What did Maya Angelou say about Nina Simone?
“What happened, Miss Simone?” once asked Maya Angelou in an essay. “What happened to your big eyes that quickly veil to hide the loneliness? To your voice that has so little tenderness yet flows with your commitment to the battle of life? What happened to you?” It was such a poignant set of questions about the troubled but brilliant Nina Simone that it inspired the name of the later Liz Garbus biopic about the Queen of Soul.
The author and Civil Rights activist had the chance to profile Simone for a Redbook interview, which delved deep into her stance on being a Black woman in America. Simone was a fierce, ardent voice in the fight for freedom, often to her own detriment. She was haunted by racially motivated murders and moved to write ‘Mississippi Goddamn’ after the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.
“Did the Black experience press down on your fingers,” probed Angelou, “Forcing those peculiar Simone harmonies from the keys?” She noted Simone visibly stiffened at the mention of it. “No Black person can be unaware of the climate in the United States,” replied Simone. “But during my early years, I was no more aware than most. My sense of responsibility unfolded slowly. Slowly.”
Angelou asked her if the children bombed in the church were the “seeds” of her scalding compositions. “I wrote – or, better, ‘Mississippi Goddam’ wrote itself through me,” explained Simone. “I had to say something – express or explode.” The 1964 hit was written in less than an hour, of almost staggering cultural significance.
Released as part of Nina Simone In Concert, the protest anthem was banned in several southern states, and the promotional singles sent to radio stations returned, snapped in half. But Simone would never allow herself to be stifled. Alongside other Black artists like Harry Belafonte and Sammy David Jr, she crossed police lines at the end of the Selma to Montgomery March, belting out the song to more than 10,000 people.
Angelou spoke to Simone’s mercurial power in the way only a poet could. “Life,” she wrote, “Has left keloidal scars on her voice, and wells of angry tears lie beneath each spoken word. Here lies innocence betrayed, and the keening that is heard is a dirge for hope abused.”
While Simone was revered for being one of the Civil Rights Movement’s most influential voices, she often felt alienated and admonished for her so-called radical sympathies after calling for violence to be met with violence. “She is loved or feared, adored or disliked, but few who have met her music or glimpsed her soul react with moderation,” wrote Angelou. “She is an extremist, extremely realised.”
Simone, Angelou concludes, “Has whispered ‘love’ into thousands of ears and shouted ‘revolution’ into the hearts of millions”.
