“I relate to her”: Elizabeth Fraser on her love of Nina Simone
There has always been a haunted quality to Elizabeth Fraser’s voice. Even when the Cocteau Twins vocalist is singing in riddles, there is something human about her that resonates beyond mere instrumentation. Like the peculiar happenstance of Déjà vu, she seems to remind you, somewhere in her ethereal babbling, that you’re on the right track in life / there is no track to abide to at all, so don’t sweat it.
In this unique way, she has captivated a legion of fans that span the generations, proving her connection to be timeless. While each fan might have a differing corroboration of how her mystical oration makes them feel, the force behind it all is a simple show of feelings. The sense of expression is one without ego; in fact, it is almost the opposite of ego, daring to be boldly naked and letting nothing but emotion rise to the fore. This is a rarity in music, so when you hear it, it stands out.
Thus, it makes sense that Nina Simone would be Fraser’s vocal hero. While the two might be entirely different on a musicological level, when it comes to performative expression, they sing from the same hymn sheet. As the Scottish chanter explained, “Nina Simone… she’s, she’s just done so much. I don’t know much about her life but that doesn’t bother me, because I’ve learnt so much about her through her material. She’s so vulnerable.“
Born in 1933 in Tryon, North Carolina, Simone showcased prodigious talent from a young age. Her first love, however, was classical music, and she yearned to be a pianist in this capacity. But because of her race, she wasn’t admitted to study this, so she leant her voice fiercely to the Civil Rights movement as a soul musician instead. As the writer James Baldwin would later opine, she led the line for this in a cultural capacity.
In fact, his take on what music is all about is pretty close to Fraser’s appraisal that she is a perfect performative vessel. Baldwin once poetically wrote: “All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations.“
Continuing: “But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours.”
The idea of the performer hitting a rarified air that aligns with your own feelings is something Freser claims Simone is unrivalled at. She arrives at exultation with ease. ”I mostly listen to Nina Simone when I am feeling really raw. The more raw I feel, the more I relate to her,” she told Melody Maker. ”When she sings, when she performs, she tends to get very caught up in what’s she’s singing about. When you listen to Nina Simone, she’s so vulnerable. And because you’re implicated in her plight, you automatically share it.”
For Fraser, this brings to mind the old Leonard Cohen line that ”music is the emotional life of most people”. As Fraser adds, ”I don’t really do that with people. And I want to do that, and so I guess I am using her with which to do that.”
Adding, ”I know I get a lot of help from the experiences she sings about.”
In this capacity, Fraser feels she has taken a lot for Simone. “These days, I try and communicate as well as I can through singing. Even when I am not using words, people can understand what lies beneath it,“ she says. Explaining the moment this influence first made its mark, she remarked, “Lawrence from Felt made me a tape with ‘Nuff Said on one side and Baltimore on the other. I thought it was brilliant then. But now…I’ve developed much more, both a singer and in my own life.“
