Reflections on Nina Simone's Legacy

by Alma Avgar Shohamy

The time has rolled around once again, the best time of the year in at least one respect: in the month of February we celebrate the birthday of Nina Simone, the High Priestess of Soul, born Eunice Waymon on February 21st in 1933. What can we say about her that hasn’t already been said? How can we honor her memory as lovers of music, life and justice?

Even writers, whose worldbuilding happens through words, often declare that Nina Simone’s genius defies and surpasses the written word. It’s true! It couldn’t be any other way! You can’t totally do this woman justice in writing. Her singing, her feeling, her resolve, her sound—they weave around our words and past our minds. They take up residence in our hearts and become a part of our bodies.

Writing this on Martin Luther King Day, I can’t help but think of “Why? (The King of Love is Dead)”, and those in this city who uphold King’s legacy of resistance and steadfastness. Simone performed that song with love, solidarity, deep grief and wrath, despite disagreeing with King’s methods. She sang out about Mississippi, King, and Black revolution in the face of regular death threats.

I also think of Simone’s friendship with Miriam Makeba and of her Mount Vernon neighbor, Betty Shabazz. The High Priestess exchanged words and spaces with so many people whose ideas and actions ring out around us today. She learned from and with Loraine Hansberry. She collaborated with Langston Hughes. She declared her beliefs, regrets, hopes and truths loudly! She still teaches the world about womanhood and personhood. Her voice reaches out to us, cutting through time and history.

I remember the transformative experience of listening to Simone’s music on vinyl in WKCR for the first time. As a new programmer on Daybreak Express, I made sure to include a Nina Simone tune (or 20) in every show. There is something so extraordinary about listening silently to “I Want A Little Sugar in My Bowl” while bleary-eyed in the early hours, and then leaping out of the creaky chair (which you might hear moving around in the background during mic breaks) to dance to “Do Nothin’ Till You Hear From Me”. Sharing music with you all on the air, playing these old records and celebrating another Nina Simone birthday in the station reminds me to practice slow rediscovery. There are new lessons waiting inside every tune of Simone’s. She’s telling us about herself and the world! She’s showing us new ways to move and be, and those ways curve in new directions every day.

In the February 2023 On Air Guide, Fenway Donegan notes that Simone’s song “Mississippi Goddam” “denounces all… who champion slow, piecemeal approaches to justice” (p. 19). The article discusses Nina Simone In Concert, describing Simone’s interactions with her audience throughout the recorded performance—the jokes, the silences, the piercing message of “Pirate Jenny” and the way that she ends the show with a spoken ‘that’s it.’ She ends it that way, decisively, with care and certainty.

Nothing about her work is piecemeal. When you close your eyes while a Nina Simone tune is on, the space behind your eyelids fills with shapes and feelings and blooming colors. The baroque and classical influences dance among the blues and folk tunes, up and down the piano. She hums, croons, groans, screams, whispers and announces. You feel the love and you feel the rage. You feel the work and music of justice in your stomach. “She inspires one to dream, to yearn, perhaps to suffer, if the song is one of sorrow,” wrote Claude Hall. “She is so great she communicates human understanding and affection for her fellow beings even while she attacks the towers of Wrong or Prejudice lyrically.”

Writer Ismatu Gwendolyn recently released an essay called “The Mythical Black Artist,” otherwise entitled, “Everyone inspired by Nina Simone; Nobody singin’ Mississippi Goddam”. Gwendolyn reflects, too, on that seminal song and its impact, as well as its reflection of Simone’s life. The essay refers back to that reflection repeatedly, bringing the song into a consideration of what revolution looks like and how our world has changed since the times of Ms. Simone.

Eunice Waymon, Nina Simone, is someone to listen to, refer to, marvel at, someone to respect to the greatest extent. I keep a poster of her in my room; when I look up at her she reminds me of honesty and humility, care and anger. Nina Simone continues to inspire countless people today with her music and the lessons of her life. She inspires us to hold our loved ones close, to build community, to attempt healing from cycles of trauma and violence. To create a world of justice and liberation.

We honor her by listening to her. By swaying to “Just In Time;” learning the hope, wrath and resolve of “Backlash Blues;” crying from the earnestness of “What More Can I Say” and the careful, kind rendition of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”—where she sighs between verses, “Well, that’s it, folks, that’s it."