WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.220 You know, usually when you go to a classical 00:00:02.220 --> 00:00:05.059 music recital, there's... There's like a very 00:00:05.059 --> 00:00:07.639 specific script you expect everyone to follow. 00:00:07.700 --> 00:00:09.960 Oh, absolutely. It's a whole environment built 00:00:09.960 --> 00:00:12.359 almost entirely around control. Right. You have 00:00:12.359 --> 00:00:15.300 the velvet seats, the hushed silence of the crowd, 00:00:15.460 --> 00:00:18.039 the pristine grand piano sitting dead center 00:00:18.039 --> 00:00:21.140 on this empty stage. It's orderly. Yeah, it's 00:00:21.140 --> 00:00:23.440 deeply refined. Yeah. I mean, it's about tradition 00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:26.160 and rigorous discipline. You adhere to the notes 00:00:26.160 --> 00:00:28.500 exactly as they were written by European masters 00:00:28.500 --> 00:00:30.820 centuries ago. Exactly. You don't deviate. No, 00:00:30.820 --> 00:00:33.240 you really don't. But so what happens when the 00:00:33.240 --> 00:00:36.689 person sitting at that pristine grand piano isn't 00:00:36.689 --> 00:00:38.789 allowed to exist within that tradition. Like 00:00:38.789 --> 00:00:41.509 what happens when you take all of that meticulous 00:00:41.509 --> 00:00:44.509 elite classical training and you are forced by 00:00:44.509 --> 00:00:47.270 society to drag it out of the concert hall and 00:00:47.270 --> 00:00:50.590 into a smoky dimly lit sticky floored nightclub? 00:00:50.689 --> 00:00:52.649 Well the script doesn't just change in that scenario 00:00:52.649 --> 00:00:55.270 it basically catches fire. And that fire is exactly 00:00:55.270 --> 00:00:57.829 what we are walking into today. We are taking 00:00:57.829 --> 00:01:00.990 a deep dive into the life of a woman whose story 00:01:00.990 --> 00:01:03.740 is almost I mean it's almost too massive for 00:01:03.740 --> 00:01:05.840 a single sitting. It really is. You probably 00:01:05.840 --> 00:01:08.260 know her as the high priestess of soul. You know, 00:01:08.400 --> 00:01:11.760 you've heard her voice in iconic movies, on television, 00:01:12.180 --> 00:01:14.560 in high -end luxury commercials. Right, but the 00:01:14.560 --> 00:01:17.599 woman behind that unforgettable voice lived a 00:01:17.599 --> 00:01:20.959 life that was far more complex, tragic, and frankly 00:01:20.959 --> 00:01:24.200 revolutionary than a simple streaming jazz playlist 00:01:24.200 --> 00:01:26.879 might suggest. For sure. Today we're tracking 00:01:26.879 --> 00:01:29.750 the life of Eunice Wayman. She was a classical 00:01:29.750 --> 00:01:32.549 piano prodigy who was forced by circumstance 00:01:32.549 --> 00:01:35.189 and by the structural racism of mid -century 00:01:35.189 --> 00:01:38.209 America to become the global icon we know today 00:01:38.209 --> 00:01:41.109 as Nina Simone. We're going to trace her journey 00:01:41.109 --> 00:01:43.890 from a thwarted classical pianist to a fierce 00:01:43.890 --> 00:01:47.310 civil rights icon and ultimately to a wandering, 00:01:47.590 --> 00:01:49.530 fractured exile. And to really understand the 00:01:49.530 --> 00:01:51.569 revolutionary artist she became for you listening, 00:01:51.870 --> 00:01:53.670 you first have to understand the classical dreams 00:01:53.670 --> 00:01:56.189 that were structurally denied to her. Her life 00:01:56.189 --> 00:02:00.689 perfectly illustrates this between raw generational 00:02:00.689 --> 00:02:03.870 talent and the incredibly heavy burden of political 00:02:03.870 --> 00:02:05.890 awakening. Okay, let's unpack this and ground 00:02:05.890 --> 00:02:08.909 in where she started. Born Eunice Wayman in 1933 00:02:08.909 --> 00:02:12.050 in the small town of Trion, North Carolina. She's 00:02:12.050 --> 00:02:15.050 the sixth of eight kids. Her mother is a Methodist 00:02:15.050 --> 00:02:17.590 preacher, which means the church is basically 00:02:17.590 --> 00:02:20.050 the center of their universe. Yeah, religion 00:02:20.050 --> 00:02:22.270 was everything. And she is playing the piano 00:02:22.270 --> 00:02:26.159 by age three. Entirely by ear, mind you. and 00:02:26.159 --> 00:02:30.300 by age 12 she's giving her first formal classical 00:02:30.300 --> 00:02:33.509 recital. And the way our sources describe this 00:02:33.509 --> 00:02:36.610 specific day, it feels like the defining moment 00:02:36.610 --> 00:02:39.090 of her entire childhood. It really does. I mean, 00:02:39.090 --> 00:02:41.889 imagine being this 12 -year -old girl. You are 00:02:41.889 --> 00:02:44.550 immensely talented. You've practiced for countless 00:02:44.550 --> 