Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you. From house Supports
Speaker 1: dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
Speaker 1: and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about the late
Speaker 1: great Nina Simone and Caroline. What would be the podcast
Speaker 1: version of a biopic? A biopod? Oh? Yeah, which which
Speaker 1: is a biocast? A biocast which sounds like some kind
Speaker 1: of medical equipment. Yeah, probably is. Actually it probably already is.
Speaker 1: We're probably getting sued right now. So many trademark violations
Speaker 1: happening already. Um. Yeah, so we're talking about Nina Simone
Speaker 1: and Caroline. I gotta confess to you that I did
Speaker 1: not grow up listening to Nina Simone. I mean I
Speaker 1: would hear her songs every now and then, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't a hardcore Nina Simone fan, although like probably everyone
Speaker 1: who was born in the midnight between eighties can attest um,
Speaker 1: the first time I heard her name was in Lauren
Speaker 1: Hill rapping with the Fuji's on Ready or Not, where
Speaker 1: she was like ebbi a capone and I'll be Nina
Speaker 1: Simone and defecating on your microphone because I was like
Speaker 1: homeschoold and white and like rapping in Suburbia. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we were doing that at the same time. Probably
Speaker 1: I was in I was in Marietta doing that, which
Speaker 1: now I'm picturing like one of those American Tale moments,
Speaker 1: you know, where they're both looking at the moon from
Speaker 1: and a little Christen and little Caroline, where we're singing
Speaker 1: and dancing along with the fujis listening to our discman,
Speaker 1: our disc women at the same time. Right, um, But recently, Caroline,
Speaker 1: my eyes have been opened, or my ears, I guess
Speaker 1: I should say, have been opened to the genius of
Speaker 1: Nina Simone. Because for a long time, you know, I
Speaker 1: knew who she was, and I knew that she's saying
Speaker 1: all these standards and was this iconic figure in jazz history,
Speaker 1: but I really didn't know that much about the breadth
Speaker 1: of her catalog and her genius and also her role
Speaker 1: as a civil rights activist. And I learned a lot
Speaker 1: of this on the Netflix documentary What Happened Miss Simone,
Speaker 1: directed by Liz Garbas Yeah, what Happened Miss Simone? Which
Speaker 1: is a line from a piece by Maya Angelou about her,
Speaker 1: which was really fascinating to read because my Angelo was
Speaker 1: obviously a great writer. But the way that she profiles
Speaker 1: Nina Simone is is also very fascinating, and but it's
Speaker 1: also very warm. She obviously loves the person that she's
Speaker 1: talking about. Yeah, and it's interesting to characterize it as
Speaker 1: a as a warm piece, because Nina Simone wouldn't be
Speaker 1: called warm by everyone in her life. She was. Um.
Speaker 1: Liz Garbas was actually talking to NPR about Nina Simone
Speaker 1: and the documentary and she was saying, how, Um, she
Speaker 1: could easily be characterized as a difficult woman, but how
Speaker 1: a lot of times, Um, that is often a sexist
Speaker 1: portrayal because there were plenty of men in music who
Speaker 1: were geniuses and we're also very difficult men, but they
Speaker 1: were just geniuses. Yeah, it's tough, full stop, stopped there. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I watched the documentary just on the edge of
Speaker 1: my seat. I thought it was fascinating and like you,
Speaker 1: I mean, I had a general awareness of Nina Simone
Speaker 1: and um, and a lot of controversy was stirred up
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, not too long ago, when
Speaker 1: news first hit that they were going to make that
Speaker 1: biopick about her, and it was sort of up in
Speaker 1: the air for a while. Who would portray her. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a million great actresses out there who uh, you know,
Speaker 1: could potentially look like Nina Simone, which is actually a
Speaker 1: big deal that we'll talk about in a little bit, um,
Speaker 1: But they went with Zoe Saldana, who's cast and created
Speaker 1: so much controversy. And so I had been more and
Speaker 1: more aware for the last couple of years, and then
Speaker 1: watching this documentary was just fast sinating. Yeah, and her
Speaker 1: bio touches on so many things too that we've talked
Speaker 1: about in the podcast before. And um, we also want
Speaker 1: to note that there is some tragically relevant timing for
Speaker 1: the release of that Netflix documentary. Um that attracted a
Speaker 1: ton of press just on its own, um, but it
Speaker 1: came out on Netflix the same day President Obama delivered
Speaker 1: the eulogy for slain South Carolina Senator Clementa C. Pinckney,
Speaker 1: who was murdered, um, along with those seven others at
Speaker 1: Charleston's Emmanuel Methodist Episcopal Church. And it would be a
Speaker 1: similar church horror and an act of racist murder that
Speaker 1: would alter the trajectory of Nina Simone's life and career. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But speaking of that trajectory, we have to talk about
Speaker 1: how she even came to music in the first place.
Speaker 1: She was born in nine thirty three as Eunice Wayman
Speaker 1: in try On, North Carolina, and she was the sixth
Speaker 1: of eight kids. Her mom was a Methodist preacher and
Speaker 1: her dad was an entertainer and handyman. And here it
Speaker 1: comes little Eunice, who's basically a musical prodigy. I mean
Speaker 1: she took to the organ at two and a half
Speaker 1: years old and started playing at her mother's church services. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so here we go, touching on our episode a while
Speaker 1: back on child prodigies. Um, she absolutely was one of them.
