Rebel with a Cause: The Artistry and Activism of Nina Simone

Eunice Kathleen Waymon (Nina Simone) 1933-2003 learned piano at the age of three and gave her first concert at the age of 12. Seated up front, her parents were forced to move to the back of the hall to make way for White people. Eunice refused to play until they were reinstated. It was her aspiration to be a classical concert pianist.
Local community effort sent the young woman to Julliard after which she applied for a scholarship at Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Despite a well received audition she was denied, later attributing the decision to racism.

Nina Simone 1969 This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
In order to fund private lessons, Simone got a job playing piano at a nightclub in Atlantic City. She changed her name to hide association with “the devil’s music” from her church-going family. “Nina,” derived from nina, a nickname given her by a boyfriend named Chico. “Simone” was taken from the French actress Simone Signoret. After the first evening, the artist was told she had to sing to keep the job, unwittingly launching a vocal career.
Amber Iman, who narrates as well as singing Nina, frames the tribute with her own relationship to Simone as well as anger at prejudice observed and endured. Trying to keep Broadway’s Soul Doctor alive, its producers instructed Iman to go sing at Harlem’s iconic Abyssinian Baptist Church in hopes of attracting a more diverse audience. “We sent out mailers, but Black people don’t read,” she was informed.
The artist tells us both she and Simone were “southern belles”- an unfortunate and surely as applied to Simone, inapplicable term. Simone was born poor. Both had a hard time adjusting to city life after rural upbringing. Neither grew up wanting to be a singer. Iman suggests her subject played hours of Bach after each work night to clear her senses.

Amber Iman
“He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” arrives by way of an original, appealing, drum-centric arrangement with capable back-up by Tiffany Mann and Ines Nassara. The three have fine vocal chemistry. “That was Nina’s rebellion,” Iman says, “Taking a church song and making it something else.” Perhaps less rebellion and more practical evolution? Eventually deemed “the High Priestess of Soul,” Simone was known for her distinctive low voice and expansive emotional range.
Research ranges from ridiculous to illuminating. We’re told the pianist was her mother’s on-the-road accompanist at age two, but returned home to care for her ailing father at four. Really?! Eyeglass issue? Simone’s star rose through clubs and recordings, the latter of which she apparently completed in record time. (There would be more than 40 albums between 1958 and 1974.)
Randy Newman’s “Baltimore,” like many of tonight’s numbers, is dense, passionate, rhythmic, and practically drowns out the singer whose enunciation could use sharpening. There’s more clarity with less ensemble. “Backlash Blues” (music by Simone/poem by Harlem Renaissance leader, Langston Hughes) is harsh and bluesy. Iman goes down on her haunches, points and almost screams. By the1960s, Simone was friends with “every” Black artist, yet not an activist. “She was raised to turn away from prejudice and live the best life she could. Nina wrote what she felt, but wasn’t out there marching.” (Iman)

Tiffany Mann, Amber Iman, Inès Nassara
In 1963, the murder of Medgar Evers and subsequent bombing of a Baptist church killing four young Black girls provoked a turning point. “I had it in my mind to go out and kill somebody,” Iman quotes. In response, Simone wrote “Mississippi Goddamn,” cited as her first protest song: Alabama’s gotten me so upset/Tennessee made me lose my rest/And everybody knows about Mississippi, goddamn…As her political activism rose, the rate of release of her music slowed.
According to historian/radio host Rickey Vincent, Simone was a pioneering musician whose career was characterized by “fits of outrage and improvisational genius…” Known for her temper and outbursts of aggression, the artist took medication from the mid-1960s onward. A diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder was finally made in 1985. (Unmentioned.) “She was an established Black musical entertainer who broke the norms of the industry and produced direct social commentary in her music,” he continues. Rolling Stone wrote: “Her honey-coated, slightly adenoidal cry was one of the most affecting voices of the civil rights movement.”
“Plain Gold Ring” (Jack Hammer) and “Gimme Some” (Andy Stroud) are multi-layered and rousing. Friendship with the playwright and activist Lorraine Hansberry inspired “To Be Young Gifted and Black.” The anthemic song is exuberantly given its due by tonight’s three vocalists. “We never talked about men or clothes. It was always Marx, Lenin and revolution,” Simone wrote.

Amber Iman
Iman ties up the evening with her own Tony Nomination for Lempicka, another short-lived Broadway run. “Like Nina, I’m never giving up.” The self importance is cloying. She speaks of continuing “racism, sexism, misogyny, and division” Simone would abhor were she around today. “What truth are we speaking? What legacy are we leaving?” Iman demands. “Feeling Good” (Leslie Bricusse/Anthony Newley) pours like molasses. Several encores follow.
Amber Iman is dynamic. Vocals are powerful, often melismatic (the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes), sometimes not lyrically clear. Tiffany Mann and Ines Nassara pack musical wallop.
Nina Simone published her autobiography, I Put a Spell on You (taking the title from her famous 1965 album)
The excellent band includes stand-outs Chala Yancy on violin/viola and Lonnie Christian on drums.
Photos by Richard Termine
Featuring: Amber Iman
Written by: Jocelyn Bioh
Directed by: Reggie D White
Music direction and arrangements: Michael O. Mitchell
Lyrics & Lyricists presents
Rebel With A Cause: The Artistry and Activism of Nina Simone
Written by Jocelyn Bioh
Directed by Reggie D. White
Arrangements/Orchestrations/Piano/Music Direction- Michael O. Mitchell
92NY (92Y) at Lexington Avenue