00:02:47.090 hours, and you are finally sitting down at the 00:02:47.090 --> 00:02:49.569 piano for your concert debut. It's a huge deal. 00:02:49.830 --> 00:02:52.569 Huge. And her parents, naturally bursting with 00:02:52.569 --> 00:02:55.150 pride, take their seats in the front row. But 00:02:55.150 --> 00:02:56.949 you have to remember, this is the Jim Crow South 00:02:56.949 --> 00:02:59.409 in the 1940s. Right. Before she could even strike 00:02:59.409 --> 00:03:02.120 the first chord. and Usher forces her parents 00:03:02.120 --> 00:03:04.759 to get up and move to the back of the hall, simply 00:03:04.759 --> 00:03:06.819 to make room for white attendees who had arrived 00:03:06.819 --> 00:03:09.360 late. Oh, man. And even at 12 years old, she 00:03:09.360 --> 00:03:11.639 completely understands the sheer indignity of 00:03:11.639 --> 00:03:13.979 that. Oh, absolutely. She completely refuses 00:03:13.979 --> 00:03:16.900 to play. She just sits there, arms crossed, and 00:03:16.900 --> 00:03:19.080 tells them she will not touch the keys until 00:03:19.080 --> 00:03:20.860 her parents are moved back to the front row. 00:03:21.139 --> 00:03:24.250 It's an incredibly potent early display of the 00:03:24.250 --> 00:03:26.349 defiance that would really come to define her 00:03:26.349 --> 00:03:28.930 entire public persona. Yeah, she forced them 00:03:28.930 --> 00:03:31.969 to move her parents back. She did. But despite 00:03:31.969 --> 00:03:35.150 that harsh early realization of how racial dynamics 00:03:35.150 --> 00:03:37.889 were going to dictate her life, her ultimate 00:03:37.889 --> 00:03:40.590 goal remained unchanged. She wanted to be the 00:03:40.590 --> 00:03:43.610 first black female concert pianist in America. 00:03:43.770 --> 00:03:45.930 And she was violently serious about it, too. 00:03:46.189 --> 00:03:48.569 Her local community actually recognized this 00:03:48.569 --> 00:03:50.870 once -in -a -generation talent and set up a fund 00:03:50.870 --> 00:03:53.349 to support her education. Which is amazing. It 00:03:53.349 --> 00:03:55.949 is. She goes to a private boarding school, Allen 00:03:55.949 --> 00:03:58.449 High School for Girls, becomes valedictorian, 00:03:58.610 --> 00:04:00.949 and then spends a grueling summer studying at 00:04:00.949 --> 00:04:03.229 the prestigious Juilliard School in New York. 00:04:03.289 --> 00:04:05.930 Just relentless drive. Exactly. And all of this 00:04:05.930 --> 00:04:07.830 was just preparation for her ultimate goal, which 00:04:07.830 --> 00:04:10.120 was an audition at the Curtis Institute of Music 00:04:10.120 --> 00:04:12.780 in Philadelphia. Her entire family even relocated 00:04:12.780 --> 00:04:14.960 to Philly, fully expecting her to get in. She 00:04:14.960 --> 00:04:19.779 auditions, and she is rejected. Yeah. That rejection 00:04:19.779 --> 00:04:22.899 was a blow from which she arguably never fully 00:04:22.899 --> 00:04:25.660 recovered. Really? Yeah. For the rest of her 00:04:25.660 --> 00:04:28.240 life, she maintained that she was denied admission 00:04:28.240 --> 00:04:32.399 purely because of racial prejudice. Now, looking 00:04:32.399 --> 00:04:35.290 objectively at the historical record. The Curtis 00:04:35.290 --> 00:04:37.569 Institute has always denied this. Right. They 00:04:37.569 --> 00:04:40.009 had a different explanation. They did. They've 00:04:40.009 --> 00:04:42.490 noted that the year she auditioned, they only 00:04:42.490 --> 00:04:45.009 accepted three out of 72 applicants. And they 00:04:45.009 --> 00:04:47.230 did actually have black students enrolled at 00:04:47.230 --> 00:04:50.870 the time. So it was insanely competitive. Exactly. 00:04:51.490 --> 00:04:53.790 But whether it was a numbers game or prejudice, 00:04:54.370 --> 00:04:56.819 the result for Eunice was the same. The door 00:04:56.819 --> 00:04:59.560 to the classical concert hall was slammed completely 00:04:59.560 --> 00:05:01.819 shut. But she still had to survive. She still 00:05:01.819 --> 00:05:04.079 needed to fund her private piano lessons because 00:05:04.079 --> 00:05:06.240 she completely refused to give up the dream. 