Speaker 1: And in addition to her mom being a Methodist preacher,
Speaker 1: she's also a housekeeper and um, a white woman. Her
Speaker 1: mother cleaned houses for notice little Unie's talent and offered
Speaker 1: to pay for lessons with a local British piano teacher
Speaker 1: named Muriel Mazan Novik a k a. Ms Mazzi, whom
Speaker 1: Nina Stamon would later describe as my white mama. And
Speaker 1: she started playing you know, like you said, at her
Speaker 1: mother's church services and really developed a reputation in Tryon,
Speaker 1: which is a tiny, tiny down um which you can
Speaker 1: almost miss if you blink. Um. So she developed this
Speaker 1: reputation for being like the town prodigy, and so she
Speaker 1: started taking these lessons and would have regular recitals because
Speaker 1: people would want to come see her play. And she
Speaker 1: later cited a recital when she was eleven, although I've
Speaker 1: also seen twelve m but regardless, and when she was young,
Speaker 1: this recital was her first time experiencing real anger at
Speaker 1: racial discrimination because her parents were asked to move from
Speaker 1: the front row to the back so that a white
Speaker 1: couple could take their place, and at eleven or twelve
Speaker 1: years old, she stopped her recital and refused to play
Speaker 1: until her parents were allowed to resume their seats in
Speaker 1: the front row. Yeah, and she talks about in the
Speaker 1: documentary how she's not even sure that she was aware
Speaker 1: of the time that it was what what that meant,
Speaker 1: and sincearily she just knew that it was wrong and
Speaker 1: that she wanted her parents back in the front row.
Speaker 1: But that was definitely sort of a critical moment for
Speaker 1: her in her development um And she went on to
Speaker 1: study at Juilliard for a summer, with her sights set
Speaker 1: on getting into the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: which ended up declining her application, and she was convinced
Speaker 1: at the time that it was based on her race.
Speaker 1: It was not until later that she found out that
Speaker 1: other African American students had been accepted. But again, this
Speaker 1: was another turning point. She had been offered a scholarship
Speaker 1: at Oberlin, but she turned it down she thought it
Speaker 1: was beneath her. But all along, this desire to become
Speaker 1: a classical musician, to be taken seriously, for her music
Speaker 1: to really perform, to get to Carnegie Hall, it really
Speaker 1: haunted her. Yeah, I mean, she talks about how she
Speaker 1: fell in love with Bach and that was her primary obsession.
Speaker 1: And it was worth noting too that she had so
Speaker 1: much of a stake in getting into her artists because
Speaker 1: it would have offered her free tuition. And before she
Speaker 1: had been ultimately rejected from the school, her family had
Speaker 1: even moved to Philadelphia, and her even being able to
Speaker 1: study at Juilliard had been partially funded by townspeople in
Speaker 1: try And who raised money for her to go. So
Speaker 1: this is like old school kickstarter essentially, and that money
Speaker 1: had run out and all of a sudden, her families
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia and she's not accepted into Curtis and what
Speaker 1: is she going to do? She has to do something.
Speaker 1: She has to make some money somehow, and she has
Speaker 1: this incredible gift as a pianist. So in n she
Speaker 1: starts playing at a cocktail piano bar in Atlantic City
Speaker 1: and makes her stage name Nina Simone so that her
Speaker 1: mom wouldn't find out, because keep in mind, this woman
Speaker 1: is a Methodist preacher. She has no nonsense. They grew
Speaker 1: up in the Bible Belt, and you know that hang
Speaker 1: out in cocktail bars and playing standards is probably not
Speaker 1: acceptable behavior. So after a couple of years of playing
Speaker 1: in these cocktail bars, uh, and she's been asked to sing,
Speaker 1: and so she's been singing and playing and honing her craft.
Speaker 1: She arrives in New York City in n gets her
Speaker 1: first top first and only Top forty hit with I
Speaker 1: Loves You Porgy and briefly Mary's white beatnik Don Ross. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there was that point in the documentary where they
Speaker 1: show her um performing I Loves You Porgy Um in
Speaker 1: the what was it the Playboy Show? Like play by
Speaker 1: Penthouse the Playboy Penthouse Show. So there's like old school
Speaker 1: black and white Hugh Hefner introducing this new sensation Nina
Speaker 1: Simone and she's you know, playing at this piano surrounded
Speaker 1: by these you know, wealthy white men with attractive white
Speaker 1: women draped across them. Um, which was just such a
Speaker 1: such a snapshot of that time. And and you can
Speaker 1: see from the beginning to how I mean, even though
Speaker 1: her voice becomes so iconic, she was kind of a
Speaker 1: reluctant singer. I mean it was something that she kind
Speaker 1: of had to do, almost singing for her supper. Otherwise
Speaker 1: she wouldn't have been able to perform starting out at
Speaker 1: those earlier piano bars. But and like you said, she
Speaker 1: finds success. She's in New York, her career is really
Speaker 1: taking off, and she she has a singular drive for success,
Speaker 1: but really more financial stability. I mean, Nina Sman wants
Speaker 1: to become rich and she has since you know, divorced
Speaker 1: Don Ross. They were married I think maybe less than
Speaker 1: a year in nineteen sixty one, she ends up marrying
Speaker 1: Andrew Stroud, who is a former New York City police
Speaker 1: officer who ends up becoming her manager. Yeah, because as
Speaker 1: much as Ninasman wanted to make money herself and become rich,
Speaker 1: Drought definitely saw dollar signs in his eyes. I take
Speaker 1: it when he looked at her because obviously she's like
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly talented, she's so good at what she does, and
Speaker 1: so he sees this as an opportunity to take her
Speaker 1: her wild creativity and her amazing skill with the piano
Speaker 1: and her amazing vocal skills and sort of point them
Speaker 1: in the direction. And that direction is becoming basically what
Speaker 1: we have the way we think of Aretha Franklin today.
Speaker 1: That's what he sort of wanted for his wife to be,
Speaker 1: that cash cow who was on top forty radio making
Speaker 1: so much money. Yeah, I mean because also by this time,
Speaker 1: Nina Simone had developed a reputation for being a very
Speaker 1: difficult performer. There were a number of clubs that did
Speaker 1: not care to book her because, as we'll talk about more, um,
Speaker 1: if you were not there to see Nina Simone do
Speaker 1: Nina Simone, then she was not going to have it.
