Princess Noire
The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Born Eunice Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina, Nina Simone (1933–2003) began her musical life playing classical piano. A child prodigy, she wanted a career on the concert stage, but when the Curtis Institute of Music rejected her, the devastating disappointment compelled her to change direction. She turned to popular music and jazz but never abandoned her classical roots or her intense ambition. By the age of twenty six, Simone had sung at New York City’s venerable Town Hall and was on her way. Tapping into newly unearthed material on Simone’s family and career, Nadine Cohodas paints a luminous portrait of the singer, highlighting her tumultuous life, her innovative compositions, and the prodigious talent that matched her ambition.
With precision and empathy, Cohodas weaves the story of Simone’s contentious relationship with audiences and critics, her outspoken support for civil rights, her two marriages and her daughter, and, later, the sense of alienation that drove her to live abroad from 1993 until her death. Alongside these threads runs a more troubling one: Simone’s increasing outbursts of rage and pain that signaled mental illness and a lifelong struggle to overcome a deep sense of personal injustice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cohodas follows her biography of Dinah Washington (Queen) with that of another prominent African-American jazz singer although Nina Simone would bristle at that label, insisting from the very start of her career that her music was grounded in the classical. (Eunice Waymon only began performing in nightclubs as Nina Simone after a failed application to the Curtis Institute of Music.) If Cohodas is respectful of Simone's legacy, particularly the impact of songs like "Mississippi Goddam" and "Young, Gifted and Black" on the civil rights movement, she's also forthright about Simone's contentious relationship with audiences and critics, and the possible mental illness underpinning that turmoil. It seems as if every one of Simone's onstage outbursts is recounted, along with every review describing her as "a very angry young woman" or wishing she'd stop playing protest songs. One of the few areas in which Cohodas shows full deference to her subject is in brushing off rumors of lesbian relationships, although a passing comment that Simone was "inexorably drawn" to the playwright Lorraine Hansberry raises questions. For the most part, though, Simone's complex personality arrogance and brilliance in equal measure receives a long-overdue elaboration. B&w illus. throughout.