00:05:06.639 --> 00:05:09.379 Right. So she takes a job playing piano at the 00:05:09.379 --> 00:05:11.920 Midtown Bar and Grill in Atlantic City. It's 00:05:11.920 --> 00:05:14.600 this gritty cocktail lounge environment. And 00:05:14.600 --> 00:05:16.199 the owner there looks at her and says, look, 00:05:16.259 --> 00:05:18.120 you can't just sit there and play Bach. If you 00:05:18.120 --> 00:05:19.959 want to keep this job, you have to sing too. 00:05:20.170 --> 00:05:22.490 Which was terrifying for her, actually, not just 00:05:22.490 --> 00:05:24.470 because she wasn't a trained singer, but because 00:05:24.470 --> 00:05:27.850 of her mother. Right. She knows her deeply religious 00:05:27.850 --> 00:05:31.189 mother would absolutely disown her for playing 00:05:31.189 --> 00:05:33.850 in a bar, let alone playing the devil's music, 00:05:34.089 --> 00:05:37.430 which is how the church viewed this secular cocktail 00:05:37.430 --> 00:05:40.389 jazz and blues. Oh, for sure. So to hide her 00:05:40.389 --> 00:05:43.069 identity, she completely changes her name. She 00:05:43.069 --> 00:05:46.069 takes Nina from a nickname a former boyfriend 00:05:46.069 --> 00:05:48.990 gave her, meaning little one in Spanish, and 00:05:48.990 --> 00:05:51.389 Simone. from the French actress, Simone Signore, 00:05:51.529 --> 00:05:55.050 who she admired. And just like that, Eunice Wayman 00:05:55.050 --> 00:05:57.790 disappears into the shadows and Nina Simone is 00:05:57.790 --> 00:06:00.189 born. It's a complete reinvention out of sheer 00:06:00.189 --> 00:06:02.610 financial necessity. I always think of her early 00:06:02.610 --> 00:06:05.069 Atlantic City gigs like this. Imagine you have 00:06:05.069 --> 00:06:08.050 a classically trained Michelin star chef. She 00:06:08.050 --> 00:06:10.689 has spent her whole life mastering complex French 00:06:10.689 --> 00:06:12.829 techniques, but she gets locked out of the fine 00:06:12.829 --> 00:06:15.610 dining world. Okay. To pay the rent, she's forced 00:06:15.610 --> 00:06:18.149 to cook late night diner food, like burgers and 00:06:18.149 --> 00:06:20.829 fries. But because she literally can't help herself, 00:06:21.189 --> 00:06:23.709 she starts applying those Michelin star techniques 00:06:23.709 --> 00:06:27.389 to the diner food. And without meaning to, she 00:06:27.389 --> 00:06:30.610 accidentally invents an entirely new, world -changing 00:06:30.610 --> 00:06:32.990 cuisine. That is actually a brilliant way to 00:06:32.990 --> 00:06:35.540 frame it. She isn't just playing standard blues. 00:06:36.079 --> 00:06:38.980 She's taking rigid European classical styling 00:06:38.980 --> 00:06:42.399 and folding it directly into American jazz, creating 00:06:42.399 --> 00:06:44.740 a sonic synthesis nobody had ever heard before. 00:06:44.740 --> 00:06:47.899 Yeah. She's serving complex, multi -layered musical 00:06:47.899 --> 00:06:50.259 reductions on paper plates, essentially. And 00:06:50.259 --> 00:06:52.579 the patrons at this gritty bar are realizing 00:06:52.579 --> 00:06:54.120 it's the most incredible thing they've ever heard. 00:06:54.199 --> 00:06:56.839 Totally. It quickly earned her a rabid following. 00:06:57.209 --> 00:06:59.329 But unfortunately, that sudden success walked 00:06:59.329 --> 00:07:01.470 her right into an immense financial tragedy. 00:07:01.629 --> 00:07:04.449 Ugh, yes. This part of her biography physically 00:07:04.449 --> 00:07:07.310 hurts to read. It's brutal. Her debut album, 00:07:07.490 --> 00:07:10.449 Little Girl Blue, comes out in 1959. It features 00:07:10.449 --> 00:07:13.949 her first huge hit, I Loves You, Porgy. Because 00:07:13.949 --> 00:07:16.870 she didn't view herself as a pop star, like... 00:07:16.589 --> 00:07:18.649 She still thought of herself as a classical pianist 00:07:18.649 --> 00:07:20.529 just trying to make a quick buck to fund her 00:07:20.529 --> 00:07:23.430 real lessons. She sold the rights to that entire 00:07:23.430 --> 00:07:26.889 album outright for just $3 ,000. Which is just 00:07:26.889 --> 00:07:29.569 a staggering mistake. Because she gave up those 00:07:29.569 --> 00:07:32.050 publishing and recording rights, she lost out 00:07:32.050 --> 00:07:35.089 on well over $1 million in royalties over the 00:07:35.089 --> 00:07:37.930 next few decades. Wow. Yeah. And that financial 00:07:37.930 --> 00:07:41.389 loss compounded in a brutal way in the late 1980s. 00:07:41.730 --> 00:07:44.089 Another song from that exact same debut album, 00:07:44.240 --> 00:07:47.180 My baby just cares for me, became a massive global 00:07:47.180 --> 00:07:49.360 hit after being featured in a Chanel number five 00:07:49.360 --> 00:07:51.439 television commercial in Europe. Right, I remember 00:07:51.439 --> 00:07:54.139 that. Yeah, top the charts. But because of that 00:07:54.139 --> 00:07:57.699 $3 ,000 deal she made in her 20s, she never saw 00:07:57.699 --> 00:08:00.779 a dime of the financial windfall from the very 00:08:00.779 --> 00:08:03.290 foundation of her career. it really sets up this 00:08:03.290 --> 00:08:06.069 lifelong narrative of exploitation by the music 00:08:06.069 --> 00:08:09.430 industry. But eventually she does