Speaker 1: So Stroud steps in and is like, Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: put together a plan. And the thing that he promises
Speaker 1: her is Carnegie Hall, where all of those childhood dreams
Speaker 1: of back and being respected as a classical musician would
Speaker 1: finally come to fruition. And in fact, on April twelfth,
Speaker 1: ninety three, she plays Carnegie Hall. Yeah, and and Stratt,
Speaker 1: I think how to put up it was his entire
Speaker 1: police pension right to sort of pay for the promotion,
Speaker 1: to even draw attention to the fact that here's this
Speaker 1: amazing performer at Carnegie Hall comes here. But in the
Speaker 1: same way that so many events in her life with
Speaker 1: sort of parallel things going on in the civil rights movement.
Speaker 1: Her performance was the same day that Martin Luther King
Speaker 1: was locked up in Birmingham. Yeah, and so you start
Speaker 1: to see, like you said, like this, these parallel things happening,
Speaker 1: and it sort of pits Nina Simone against herself. On
Speaker 1: the one hand, Um, as she once told Rogue Magazine,
Speaker 1: all my life, I felt the terrible pressure of having
Speaker 1: to survive. So she has this almost primal need to
Speaker 1: amass as much wealth as possible, and she is starting
Speaker 1: to do that through Stroud's management. But too, you have
Speaker 1: this civil rights movement picking up, and her personal passion
Speaker 1: for that also really coming to life. Um And before
Speaker 1: we get more into her as a civil rights activists,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about her voice and music,
Speaker 1: because in a lot of ways it's undefinable. People call
Speaker 1: her the high process of soul, and she defies genres
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. NPR music writer David brent
Speaker 1: Johnson notes how she incorporated jazz, blues, folk, pop, show tunes, gospel,
Speaker 1: and R and B into these performances and albums. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of amazing to see the product of her
Speaker 1: creating out of necessity because here's this amazingly classically trained musician.
Speaker 1: She's so good at what she does. She's a prodigy.
Speaker 1: She's so just like it's just intuitive when she sits
Speaker 1: down at the piano, but performing early on in her
Speaker 1: career at those piano bars in those cocktail clubs and
Speaker 1: having to, like you said, sing for her supper. You know,
Speaker 1: people don't want to hear Bach at the bar and
Speaker 1: so speak yourself, Caroline, I'm speaking for those jerks in
Speaker 1: New York or Atlantic City or wherever. Um. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't want to hear just like classical music played
Speaker 1: for an entire set, Which that was another thing that
Speaker 1: Nina Simon said that she had to get used to
Speaker 1: the idea of a set. She's like, well, all right,
Speaker 1: you want me to play play for forty five minutes,
Speaker 1: that's fine. I've been playing for eight hours a day
Speaker 1: for basically my whole life. So that's cool, um, But
Speaker 1: being sort of in that position of being an entertainer
Speaker 1: having to do this out of necessity to make money
Speaker 1: and live and get by to try to she her dreams,
Speaker 1: it meant she had to incorporate a lot of popular
Speaker 1: stuff at the time, and so what came out of
Speaker 1: that was some really amazing and interesting music. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you have recognizable tunes like I Put a Spell on
Speaker 1: You that she reinvented and made so growlly and intense.
Speaker 1: But then also you have this children's song that she
Speaker 1: wrote in the wake of Lorraine Handsbury's death, called Young,
Speaker 1: Gifted and Black, that she wanted to have this song
Speaker 1: so that black children everywhere could feel proud of themselves.
Speaker 1: And then of course she ended up writing protests songs
Speaker 1: like Mississippi Goddamn, which we're going to talk about more
Speaker 1: in just a minute. And then for instance, President Obama's
Speaker 1: favorite Nina Simon song Centerman, which I was listening to
Speaker 1: Caroline before we came into this podcast, and it is
Speaker 1: going on loop in the back of my head, so
Speaker 1: that I'm talking to Nina saman tune you cannot hear it,
Speaker 1: and sting, it's got it's very up tempo. I'm glad
Speaker 1: you're having a good time. You know I'm having a
Speaker 1: great time too. Excellent. Um. But yeah, but the song
Speaker 1: is a traditional spiritual about a sinner trying to hide
Speaker 1: on judgment Day. So there we see, we've got great
Speaker 1: examples of how she incorporates all of these different musical
Speaker 1: traditions to really create her own place in music. And
Speaker 1: she even did the song Don't let Me Be Misunderstood,
Speaker 1: which was covered by the Animals, which I had to
Speaker 1: have a misconception in my head corrected, Oh, did you
Speaker 1: think it was slip flop? I thought it was the
Speaker 1: other way around. I thought Nina s mom and got ignorant.
Speaker 1: Caroline Irven, the podcaster, Uh, totally thought that that was
Speaker 1: the animal song. But no, she performed this wonderful song
Speaker 1: and the animals covered it. But it's interesting to read
Speaker 1: too about her relationship with um people doing rock and
Speaker 1: roll music, specifically in England and abroad. UM. She was
Speaker 1: sort of fascinated by them, and she wrote her brother
Speaker 1: basically saying, like all of these young white kids in
Speaker 1: England and France and stuff are doing dances that you
Speaker 1: and I used to do when we were kids, and
Speaker 1: they're doing this black music in their own way, and
Speaker 1: it's so fascinating. And she was so enthralled not only
Speaker 1: by that idea and found it very interesting, but also
Speaker 1: by the idea that she was just really loved people.
