Why Nina Simone thought America became the “United Snakes”
“I’ll tell you what Freedom is to me. No fear”. – Nina Simone
To be called a snake is usually more than just a character-attacking insult; it’s a crown worn only by those who wade undetected from place to place, black hearts hissing with venomous intent, oppressing those with trails of fire in their wake. A fitting title, some might say, for a place that deceptively sports the badge: ‘The Land of the Free’.
Nina Simone certainly wasn’t among the brave firsts who attempted solemnly to expose all the cracks in America’s crumbling empire, but her unrelenting fervour did rank her among the brave firsts who genuinely made an impact in the face of its hard-wired systemic bullshit. The country’s dissonant value system is easy to become desensitised to today, but that kind of normalisation doesn’t just stem from the constant hounding of news outlets and the world leaders themselves; it comes from innate privilege.
After all, people can turn a blind eye to things that don’t directly impact them, and, from the day she was born, Simone never knew such blissful ignorance. But this firsthand experience of racism wasn’t the only thing that gave Simone the fire to march on. It was also listening and observing those around her, the unsuspecting prey that had long transitioned into suspecting after the constant harassment from their vengeful, predatory, snake-like counterparts.
Or, in other words, those whose anthemic patriotism came in the form of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and who idolised eagle-like symbols with façades parading bravado and strength, but which actually harboured something more insidious deep beneath the surface. This kind of darkness, the kind so deeply embedded that it could be missed, so directly harmful that it’s impossible to avoid, is exactly what Simone dedicated herself to dismantling—like a serpentine-like warrior herself, unflinching in the blaze.
If this wasn’t proven in the deep-red hues of her anger-fuelled songs, from the anguished ‘Mississippi Goddam’ to the more starkly revealing ‘Four Women’, it came through in her interviews, when she framed the United Snakes of America as a system built to destroy, naming and shaming its flaws and pitfalls as reasons she eventually left to build a home somewhere else, somewhere with less thorns: “I came to expect despair every time I set foot in my own country, and I was never disappointed”.
Aside from losing many of her dreams, Simone embodied her own heartache and despair, bringing her sour words to knife fights where virtue existed in perseverance, even against the perils of richer, more established players. For Simone, the recipe for success, not just musically, but in changing the ways of the world, started with underlining the truth with the sharp tip of a marker, and knowing how to show up with raw grit, even in a world that favoured the voiceless, polished chords of those turned the other way.
As she noted in 1969: “I choose to reflect the times and the situations in which I find myself. That, to me, is my duty. At this crucial time in our lives when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don’t think you can help but be involved.”