sign with Colpix 00:08:09.430 --> 00:08:12.370 Records where she demands and gets total creative 00:08:12.370 --> 00:08:15.149 control and she starts building this incredibly 00:08:15.149 --> 00:08:17.610 lucrative career. She does, yeah. But I have 00:08:17.610 --> 00:08:19.449 to ask, here's where it gets really interesting 00:08:19.449 --> 00:08:22.310 to me. If her career as a pop and jazz artist 00:08:22.310 --> 00:08:24.689 was finally taking off and she's finally making 00:08:24.689 --> 00:08:28.600 real money, Why risk it all with a sudden sharp 00:08:28.600 --> 00:08:31.879 pivot into radical politics? Was it just a pure 00:08:31.879 --> 00:08:34.559 emotional reaction to the news or did she know 00:08:34.559 --> 00:08:36.659 exactly what she was sacrificing? Honestly, it 00:08:36.659 --> 00:08:39.019 wasn't a calculated career move at all. It was 00:08:39.019 --> 00:08:41.399 an unavoidable moral imperative for her. You 00:08:41.399 --> 00:08:43.120 have to look at the timeline. The turning point 00:08:43.120 --> 00:08:47.240 is 1963. OK. In June, civil rights activist Medgar 00:08:47.240 --> 00:08:49.320 Evers is assassinated in his own driveway in 00:08:49.320 --> 00:08:51.559 Mississippi. Right. Then in September, you have 00:08:51.559 --> 00:08:53.919 the horrific bombing of the 16th Street Baptist 00:08:53.919 --> 00:08:56.480 Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four 00:08:56.480 --> 00:08:58.220 young black girls who were just getting ready 00:08:58.220 --> 00:09:02.100 for Sunday service. It was. And the sheer unvarnished 00:09:02.100 --> 00:09:05.179 brutality of those two events shattered whatever 00:09:05.179 --> 00:09:07.879 barrier Simone had tried to keep between her 00:09:07.879 --> 00:09:10.539 palatable music and her identity as a black woman 00:09:10.539 --> 00:09:13.129 in America. And the result of that shattering 00:09:13.129 --> 00:09:16.889 is arguably her most famous protest song, Mississippi 00:09:16.889 --> 00:09:20.350 Goddamn. Yes. She described writing that song 00:09:20.350 --> 00:09:23.250 as an eruption. She said it came to her in a 00:09:23.250 --> 00:09:26.210 rush of fury, hatred, and determination. It was 00:09:26.210 --> 00:09:29.090 a completely visceral reaction. She famously 00:09:29.090 --> 00:09:30.889 said that releasing that song was like throwing 00:09:30.889 --> 00:09:33.029 10 bullets back at them. And if you listen to 00:09:33.029 --> 00:09:35.389 the song, it is so subversive. She plays it at 00:09:35.389 --> 00:09:38.850 this upbeat, almost bouncy show tune tempo. Right. 00:09:38.850 --> 00:09:40.509 It's very fast. It sounds like something you'd 00:09:40.509 --> 00:09:42.649 hear in a bright Broadway musical. But then the 00:09:42.649 --> 00:09:45.029 lyrics kick in and she is just searing the American 00:09:45.029 --> 00:09:48.450 South with absolute venom. It completely obliterated 00:09:48.450 --> 00:09:51.929 her safe, palatable pop image. Overnight. Promotional 00:09:51.929 --> 00:09:54.110 copies of the record were literally snapped in 00:09:54.110 --> 00:09:56.429 half by a radio station in the Carolinas and 00:09:56.429 --> 00:09:58.990 mailed back to her record label. Southern stations 00:09:58.990 --> 00:10:02.120 boycotted her entirely. They did. instead of 00:10:02.120 --> 00:10:04.879 apologizing or backing down to save her record 00:10:04.879 --> 00:10:08.340 sales, she leaned further in. And her political 00:10:08.340 --> 00:10:10.460 evolution during this time is really striking, 00:10:10.779 --> 00:10:13.379 especially when you compare it to the mainstream 00:10:13.379 --> 00:10:15.480 civil rights movement that was being broadcast 00:10:15.480 --> 00:10:17.500 on television. Right, because looking at the 00:10:17.500 --> 00:10:20.340 historical texts, she completely diverged from 00:10:20.340 --> 00:10:22.679 Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent approach. 00:10:23.340 --> 00:10:25.259 Malcolm X was actually her neighbor when she 00:10:25.259 --> 00:10:27.580 lived in Mount Vernon, New York. He was, yeah. 00:10:27.759 --> 00:10:29.500 And I want to step in here really quickly to 00:10:29.500 --> 00:10:32.759 be very clear. As we're looking at these sources, 00:10:33.419 --> 00:10:35.899 we are impartially reporting the historical facts 00:10:35.899 --> 00:10:38.559 of her life. We aren't endorsing any specific 00:10:38.559 --> 00:10:41.460 political ideologies or taking sides, but the 00:10:41.460 --> 00:10:44.360 biography states very clearly that she supported 00:10:44.360 --> 00:10:47.460 black nationalism. Okay. Got it. Yeah. And she 00:10:47.460 --> 00:10:49.440 actively advocated for a