Speaker 1: When she went abroad, people just really loved her, and
Speaker 1: she didn't feel the same sort of edges of that
Speaker 1: racial confinement that she's so often butted up against in America. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was definitely more comfortable abroad than in what she
Speaker 1: would later call the United Snakes of America. And I
Speaker 1: mean her her blackness was very much a part of
Speaker 1: her art as well. Um in nineteen sixty six column
Speaker 1: in the Philadelphia Tribune, m her singing was described as
Speaker 1: being quote to be brought into a brace of contact
Speaker 1: with the black heart and to feel the power and
Speaker 1: beauty which for centuries have beat there. And at the
Speaker 1: same time that that depth and expression of her voice
Speaker 1: was sometimes criticized for being too masculine, because she does
Speaker 1: have such a low register depending on what she's singing.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, as we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: she demanded the full attention of her audience. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what she needed in order to perform, because she
Speaker 1: wasn't just sitting there like playing little songs and ditties.
Speaker 1: I mean it was You can tell if you watch
Speaker 1: her perform that it is a full mind, body, emotional
Speaker 1: performance for her. And so she was known to heckle
Speaker 1: people or even leave the stage. If someone was talking,
Speaker 1: she would stop and she would point. I mean, hope, oh,
Speaker 1: Nina Simone. Thank goodness that she was not performing in
Speaker 1: the era of cell phones and text messaging. I don't
Speaker 1: think she would get through a single concert. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: closest thing to that I've seen is going to a
Speaker 1: Nico Case concert and seeing her stop everything for somebody
Speaker 1: who has a cell phone out. Um. But yeah, you
Speaker 1: can imagine that. Well, I would have loved it, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you tell them to shut up. Um. Not everybody, including promoters,
Speaker 1: was as big a fan of that, and so that
Speaker 1: was another kind of stumbling block to maintaining a mainstream status.
Speaker 1: You know, her husband at this point, as we get
Speaker 1: deeper and deeper into the sixties, her husband is getting
Speaker 1: concerned with her interest in the civil rights movement, that
Speaker 1: she's focusing too much on that rather than creating pop music.
Speaker 1: He's concerned that she's too you know, moody and abrasive
Speaker 1: to the people around her in her career. Um, but
Speaker 1: she does not let that stop her. She dove head
Speaker 1: first into the civil rights movement. And we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about Nina Simone civil rights activists. And when we
Speaker 1: come right back from a quick break, So, as a
Speaker 1: dark skinned black woman raised in the Jim Crow South,
Speaker 1: Nina Simone continually experienced racism from the get go. I
Speaker 1: mean we mentioned that incident with the recital when she
Speaker 1: was eleven or twelve years old, but she was constantly
Speaker 1: told that her skin was too dark and her nose
Speaker 1: was too broad, essentially that she looked too African. And
Speaker 1: she even once commented on how she never made the
Speaker 1: cover of Jet or any magazines because they preferred wider
Speaker 1: looking cover stars like Diana Ross. So her appearance it
Speaker 1: was something that was often at the forefront of her
Speaker 1: mind as she thought about her place not only in
Speaker 1: the music industry, but also in American society more broadly
Speaker 1: at this time of so much racial unrest. But I
Speaker 1: mean that brings us back to when we talked earlier
Speaker 1: about the biopic that's been made with with Zoe Saldana
Speaker 1: and how if you're not aware of this backstory about
Speaker 1: how there was so much focus from outside and from
Speaker 1: within on her appearance, you might not understand why people
Speaker 1: were up in arms about the casting choice, since Nina
Speaker 1: Simone herself said, they're picking people who look like darker
Speaker 1: skinned white people to appear on magazines rather than people
Speaker 1: who look like me. Yeah. At one point, she writes
Speaker 1: in her diary, I can't be white, and I'm the
Speaker 1: kind of colored girl who looks like everything white people
Speaker 1: despise or have been taught to despise. If I were
Speaker 1: a boy, it wouldn't matter so much. But I'm a
Speaker 1: girl and in front of the public all the time,
Speaker 1: wide open for them to jeer and approve of or
Speaker 1: disapprove of. So she gets it. I mean, she's been
Speaker 1: she's been exposed to basically appearance shaming of every kind
Speaker 1: her in entire life, and understands that women have it
Speaker 1: way worse than guys do. Yeah. And and it's also
Speaker 1: too in the early nineties sixties that she becomes more radicalized.
Speaker 1: She's powering around with leading black activists and scholars of
Speaker 1: the day, including James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Stokely Carmichael and others.
Speaker 1: And we mentioned Lorraine Handsbury earlier, who inspired the song
Speaker 1: young Gifted in Black and Um. She was a playwright
Speaker 1: who wrote A Raisin in the Sun, who was incredibly successful,
Speaker 1: brilliant and became extremely close friends with Nina Simone and
Speaker 1: really provided her not just an education in black identity,
Speaker 1: but also Black womanhood and feminism. Yeah, there's a great
Speaker 1: quote where Simone says, it was always Marks Linen and
Speaker 1: Revolution real girls talk, and I just love that that
Speaker 1: she's finally getting this real relationship with someone who is
Speaker 1: believing in her own her being Nina sam believing in
Speaker 1: her own independence and intelligence and giving her the credit
Speaker 1: to be able to talk about the stuff and understand
Speaker 1: this stuff, whereas it seems like she had just been
Speaker 1: surrounded by people, particularly her overbearing husband, who were just like,
Speaker 1: I don't care, just stay on this career track, and
Speaker 1: overbearing not only overbearing but also outright abusive, which we'll
Speaker 1: talk about more in a little bit. Um. But in
Speaker 1: terms of her relationship with Handsbury, she wrote in her
Speaker 1: memoir much later on uh quote, I started to think
Speaker 1: about myself as a black person in a country run
Speaker 1: by white people, and a woman in a world run
Speaker 1: by men. And I mean that relationship with Handsbury was
Speaker 1: so so formative for her and unfortunately ended so quickly
Speaker 1: because Handsbury died of cancer in nine which was a
Speaker 1: tragic moment for Nina Simone. And so what really ended
Speaker 1: up radicalizing Nina Simone in terms of the civil rights
Speaker 1: movement was a couple of events that happened really close together.
