The one genre Nina Simone thought was “a mistake”
No genre comes into existence on purpose. As much as music historians like to pinpoint the exact moment that heavy metal came into existence or the first proper grunge song that human ears got to hear, genres are only born when people start learning from their influences and start to carve out a niche for themselves in the pop sphere. By the time new genres are fully evolved, most people don’t know where they came from, but Nina Simone knew when some styles were best left by the wayside.
But Simone was always looking for something new whenever she sang her songs. She knew the importance of her voice on many of her classic hits, but when listening to her take on everything from ‘Sinnerman’ to ‘I Put A Spell On You’, it told people everything they needed to know. She was a sonic actor in many ways when translating every one of these melodies, and if she needed to inhabit a character to get her point across, that was what she was going to do.
Throughout music history, though, Simone’s take on her experience with racial issues had left her to change mediums multiple times. Anyone could have cried out in pain when singing the blues, but given her knowledge of different flavours of jazz, Simone could switch on a dime and have audiences eating out of the palm of her hand, whether she had the same 12-bar chord progression or a beautiful horn arrangement behind her.
Nothing she did was necessarily rock and roll by any means, but once the 1980s started, it turned out that rock wasn’t even the only voice of resistance in mainstream media. The Sugarhill Gang had first begun making something new as far back as the disco years, and when people first started hearing songs like ‘Rapper’s Delight’ and Grandmaster Flash’s ‘The Message’, it was only a matter of time before hip-hop started taking over with acts like Run-DMC.
Each new rap album may have offered a unique take on life, but for Simone, it never qualified as real music, saying, “I don’t like rap music very much. It’s mostly poetry with drums. I enjoy the protest lyrics because it’s a reflection of what I used to do. But I don’t enjoy them calling it rap music. The music is a mistake. It’s just poetry and drums, and that’s what they should call it.” A valid argument, to be sure, but the common misconception of what rap is usually comes down to one’s definition of music.
Any type of music can be made by whatever instruments can produce sound, and even if rappers are using their voice to spit out poetry, a lot of people can focus on the percussive nature of the way they sing. In fact, given what DJs could do in the world of sampling, rap was about to become the most eclectic genre of music anyone had ever heard. There would be pieces from different James Brown songs or the occasional Led Zeppelin rip, but some of Simone’s greatest songs wouldn’t have been that out of place on some jazz rap albums, either.
And looking at how far rap has come since its infancy, it’s nice to see that the new school is learning how to take the blend of poetry and percussion to new heights. There will always be people who are playing music only for a laugh, but the true artists like Kendrick Lamar and JID will always know how to create song ideas that no one had ever thought of before and use some deep instrumentation behind them.
Most people like the idea of working on records in the same way people used to back in the day, when they were relying on finely composed music, but what most rappers are doing isn’t all that dissimilar from what Simone was doing in her prime. This was music being used as a means of resistance, and even if it wasn’t to everyone’s taste, no one could deny the passion behind a song like Public Enemy’s ‘Fight the Power’.