violent revolution, 00:10:49.440 --> 00:10:51.740 and she believed that African Americans should 00:10:51.740 --> 00:10:54.740 use armed combat to form a separate independent 00:10:54.740 --> 00:10:56.899 state. Again, just neutrally reporting what the 00:10:56.899 --> 00:10:59.039 historical source material says. Of course. But 00:10:59.039 --> 00:11:01.539 that is a massive departure from the we shall 00:11:01.539 --> 00:11:04.460 overcome narrative that dominated the mainstream 00:11:04.460 --> 00:11:07.259 press at the time. It is a huge departure. She 00:11:07.259 --> 00:11:09.960 viewed nonviolence as a deeply flawed strategy 00:11:09.960 --> 00:11:12.379 against an opponent that was actively bombing 00:11:12.379 --> 00:11:15.240 children. And much of this intense political 00:11:15.240 --> 00:11:18.259 consciousness was cultivated through her incredibly 00:11:18.259 --> 00:11:20.299 close friendship with the brilliant playwright 00:11:20.299 --> 00:11:22.919 Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote A Raisin in the 00:11:22.919 --> 00:11:25.659 Sun. Oh, wow. Simone used to say that when they 00:11:25.659 --> 00:11:27.980 hung out, it wasn't superficial chatter. She 00:11:27.980 --> 00:11:31.019 described it as... real girls talk, but their 00:11:31.019 --> 00:11:34.000 version of girls talk was like sitting around 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:36.980 debating Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and the mechanics 00:11:36.980 --> 00:11:39.779 of global revolution. Exactly. It was rigorous 00:11:39.779 --> 00:11:43.000 intellectual cross -pollination. And sadly, after 00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:45.940 Hansberry died tragically young of cancer, Simone 00:11:45.940 --> 00:11:48.519 honored her by taking the title of one of Hansberry's 00:11:48.519 --> 00:11:51.299 unfinished plays and turning it into the monumental 00:11:51.299 --> 00:11:54.480 anthem. To be young, gifted and black. Which 00:11:54.480 --> 00:11:56.440 is such an incredible tribute. But you know, 00:11:56.539 --> 00:11:58.679 her activism wasn't just loud, explosive anger 00:11:58.679 --> 00:12:00.799 like Mississippi Goddamn or broad, uplifting 00:12:00.799 --> 00:12:03.220 anthems. She started using her classical precision 00:12:03.220 --> 00:12:06.000 to surgically dissect race and gender. Yes, she 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:08.860 really did. And that brings us to the song For 00:12:08.860 --> 00:12:12.519 Women. This song blew my mind. She's expanding 00:12:12.519 --> 00:12:15.500 the protest beyond just voting rights and turning 00:12:15.500 --> 00:12:17.940 the lens onto identity and intersectionality 00:12:17.940 --> 00:12:20.879 long before that word was being used in universities. 00:12:21.279 --> 00:12:23.480 Yeah, Four Women is an absolute master class 00:12:23.480 --> 00:12:26.600 in narrative songwriting. She systematically 00:12:26.600 --> 00:12:29.919 dismantles Eurocentric beauty standards by exploring 00:12:29.919 --> 00:12:32.100 the internalized trauma of four black women, 00:12:32.399 --> 00:12:34.620 each with a different skin tone and a different 00:12:34.620 --> 00:12:37.250 brutal history. Right. But she goes further than 00:12:37.250 --> 00:12:40.769 just skin color. She is exposing the restrictive 00:12:40.769 --> 00:12:43.289 historical stereotypes that have been forced 00:12:43.289 --> 00:12:45.720 onto black women for centuries. Yeah, she gives 00:12:45.720 --> 00:12:48.200 each woman a verse. She starts with Aunt Sarah, 00:12:48.419 --> 00:12:50.460 representing the mammy archetype, the woman whose 00:12:50.460 --> 00:12:52.360 back is bent from scrubbing floors and carrying 00:12:52.360 --> 00:12:55.299 the physical labor of white society. Then there's 00:12:55.299 --> 00:12:58.299 Sophronia, representing the tragic mulatto, the 00:12:58.299 --> 00:13:00.340 mixed race woman who is the product of a white 00:13:00.340 --> 00:13:02.860 father forcing himself on a black mother, leaving 00:13:02.860 --> 00:13:05.159 her trapped between two worlds. Then she moves 00:13:05.159 --> 00:13:07.799 to Sweet Thing, representing the sex worker, 00:13:08.340 --> 00:13:11.080 forced to commodify her own body just to survive. 