Speaker 1: One was the murder of civil rights organizer Medgar Evers.
Speaker 1: The other was the bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church,
Speaker 1: which killed four young black girls who were leaving Bible class.
Speaker 1: And so at this point Nina Simone is like, listen,
Speaker 1: I cannot just sit here and just play music. I
Speaker 1: I have to do something. Yeah, And the first thing
Speaker 1: she tried to do was make a gun. I mean,
Speaker 1: she wanted she wanted to kill. She was enraged by it,
Speaker 1: and um, she tried to make a gun and was
Speaker 1: quickly like, I can't make a gun. And I think
Speaker 1: also her husband Andrew was like, oh, Nina, please don't
Speaker 1: try to make a gun. This is not the answer.
Speaker 1: And so she ends up writing in an afternoon this
Speaker 1: protest song Mississippi Goddamn and not to Risingly. Because of
Speaker 1: the title, the song was banned on some radio stations,
Speaker 1: and crates of records were sent back broken in protest um.
Speaker 1: And the chorus to the song says, Alabama's gotten me
Speaker 1: sotapes that Tennessee made me lose my rest, and everybody
Speaker 1: knows about Mississippi Goddamn. And if you listen to her
Speaker 1: and watch her playing this song, I mean she even
Speaker 1: starts off saying how the name of this tune is
Speaker 1: Mississippi Goddamn, and I mean every word of it well,
Speaker 1: because in addition to that chorus, she also um imitates
Speaker 1: white people in the community telling black people and black
Speaker 1: activists to take it slowly, go slow, and her backup
Speaker 1: singers say too slow, um, which is a refrain that
Speaker 1: you hear today in terms of any type of civil
Speaker 1: rights organizing. There's always somebody in power saying, well, let's
Speaker 1: slow down a little, let's let's not take this so fast.
Speaker 1: And so it wasn't It definitely wasn't just the name
Speaker 1: of the song. It was the whole idea, the ideology
Speaker 1: contained within it that just put a lot of people off,
Speaker 1: to say the least yeah, I mean. And so after
Speaker 1: this song comes out, she plays Carnegie Hall for a
Speaker 1: second time, and she sings Mississippi God Damn. And when
Speaker 1: she gets to the part saying, oh, but this country
Speaker 1: is full of lies and you're all going to die
Speaker 1: and die like flies, she slows it down and looks
Speaker 1: out into the predominantly white audience sitting there, And I mean,
Speaker 1: she she like she said, she means what she is singing. Um.
Speaker 1: And we should note too that she had long supported
Speaker 1: the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, the Congress of Race Equality,
Speaker 1: and the n double a c p UM. But this
Speaker 1: is when she really throws herself even more publicly and
Speaker 1: visibly into the civil rights movements. She's marching, she's playing
Speaker 1: benefit concerts, she's really using the stage as her platform
Speaker 1: to speak truth to power and express her lack of
Speaker 1: faith in that, like you said, that gradual push for
Speaker 1: civil rights. Yeah. And during the march from selma Um,
Speaker 1: she she performs Mississippi Goddamn on a stage that's propped
Speaker 1: up by coffins. And so that in itself is a
Speaker 1: huge deal and a great turning point. But she meets
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King and sticks out her hand and says,
Speaker 1: I am not nonviolent, and every account of the event
Speaker 1: says that he gentally was like that's okay, that's that's fine,
Speaker 1: that's totally cool. And it wasn't until then that she
Speaker 1: relaxed and was like, well, you know, it's amazing to
Speaker 1: meet you. But she just had to make sure that
Speaker 1: he knew because he was he was more than just
Speaker 1: a face of the movement, I mean to white people.
Speaker 1: He was people were so happy about the whole non
Speaker 1: violent thing, as you would understand, and and so she
Speaker 1: was just making it clear to this guy who's the
Speaker 1: face of everything, uh, that that wasn't her jam no no,
Speaker 1: I mean. And she certainly wasn't the only black musician
Speaker 1: or black entertainer who was using their notoriety to help,
Speaker 1: you know, promote the civil rights movement. But she had
Speaker 1: such a harder time simultaneously supporting a commercial career and
Speaker 1: her activism, um compared to say Aretha Franklin or Harry Belafonte,
Speaker 1: who were were still able to continue selling records. But
Speaker 1: Nina Simone just with this hit a wall with a
Speaker 1: lot of it and her prominent activism, though contrast the
Speaker 1: overwhelming male leadership of the civil rights movement. This is
Speaker 1: something that we touched on a little bit, I think
Speaker 1: in our um a couple of podcasts on women in
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement, and also in our podcast on
Speaker 1: women abolitionists. UM. But we found a paper by Ruth
Speaker 1: Feldstein called I Don't Trust You Anymore Nina Simone, Culture
Speaker 1: and Black activism in the nineteen sixties, and Feldstein writes, quote,
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen sixties, assertions of black male pride
Speaker 1: remained at the center of calls for black power that
Speaker 1: were implicitly and explicitly gendered male. And here you have
Speaker 1: Nina Simone who is sort of just not paying any
Speaker 1: attention to that structure whatsoever, and you know, doing her Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. For instance, in nineteen sixty eight, in front
Speaker 1: of an audience in Harlem, she read a poem by
Speaker 1: David Nelson asking her audience, are you ready to do
Speaker 1: what is necessary? And the poem and of course Nina
Speaker 1: Simone encouraged the audience to break and burn white things,
Speaker 1: build black things, kill if necessary. And so you can
Speaker 1: just imagine that these are things that not a lot
Speaker 1: of other people in the mainstream are saying out loud well,
Speaker 1: and even just if you look at Mississippi Goddamn, which
Speaker 1: had come out a few years prior to that. UM.
