Outraged by racism in the U.S., Simone lived out her later years in France.
This is the year of Nina Simone films. The documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? premiered on Netflix in June, and a December opening has been set for the biopic Nina, which is controversial because of the dark makeup and prosthetic nose worn by its star, Zoe Saldana.
In between there is The Amazing Nina Simone, a documentary written, directed, produced, photographed, edited and narrated by Jeff L. Lieberman. It’s a fine introduction to the fascinating singer, songwriter and pianist who grew up poor in segregated North Carolina and later sang in elegant French for rapt Europeans. She died in 2003 at age 70.
An entertainment legend, Simone led a troubled life. Some of her troubles were institutional, including the difficulties she faced as an African American woman, in music and beyond. Born Eunice Waymon, Simone was a musical prodigy as a child, and she aspired to be a classical pianist. She studied at Juilliard in a summer program but was turned down by Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music — because of her race, she claims bitterly in an interview years later.
In the 1950s, she began playing piano and singing in an Atlantic City nightclub, and her debut LP from 1958 featured her only top-20 hit single, a doleful version of “I Loves You Porgy.” She graduated to larger stages, including Carnegie Hall, and developed a unique style that incorporated jazz, classical, blues and gospel influences.
Her interest in the civil rights movement deepened over the course of the 1960s. Outraged by the murder of Medgar Evers and the young victims of the Birmingham church bombing, she composed “Mississippi Goddam,” which, like a Phil Ochs protest song, combined lacerating words and discomfitingly cheerful music.
In the 1970s, she divorced her abusive husband and left the U.S. After stints in Barbados and Liberia, she ended up in France, where she lived the rest of her life. She continued performing and apparently benefited from medication for a mental illness that is never really identified. One interviewee says she was bipolar. Another says she was possessed by a demon.
The Amazing Nina Simone reflects a monumental research effort. Lieberman interviewed family members, musicians, academics, an ex-girlfriend, even the elderly widow of Simone’s piano teacher. Lieberman weaves this material together deftly, though there are some needlessly flashy visual effects. If there were fewer of those and more of Simone’s wondrous singing, I wouldn’t complain.