00:13:11.740 --> 00:13:14.789 And finally, she ends with Peaches, representing 00:13:14.789 --> 00:13:17.690 the angry black woman whose bitterness is the 00:13:17.690 --> 00:13:19.870 direct inheritance of generations of slavery 00:13:19.870 --> 00:13:23.429 and segregation. It's so intense. She essentially 00:13:23.429 --> 00:13:26.610 forces the audience to look directly at the psychological 00:13:26.610 --> 00:13:28.830 scars of American history. It's almost like she 00:13:28.830 --> 00:13:32.269 was smuggling radical social theory and elite 00:13:32.269 --> 00:13:34.769 classical architecture inside a Trojan horse 00:13:34.769 --> 00:13:37.269 of pop and blues. Like you think you're just 00:13:37.269 --> 00:13:39.509 tapping your foot to a catchy tune, but you're 00:13:39.509 --> 00:13:42.909 actually getting an Ivy League lecture on intersectionality 00:13:42.909 --> 00:13:46.259 and Johann Sebastian Bach. That phrase, classical 00:13:46.259 --> 00:13:48.580 architecture, is actually the perfect way to 00:13:48.580 --> 00:13:51.159 describe her playing because she absolutely hated 00:13:51.159 --> 00:13:53.220 being called a jazz singer. Really? Yeah, she 00:13:53.220 --> 00:13:55.700 saw herself as a composer and an arranger. She 00:13:55.700 --> 00:13:58.259 brought the specific ruling virtuosity of the 00:13:58.259 --> 00:14:00.539 19th century romantic piano repertoire, so I 00:14:00.539 --> 00:14:03.779 think Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, directly into 00:14:03.779 --> 00:14:06.009 our popular music. And when you look at her sheet 00:14:06.009 --> 00:14:09.049 music, she's actually using Bach -style counterpoint 00:14:09.049 --> 00:14:11.950 in these nightclub songs. She is. For anyone 00:14:11.950 --> 00:14:14.830 who might not be a music theory nerd, counterpoint 00:14:14.830 --> 00:14:17.309 is essentially playing two or more completely 00:14:17.309 --> 00:14:20.269 independent melodies at the exact same time and 00:14:20.269 --> 00:14:23.009 making them harmonize. Which is incredibly difficult. 00:14:23.169 --> 00:14:26.190 Oh, yeah. Imagine your left hand playing a heavy 00:14:26.190 --> 00:14:28.870 rhythmic glues bass line while your right hand 00:14:28.870 --> 00:14:31.549 is playing an intricate, soaring, mathematically 00:14:31.549 --> 00:14:35.460 perfect classical back melody. It takes immense 00:14:35.460 --> 00:14:38.200 brain power to not let them bleed into each other. 00:14:38.720 --> 00:14:41.179 Jazz legend Miles Davis was apparently in awe 00:14:41.179 --> 00:14:43.460 of her ability to play three -part counterpoint 00:14:43.460 --> 00:14:45.659 while improvising. It was a staggering technical 00:14:45.659 --> 00:14:47.899 skill. But you know, her piano playing also served 00:14:47.899 --> 00:14:50.620 a secondary, almost defensive purpose regarding 00:14:50.620 --> 00:14:53.220 her vocals. We all think of Nina Simone's voice 00:14:53.220 --> 00:14:56.080 as this deeply iconic, rich sound, but she never 00:14:56.080 --> 00:14:58.580 actually trained as a singer. Zero formal voice 00:14:58.580 --> 00:15:01.279 training. She studied piano for 14 years, practicing 00:15:01.279 --> 00:15:04.539 six hours a day. But the voice was just raw, 00:15:04.879 --> 00:15:07.179 unprained instinct. Which made her very self 00:15:07.179 --> 00:15:09.940 -conscious, actually. But she utilized her profound 00:15:09.940 --> 00:15:13.019 musical intelligence to mask what she felt were 00:15:13.019 --> 00:15:15.299 her vocal limitations. Oh, that's clever. Yeah, 00:15:15.299 --> 00:15:17.940 her voice naturally sat in the contralto range, 00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:20.159 which is the lowest female singing voice. Yeah. 00:15:20.580 --> 00:15:23.039 Because she had perfect pitch, she would transpose 00:15:23.039 --> 00:15:25.879 any song into the absolute easiest key for her 00:15:25.879 --> 00:15:28.679 specific range. Makes sense. Right. And by doing 00:15:28.679 --> 00:15:31.200 that, nobody could detect that her vocal flexibility 00:15:31.200 --> 00:15:34.700 was limited. Instead of doing flashy vocal acrobatics, 00:15:34.980 --> 00:15:37.519 her signature became this incredible dynamic 00:15:37.519 --> 00:15:41.100 tension. She would elongate a single note, holding 00:15:41.100 --> 00:15:43.720 it perfectly still while her hands played a hurricane 00:15:43.720 --> 00:15:45.679 of notes underneath it. You can actually hear 00:15:45.679 --> 00:15:48.019 that tension in almost all her live recordings. 00:15:48.460 --> 00:15:50.899 But carrying the immense weight of that musical 00:15:50.899 --> 00:15:53.480 tension, combined with being the uncompromising 00:15:53.480 --> 00:15:56.779 political voice for so much pain and anger, It 00:15:56.779 --> 00:15:59.220 eventually broke her down. It did. And the later 00:15:59.220 --> 00:16:01.720 half of her life story paints a really dark, 00:16:01.899 --> 00:16:05.360 fractured reality. Yeah. By 1970, the psychological 00:16:05.360 --> 00:16:08.299 toll of her genius and her activism became too 00:16:08.299 --> 00:16:10.580 much. The civil rights movement was fracturing, 00:16:10.799 --> 00:16:12.879 many of its leaders had been assassinated, and 00:16:12.879 --> 00:16:14.899 she felt completely disillusioned with America. 