Speaker 1: A comedian Dick Gregory was talking about this in the
Speaker 1: Netflix documentary What Happened in Miss Simone UM, And he said,
Speaker 1: if you look at all the suffering black folks went through,
Speaker 1: not one black man would dare say Mississippi Goddamn. We
Speaker 1: all wanted to say it, but she said it. And
Speaker 1: so then by a lot of disillusionment had set in
Speaker 1: and quote the days when revolution really had seemed possible,
Speaker 1: We're gone forever, especially when you consider that a lot
Speaker 1: of people around her, and a lot of people important
Speaker 1: to the movement, people like Martin Luther King and Handsbury
Speaker 1: and Malcolm X and so many other integral figures were gone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were either dead or imprisoned, and a lot of
Speaker 1: public attention and protests. You by this point had shifted
Speaker 1: away from civil rights and toward Vietnam, and Simone was
Speaker 1: really devastated. I mean, obviously, at this point we have
Speaker 1: a lot of domestic abuse that's been going on in
Speaker 1: the background for a while, and uh, mental illness that
Speaker 1: has been left untreated for a long time, which only
Speaker 1: compounds this. But I mean she she really felt like
Speaker 1: the cause was dead. Yeah, And so in ninety four
Speaker 1: she leaves for Liberia, where she she writes a lot
Speaker 1: about how free she finally feels how amazing it is
Speaker 1: to be there, um because for her, yeah, everything, everything
Speaker 1: had been lost. And so her marriage has broken down
Speaker 1: at this point, um, and she's no longer performing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she, uh, she ends up just like saying screw
Speaker 1: it to the US. She's not paying taxes. I mean,
Speaker 1: she kind of goes off the red and her daughter
Speaker 1: Lisa comes to live with her for I think it's
Speaker 1: two years in Liberia. But that was an incredibly tumultuous time.
Speaker 1: Nina Simon was not healthy, um in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways when she was living there. And this is when
Speaker 1: we get to talking about Nina Simone the person behind
Speaker 1: the persona because uh, you know, mental illness and domestic
Speaker 1: violence were just major factors going on in the background
Speaker 1: of her career ascent and then decent. Yeah, so during
Speaker 1: this time, during this in the background, she's likely suffering
Speaker 1: from bipolar disorder or possibly borderline personality disorder. She did
Speaker 1: try psychoanalysis for a while, which her husband made her quit.
Speaker 1: She also tried hypnosis, relied on drugs and sex and
Speaker 1: drinking for a while, but she turned a lot to writing.
Speaker 1: She has extensive diaries which are a fascinating look into
Speaker 1: the inner workings, everything that's going on behind the scenes
Speaker 1: during this time and a lot of what's going behind
Speaker 1: the scenes in her nine year marriage with Andrew Stroud,
Speaker 1: who you know, it has also taken over her career
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, um, and whom she blames
Speaker 1: for her depression because she's constantly touring and constantly performing
Speaker 1: to what she says, Well, you want to be rich,
Speaker 1: you want to live in big houses, here you go,
Speaker 1: You've got to work, um. But they had an incredibly
Speaker 1: violent relationship. I mean he began beating her very soon
Speaker 1: into I don't know if it had started before they
Speaker 1: were married, but certainly once they were married, Um, it
Speaker 1: quickly turned violent. And that was something that their daughter
Speaker 1: witnessed as well. I mean, it was a hallmark of
Speaker 1: their relationship. Yeah. And so you know, we talked about
Speaker 1: how she left the United States for Liberia and during
Speaker 1: those couple of years that her daughter was with her, Uh,
Speaker 1: Simone went from being the abused to the abuser and
Speaker 1: beating her daughter and berating her for being light skin
Speaker 1: and of course Lisa point pointed out to her mother,
Speaker 1: well you picked my father. I didn't. Yeah, and Andrew
Speaker 1: Stroud is a light skinned black man. Um. So, after
Speaker 1: Liberia though, she moved to Switzerland and then Paris, and
Speaker 1: she is almost penniless by this point. She hasn't been touring,
Speaker 1: hasn't been paying taxes, and friends finally intervened to get
Speaker 1: her mental help. Um And it's it's at this point
Speaker 1: too in the documentary where you see to this physical
Speaker 1: transformation of Nina Simone, because I mean the mental health
Speaker 1: influence that can impact your you know, your outside appearance too.
Speaker 1: And she just hadn't been taking care of herself for
Speaker 1: so long. Well, she hadn't been taking care of herself.
Speaker 1: But also once she did receive a diagnosis for bipolar
Speaker 1: disorder thanks to the friends who stepped in and we're like,
Speaker 1: you can't live like this. You're living in filth, you're
Speaker 1: not taking care of yourself. We're going to take you
Speaker 1: to the doctor. She got on medication, but the whole
Speaker 1: thing with the medication was that it's going to interfere
Speaker 1: with her motor skills, with the way that she looks
Speaker 1: in the way that she carries herself, but more specifically
Speaker 1: the way that she sings and plays the piano. The
Speaker 1: doctor said, well, this is eventually going to take her
Speaker 1: skills away from her, and it's there's an interesting moment
Speaker 1: in the documentary when her daughter Lisa is talking about
Speaker 1: this and she's she's talking about it in sort of
Speaker 1: a detached manner in terms of like, here's what happened,
Speaker 1: but she frames it in terms of like those guys
Speaker 1: in France, UM basically took away her. They interfered with her,
Speaker 1: her craft, her skill, her gift. And that's I think
Speaker 1: an interesting perspective coming from a child of abuse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, but at that point it was a life
Speaker 1: or death situation. Her friends were like, Okay, you will
Speaker 1: have to perform so that you can live, or you're
Speaker 1: you have to remain untreated and you're going to die.
