Two: Nina

Nina

Simone never wanted to sing.  She wanted to be a classical pianist; not a common career choice for black women from the southern USA in the 1950s.  On being rejected by The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Nina needed a job, and sang in bars – changing her name from Eunice Waymon, to avoid her religious mother finding out about her shameful new occupation. 

Ten years later, she was “one of the best entertainers of all time”, according to her daughter (and many others, to be fair). 

I have heard The Nation of Islam referred to as “the hate that hate created”.  Nina Simone could have been called the rejection that rejection created: always aware of difference, aware of the outsider, unwanted status that black skin gave a little girl in 50s North Carolina.  Racism was everywhere, written into law in southern states, and yet never discussed, making it seem like the most natural, unquestionable thing.  This is where Nina Simone came from.  She (literally) had to cross the train tracks to get to her piano lessons, and longed to be the first black female concert pianist.

At her first recital, her parents were removed from their seats at the front of the church – to make way for a white family.  The young Simone refused to play until they were back in their seats – “and to hell with poise and elegance”. 

In the end, she became a popular entertainer.  Her unique voice (with a much lower register than most female singers) by turn sultry and explosive – and undoubted musical ability – made her a big draw.  She achieved mainstream popularity thanks in part to her husband’s ambition and business acumen.  But mostly, like Amy (who also had a unique voice), because she was talented, unique and inhabited songs; she lived the music.  
She meant it.

So that, when she sang Mississippi Goddamn! It was doubly powerful: anyone with her experience (ie, any black American) could likely relate to the sentiment, but only she could deliver it with that power.  Simone didn’t write all of her own material, but made so many songs her own, from jazz standards to folk songs and pop hits.  And she did write Mississippi Goddamn!

Mississippi Goddamn! was a response to the assassination of Medgar Evers and the terrorist attack on a church in Mississippi in 1965.  While Bob Dylan could use his talents in a colder, more analytical way (Only A Pawn In Their Game, also about the murder of Evers, remains one of the sharpest political songs ever written), Simone was intimately, emotionally involved, and sang it out: “Everybody knows about Mississippi GODDAMN!”  Everybody in America did know, and many people did little or nothing about it. 

Dylan was singing about his community, in a doubly important way: he was singing about the white man who murdered Evers, but singing about him to the mostly white, left-leaning/liberal political circles in which he moved: “it ain’t him to blame, he’s only a pawn in their game.”  The song explained how that worked.  Simone was singing “you don’t have to live next to me, just give me equality”, also directly addressing white Americans, but with real urgency, singing the struggle.

And it clearly hurt Nina Simone’s career to release a song that could not be played on the radio.  Stations must have been relieved that there was a ”swearword” in the title, giving them a suitable reason for not playing it.  The original record sleeve read “Mississippi  *@!!?*@!”.  Even though it wasn’t played on the radio, the “Goddamn” was beeped out.

Getting involved with the civil rights movement gave direction and purpose to Nina’s righteous indignation; but its’ perceived failures, and the string of assassinations, had a depressing effect.  It’s hard to imagine how it could have any other effect, or how it could have been calculated to have any other effect.  Martin Luther King’s murder had a particularly devastating effect on the civil rights movement, race relations – and Nina Simone.  Her response was anger and militancy. 

As she said at the time: “I ain’t about to be non-violent, Honey!”

And, later, challenging her audience, “Are you ready to smash white things, burn buildings?  Are you ready?  Are you ready to kill, if necessary?”  At one college performance, she pointed out how many black students were studying in the institution and added: “This is for you, only you.”

This wasn’t a person who wanted to fit in with white society – at least, didn’t want to try to. 

How she would have reacted to recent events in the USA will have to remain unknown.  She might have written a great song about it, she might have screamed “WHY are we STILL seeing this shit?”, she might have got depressed, like many others.  Or angry, like many others.  Perhaps her scathing assessment of the gains and missed opportunities of the 60s were all too accurate.

“Troubled” doesn’t quite cover the fractious, volatile character of the older Nina Simone, who seemed to have been left hopeless.  But as a combative performer, lost in the music, she was always captivating, including to audiences she apparently railed against.  “I wanna go into that den of those elegant people with their old ideas and smugness – and just drive them insane!”

Rock ‘n’ fuckin’ roll, yo.  

Like Mos Def (who, funny enough, appears in Amy and was a friend of Winehouse) said:

“You may dig on the Rolling Stones, but they could never ever rock like Nina Simone.”

Her troubled relationship with her husband and daughter are not glossed over in the film.  Excerpts from her diaries and extensive interviews with all three reveal abuse, violence and control.  The startling honesty of Simone’s daughter in particular makes this possibly the most moving thing about the film.  Neither focussing too tightly on, nor ignoring, her flaws and personal struggles makes it a full and honest account of a complex and troubled person and artist.  In the 1980s, Nina Simone was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which was not public knowledge until after her death – and which may have suddenly made sense of some apparently erratic behaviour.

At her European comeback shows, decades after her most successful period, Simone seemed quiet and reflective. 

"Baby, do you understand me now…?”

The final frame of the film reveals that Simone was given an honorary degree by the Curtis Institute.

This was awarded just two days before she died.  I wonder if she felt vindicated.

Amy vs Nina

In Amy, Winehouse seemed like a lost little girl, brash and unaffected, looking for unconditional parental love and attracted to bad influences.  Her talent, coupled with a lack of commercial ambition, gave her an unexpected level of success, as her second album sold huge amounts, bolstered (at least commercially, if not artistically) by the involvement of Mark Ronson.  It’s fair to say she wasn’t suited to the 24-hour publicity circus that followed.  It’s also fair to say that the tabloid press are an absolute shower of bastards and 24-hour TV news is an almost entirely negative influence on our culture.

In What Happened, Miss Simone? Nina comes off as flawed, full, raw, real; shunned by mainstream (white) society because of her refusal to bow to racism, and shut off from those around her by anger and mental health issues.

If she was born thirty years later, maybe she would have been a concert pianist.  Or, at least, free to be herself.  (Looking at the current state of the world, you might call that wishful thinking.)

“Everything has had to be sacrificed for the music.” 

As one contributor asks: “Was Nina allowed to be exactly what she was?  Most people are afraid to be as honest as she lived.”

It’s fair to say that Nina Simone was a one-off.  It’s also fair to say that mainstream American society needed the shock that her and others gave it in the 1950s and 60s – and that these shocks could have achieved so much more, had the backlash not been so violent.

Both films use the phrase “downward spiral” for their subjects’ lives and career paths.  Is it “better to burn out than to fade away”, like Neil Young claimed?

Both women used music as therapy/redemption; their raison d’etre.  

Both films deal with missed opportunities:  apparently, Winehouse had planned to start a supergroup with Questlove, Mos Def, Rafael Saddique and herself…if only.

Without any need for 24-hour press coverage, both performers gave of themselves fully, with Winehouse laying her life out in song; “I love you much/it’s not enough/You love blow/and I love puff”.

Simone expressed herself both through her own words (“Do I move you?”) and those of others (“Oh, Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood”).  The interviews and diaries featured in What Happened, Miss Simone? give new and unique insight into the subject’s experience and innermost thoughts. 

Ultimately, the Nina film is better, if only because the subject is a bit more interesting (no disrespect to Winehouse), and it reveals new insights – many of the diaries and interviews in the film have not been seen before.  The idea of making a documentary about someone whose life was well-publicised in the very recent past is not as interesting to me as the story of a person whose (occasionally volatile) public persona was only part of the story.