00:16:15.480 --> 00:16:17.980 So she fled the country entirely. And she was 00:16:17.980 --> 00:16:20.679 fleeing on multiple fronts, right? She left behind 00:16:20.679 --> 00:16:23.840 her husband and manager, Andrew Stroud. She later 00:16:23.840 --> 00:16:26.200 claimed he abused her both psychologically and 00:16:26.200 --> 00:16:29.559 physically, treating her, in her own words, like 00:16:29.559 --> 00:16:32.360 a workhorse to generate money. A very dark situation. 00:16:32.639 --> 00:16:35.600 But she was also fleeing the IRS. There was a 00:16:35.600 --> 00:16:37.899 warrant for her arrest regarding unpaid taxes, 00:16:38.379 --> 00:16:40.899 which she had deliberately withheld as a protest 00:16:40.899 --> 00:16:43.740 against the Vietnam War. Right. And this begins 00:16:43.740 --> 00:16:47.559 a long, painful, and highly unstable period of 00:16:47.559 --> 00:16:51.059 nomadic exile. She goes to Barbados First, where 00:16:51.059 --> 00:16:53.000 she reportedly had a lengthy affair with the 00:16:53.000 --> 00:16:56.820 Prime Minister. Wow. Yeah. Then, heavily persuaded 00:16:56.820 --> 00:16:58.820 by her close friend, the South African singer, 00:16:59.080 --> 00:17:02.019 Maryam Akaba, she relocates to Liberia, hoping 00:17:02.019 --> 00:17:04.000 to find a sense of belonging in Africa. And this 00:17:04.000 --> 00:17:05.759 is where the story gets incredibly difficult 00:17:05.759 --> 00:17:08.480 to process. When she moved to Liberia, she abandoned 00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:10.940 her young daughter, Lisa, back in New York. And 00:17:10.940 --> 00:17:12.819 when Lisa eventually reunited with her mother 00:17:12.819 --> 00:17:15.200 in Africa, Lisa reported that her mother was 00:17:15.200 --> 00:17:17.680 so physically and mentally abusive that it drove 00:17:17.680 --> 00:17:20.779 Lisa to become suicidal. Lisa actually had to 00:17:20.779 --> 00:17:22.720 flee back to the United States just to survive 00:17:22.720 --> 00:17:25.339 her own mother. It's horrific. It is. How do 00:17:25.339 --> 00:17:27.480 we even begin to process that? Like, we love 00:17:27.480 --> 00:17:30.240 to romanticize the tortured artist trope in our 00:17:30.240 --> 00:17:32.700 culture. We love the rebellious civil rights 00:17:32.700 --> 00:17:35.980 hero. But how do you, as a listener, reconcile 00:17:35.980 --> 00:17:39.160 the musical genius who wrote to be young, gifted, 00:17:39.240 --> 00:17:42.579 and black with a mother who caused such profound 00:17:42.579 --> 00:17:46.200 harm to her own child? It is the crucial, uncomfortable 00:17:46.200 --> 00:17:48.059 tension of her legacy. You really can't just 00:17:48.059 --> 00:17:50.140 brush it away. But if you look at the broader 00:17:50.140 --> 00:17:52.720 medical context of her life, you see a woman 00:17:52.720 --> 00:17:55.440 who's underlying biology was constantly colliding 00:17:55.440 --> 00:17:58.359 with immense trauma. What do you mean by biology? 00:17:58.960 --> 00:18:00.359 Well, while she was living in the Netherlands 00:18:00.359 --> 00:18:02.980 in the late 1980s, she was finally diagnosed 00:18:02.980 --> 00:18:06.039 with bipolar disorder. For decades, she'd been 00:18:06.039 --> 00:18:08.380 carrying the grief and rage of an entire marginalized 00:18:08.380 --> 00:18:10.940 population on her shoulders while simultaneously 00:18:10.940 --> 00:18:13.200 being exploited by the music industry, abused 00:18:13.200 --> 00:18:16.140 by her partner, and suffering from severe, completely 00:18:16.140 --> 00:18:19.319 untreated psychiatric illness. Wow. And because 00:18:19.319 --> 00:18:21.819 the bipolar disorder went untreated for so long, 00:18:22.180 --> 00:18:24.359 the people around her had to resort to extreme 00:18:24.359 --> 00:18:27.000 measures. Her friends and caretakers were secretly 00:18:27.000 --> 00:18:30.440 slipping her antipsychotic medication, Trilofon, 00:18:30.940 --> 00:18:33.420 into her food just to keep her stabilized because 00:18:33.420 --> 00:18:35.619 she refused to follow a treatment plan. Exactly. 