Speaker 1: And she chose to perform and live. And so she
Speaker 1: her career slowly starts picking up a little bit. I mean,
Speaker 1: she starts playing jazz festivals and things like that. She
Speaker 1: rarely returns to the United States um, and actually she
Speaker 1: has a mini comeback when Chanel picked up My Baby
Speaker 1: just cares for me for their international TV campaign, so
Speaker 1: she gets some additional touring out of that. But um,
Speaker 1: I mean it just her life kind of winds down
Speaker 1: after that in a really tragic kind of way, which
Speaker 1: seems largely the product of mental illness left unchecked. And
Speaker 1: then in two thousand two she was diagnosed with breast
Speaker 1: answer and she died the following year. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: amazing talent, this amazing activist, this amazing voice gets snuffed out.
Speaker 1: But she left behind an incredible legacy for anyone willing
Speaker 1: to look into it. And that's why I mean this
Speaker 1: documentary was so fascinating to It was such a fascinating
Speaker 1: entry into learning more about her well and also helping
Speaker 1: revive her profile because for a long time she was
Speaker 1: largely written out of jazz history. I mean, she has
Speaker 1: in more recent years, as biographies have been published, um
Speaker 1: and her catalogs revived. Um, she has gotten her do
Speaker 1: more for really establishing that sound of modern jazz. And
Speaker 1: it did also help when President Obama cited Sinnerman as
Speaker 1: one of his songs always on his iPod playlist. That
Speaker 1: ushered her into the twenty century mainstream. But I think
Speaker 1: that these nuances of her biography and who Nina Simone
Speaker 1: really was as a fixture in the nineteen seventies in
Speaker 1: the midst of not so much the development of jazz,
Speaker 1: but more just the development of the United States and
Speaker 1: race relations. Um. I think a lot of people have been,
Speaker 1: at least myself, had been unaware of the role that
Speaker 1: she played. Yeah, and and so it's fascinating to learn
Speaker 1: about that. But not everybody was super pleased with the
Speaker 1: documentary or the way that her life was framed, because
Speaker 1: you know, like you said at the top of the podcast, Kristen,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of male artists throughout history of various
Speaker 1: types of art who have been considered geniuses. But they
Speaker 1: were they were like mad geniuses, but that madness was attractive.
Speaker 1: It was something that was positive in their life as
Speaker 1: a force. But um, when you talk about women, the
Speaker 1: conversation is a little bit different. And so Tanya Steele
Speaker 1: at Indie Wire basically says, can we not just accept
Speaker 1: and love and respect her as an artist full stop?
Speaker 1: Do we have to qualify her genius by talking about
Speaker 1: the fact that she had this mental illness and this
Speaker 1: abusive background. Yeah. Well, and she also took a huge
Speaker 1: issue with um. Liz Garba's the documentarian, allowing interviews with
Speaker 1: Andrew Stroud, her horrendously abusive ex husband, to be included
Speaker 1: in the documentary as though he is helping shape her narrative, um,
Speaker 1: and saying that that's you know, that's just an injustice
Speaker 1: to her. Yeah, basically that she had such extensive diary
Speaker 1: entries and we have her daughter there, Um, can we
Speaker 1: not let Nina speak for herself? Um, which I mean
Speaker 1: she certainly does in the documentary, but U deal definitely
Speaker 1: takes interest with Andrew Straud's presence. Yeah, because it's not
Speaker 1: only as as as Steel writes about, it's it's not
Speaker 1: just how are we interpreting female genius, but it's black
Speaker 1: female genius. And she sees it as almost perpetuating stereotypes
Speaker 1: of the angry black woman or the mad black woman
Speaker 1: and says that it it's sort of delegitimizes her role
Speaker 1: in culture more broadly and jazz history more specifically. But
Speaker 1: I mean, I would I would hope, as and I
Speaker 1: mean as a casual Netflix viewer sitting on my couch,
Speaker 1: that a documentary that I watch about a public figure
Speaker 1: would include an explanation of their life and how they
Speaker 1: lived in and part of that sometimes is mental illness
Speaker 1: or is a background that is frightening to other people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's that question of whether knowing someone's demons
Speaker 1: diminishes their legacy as a genius, because I think a
Speaker 1: lot of times too, it's it's so heartbreaking to find
Speaker 1: out that someone that you idolize has has faults, you know,
Speaker 1: to say the least. And but I think it's still
Speaker 1: possible to appreciate her and acknowledge her role and her
Speaker 1: you know, being a child brodigy all the way up
Speaker 1: to you know, the role that she played in the
Speaker 1: Civil rights movement as um as controversial as it was,
Speaker 1: you know, calling for white people to be killed and
Speaker 1: white things to be burned down, um and then fleeing
Speaker 1: the country. Uh So, I'm really curious though, to hear
Speaker 1: from listeners on this. What are your thoughts on Nina Simone?
Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite song? Does her biography influence
Speaker 1: how you listen to her music at all? We're really
Speaker 1: curious to hear all of your thoughts. Mom Stuff at
Speaker 1: how Stuffwork dot com is our email address. You can
Speaker 1: also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook.
Speaker 1: And we've got a couple of messages to share with
Speaker 1: you right now, so I gotta let her here from
Speaker 1: Olivia about our interview with Hilary Frank, host of the
Speaker 1: podcast you need to listen to if you aren't already
Speaker 1: The Longest Shortest Time Um, She writes, I wanted to
Speaker 1: thank you for sharing such an amazing podcast and community.
Speaker 1: I had no clue it was out there. I just
Speaker 1: had my son four months ago and have never in
Speaker 1: my life felt so deceived by women. Well I'm not
Speaker 1: the typical mom. I did have a super average pregnancy
Speaker 1: and a very easy delivery, but my postpartum experience was horrible.
Speaker 1: And she goes on to say how when she found
Speaker 1: out she was pregnant, she was thrilled. She had always
Speaker 1: wanted kids, but you can't prepare yourself for something you
Speaker 1: don't know is coming. When my son came, I was
Speaker 1: ready for the mack truck of love, but instead I
Speaker 1: was hit with a mack truck of panic and anxiety.
Speaker 1: I spent lots of time trying to nurse or bent
Speaker 1: over the changing table bawling my eyes out. I felt
Speaker 1: a shame for not loving my son the moment he
Speaker 1: was born. On top of that, I felt so alone
Speaker 1: and isolated because of this high anxiety level. My blood
Speaker 1: pressure skyrocketed and my milk didn't come in, so my
Speaker 1: son cried constantly, which only fed into my feelings of
Speaker 1: inadequacy as a mom. I felt like I had to
Speaker 1: keep all of these struggles quiet, because you can't say
Speaker 1: you feel anything but love for your child out loud.
Speaker 1: I reached out to my O B g U I
Speaker 1: N who delivered my son, and his answer was, you're
Speaker 1: not depressed, and that was the end of the story.
Speaker 1: I was determined to fight my way out of this,
Speaker 1: so I changed my diet, started exercising, and went outside
Speaker 1: every day. A few weeks before I was about to
Speaker 1: go back to work, I was in such a dark place.
Speaker 1: I started to push my boyfriend away, and I was
Speaker 1: sure our relationship was coming to an end. I was
Speaker 1: preparing myself mentally to be a single parent when he
Speaker 1: said to me, I've been with you when your mother
Speaker 1: was diagnosed with cancer, when your grandmother was diagnosed with cancer,
Speaker 1: and through your parents divorced. I have never seen you
Speaker 1: like this. I just want you to feel better. That's
Speaker 1: when I took my help into my own hands. I
Speaker 1: visited my primary care doctor who prescribed me medication, and
Speaker 1: I found a therapist. Now I've been back at work
Speaker 1: for a month and I'm feeling more like myself. I
Speaker 1: feel like a confident mom. Other than the struggle I
Speaker 1: have with not being able to breastpeed my child, I
Speaker 1: love him more than anything. That mactruck of love hit me. Finally,
Speaker 1: I wish more women talked about this stuff. Even when
Speaker 1: I reached out to my mom, she didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do. She knew I wasn't depressed, but she had
Speaker 1: no suggestions for me. I think as women were doing
Speaker 1: a disservice to each other not sharing these stories. Those
Speaker 1: first few months for me were such a struggle, and
Speaker 1: I wasn't prepared for that at all. I wish someone
Speaker 1: would have told me. So I tell everyone I love
Speaker 1: your podcast, and so does my son. We listen to
Speaker 1: them on the way to daycare in the morning. So
Speaker 1: thank you so much, Olivia for sharing that story that
Speaker 1: I know is going to resonate with a lot of
Speaker 1: our listeners as well. Well. I have a letter here
Speaker 1: from a listener who wishes to remain anonymous, in response
Speaker 1: to our episode on science fiction. She says, I'm someone
Speaker 1: who attends World Con every year and has worked on
Speaker 1: World con Convention committees. I was totally not expecting to
Speaker 1: hear you guys talking about this community that I'm so
Speaker 1: intimately involved in. The current situation with the Hugos and
Speaker 1: the puppies is so massively frustrating. The central argument from
Speaker 1: the puppies is that there's this social justice warrior cabal
Speaker 1: that has been manipulating the hugos and ensuring that women
Speaker 1: and people of color and queer people when Hugos or
Speaker 1: people who write about those groups, that this doesn't reflect
Speaker 1: the will and interest of quote real sci fi fans, who,
Speaker 1: so far as I can tell, are straight white men
Speaker 1: who read real science fiction, which is basically fifties pulled
Speaker 1: with ray guns and spaceships and anything help quote message fiction.
Speaker 1: What they're basically saying is women and people of color
Speaker 1: and queer people aren't capable of writing well enough to
Speaker 1: win awards on their own, and they seem to think
Speaker 1: the only reason the author would write about, say, people
Speaker 1: of color, is because they want to make some sort
Speaker 1: of political statement in order to cater to this group
Speaker 1: of s jws, not because you know there are people
Speaker 1: of color in the world, and so writing should reflect
Speaker 1: that writing about a world solely inhabited by white people
Speaker 1: isn't much more of a political statement than writing about
Speaker 1: a diverse world that reflects the one we live in.
Speaker 1: What we're seeing with the puppies is so similar to
Speaker 1: what happening gamer Gate. A bunch of straight white men
Speaker 1: assumed for a long time that science fiction is solely
Speaker 1: about them and for them, and when women and people
Speaker 1: of color and queer people speak up and say no,
Speaker 1: this is actually for us too, and we've always been here,
Speaker 1: they freak out and decide that it's a personal attack
Speaker 1: on them that they must defend against. The good news
Speaker 1: is the reason it's happening is because we're being loud
Speaker 1: and refusing to put up with them anymore. So that's
Speaker 1: optimistic and optimus. You have to end on. So thank
Speaker 1: you for sending us that letter, and thanks to everyone
Speaker 1: who's written into us. Mom stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com as our email address, and for links to
Speaker 1: all of our social media as well as all of
Speaker 1: our blogs, videos and podcasts, including this one with links
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