00:18:35.779 --> 00:18:38.700 It highlights the extreme, terrifying instability 00:18:38.700 --> 00:18:41.299 she was living with. And that instability frequently 00:18:41.299 --> 00:18:44.039 spilled over into erratic and sometimes very 00:18:44.039 --> 00:18:47.000 real physical violence. Yeah, the incidents from 00:18:47.000 --> 00:18:50.599 this era are alarming. In 1985, she fired a gun 00:18:50.599 --> 00:18:53.299 at a record company executive who she accused 00:18:53.299 --> 00:18:55.720 of stealing her royalties. She later admitted 00:18:55.720 --> 00:18:57.660 in interviews that she was actively trying to 00:18:57.660 --> 00:18:59.750 kill him but missed. Yeah. And then a decade 00:18:59.750 --> 00:19:02.170 later, while living in France, she shot and wounded 00:19:02.170 --> 00:19:04.609 her neighbor's teenage son with an air gun. Why? 00:19:05.069 --> 00:19:06.930 Because his laughter was interrupting her piano 00:19:06.930 --> 00:19:09.170 practice, and she perceived his response to her 00:19:09.170 --> 00:19:11.950 as a racial insult. Right. And, you know, it 00:19:11.950 --> 00:19:14.029 does not excuse the violence or the profound 00:19:14.029 --> 00:19:16.750 harm she caused her daughter. full stop, but 00:19:16.750 --> 00:19:19.069 it provides the tragic context of a brilliant 00:19:19.069 --> 00:19:21.490 mind that was pushed far beyond its breaking 00:19:21.490 --> 00:19:23.950 point, completely unsupported by the society 00:19:23.950 --> 00:19:26.730 that consumed her art. It's a really heavy reality, 00:19:27.130 --> 00:19:29.309 which I think makes the final chapter of her 00:19:29.309 --> 00:19:32.630 life feel incredibly bittersweet. Two days before 00:19:32.630 --> 00:19:34.690 she died in her sleep at her home in France in 00:19:34.690 --> 00:19:38.289 2003, at the age of 70, she received a piece 00:19:38.289 --> 00:19:41.940 of mail. It was an honorary degree. Yes. an honorary 00:19:41.940 --> 00:19:44.019 degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in 00:19:44.019 --> 00:19:46.660 Philadelphia. The exact same school that had 00:19:46.660 --> 00:19:49.660 rejected her half a century earlier. The rejection 00:19:49.660 --> 00:19:52.180 that literally altered the entire trajectory 00:19:52.180 --> 00:19:55.069 of her life. Yeah. In her later years, she always 00:19:55.069 --> 00:19:57.329 insisted on being called Dr. Nina Simone after 00:19:57.329 --> 00:20:00.130 receiving various honorary degrees. But finally, 00:20:00.130 --> 00:20:02.210 receiving that specific validation from Curtis 00:20:02.210 --> 00:20:05.829 just 48 hours before the end of her life is an 00:20:05.829 --> 00:20:08.250 incredibly poignant close to her story. It really 00:20:08.250 --> 00:20:10.710 is. So to synthesize what we've unpacked today 00:20:10.710 --> 00:20:13.490 for you listening, Nina Simone wasn't just a 00:20:13.490 --> 00:20:16.369 jazz singer. She was a classical virtuoso who 00:20:16.369 --> 00:20:19.950 was hijacked by history, denied the polite, orderly 00:20:19.950 --> 00:20:22.450 world of the classical concert hall, She used 00:20:22.450 --> 00:20:26.329 the only tool she had left, a piano and a raw, 00:20:26.750 --> 00:20:29.829 untrained control to voice, to force the world 00:20:29.829 --> 00:20:33.710 to look at its own ugliness. She weaponized her 00:20:33.710 --> 00:20:36.480 talent to fight for liberation. even as that 00:20:36.480 --> 00:20:39.740 fight and her own untreated illness consumed 00:20:39.740 --> 00:20:41.579 her from the inside out. It leaves you with something 00:20:41.579 --> 00:20:43.640 really profound to mull over. Like, we spent 00:20:43.640 --> 00:20:45.380 this whole time talking about how the Curtis 00:20:45.380 --> 00:20:47.779 Institute's rejection destroyed Eunice Wayman's 00:20:47.779 --> 00:20:50.279 dream. But imagine for a second if they had accepted 00:20:50.279 --> 00:20:52.660 her. Right. Imagine if society had just let her 00:20:52.660 --> 00:20:54.980 be the classical concert pianist she wanted to 00:20:54.980 --> 00:20:56.980 be. We would have gained a brilliant interpreter 00:20:56.980 --> 00:20:59.440 of Bach and Chopin, sure. But we never would 00:20:59.440 --> 00:21:01.240 have had Mississippi Goddamn. We never would 00:21:01.240 --> 00:21:02.900 have had the soundtrack to the civil rights movement. 00:21:02.940 --> 00:21:05.259 That's very true. It begs a really uncomfortable 00:21:05.259 --> 00:21:09.039 question about how we consume art. Does society 00:21:09.039 --> 00:21:11.519 sometimes require the complete breaking of a 00:21:11.519 --> 00:21:13.859 marginalized person in order to forge the cultural 00:21:13.859 --> 00:21:17.000 anthems we desperately need? A haunting, but 00:21:17.000 --> 00:21:19.359 really necessary thought to leave on. Thank you 00:21:19.359 --> 00:21:21.640 so much for joining us on this deep dive into 00:21:21.640 --> 00:21:24.019 the extraordinary, turbulent life of Dr. Nina 00:21:24.019 --> 00:21:25.220 Simone. We'll see you next time.