i knew little about Nina Simone


but when i watched this documentary i felt like slapping myself with a flip-flop.
how had i live my 33 years and not heard of this spirited woman?! her skill on that piano,her voice,her style, her passion for civil rights. I love this documentary, they did an excellent job of showing her talent, pain, dreams all that. i am so happy i watched this

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I was familiar with Simone and some of her music, which is why I wanted to see this documentary about her in the first place---it's very good, because you have interviews with Simone herself explaining who she was and what she was about,and her philosophy on her life and music. There was also a documentary--a British one, I think--that I caught on CBC Channel 9 in Windsor back in 2004 that wished I could have taped (didn't know it was coming on,though.) Thing is, most people don't know about her because her music is rarely played on the radio (I only heard one song by her on a jazz station years ago.) My aunt had at least one record by her with the tune "Four Women" on it, but I never listened to it because I'd never heard of her at the time. I also liked haring about her work in the civil rights movement, and how she wore a natural and openly showed her pride in her blackness a couple of years before it became the cool thing to do---plus she wasn't your conventional-looking pop singer of that era, which definitely made her stand out form the usual run-of-the-mill entertainer of that time.

Actually, the first time i saw Simone actually perform was on a concert tape in the late '80s---I think it was a number of jazz singers doing a tribute to Billie Holiday. She was among them, and what struck about her at the time was that she looked mad as hell, and that she looked at the piano as if she wanted to attack it instead of playing it. I didn't like her voice at all,either---couldn't stand it. In fact, her voice has always been an acquired taste for me---it's only recently that I've gotten use to it. According to the film, she pushed her vocal chords too hard during one performance and damaged them permanently, which explained why her voice always sounded kind of off to me. I did hear an entire CD of songs she'd written and arranged (among them was a beautiful cover of the Doors' hit tune "Light My Fire"---at least I think that was the cover she did--which was actually a pretty beautiful version of it (I've always loved the song myself, so of course I liked it anyway.)

That being said, it was fun to see her early performances, as well as a film she performed in---her voice really sounded good,and she played beautifully.. Also, it seems that her musical style was hard to categorize--she seemed to sing whatever she wanted,from jazz to folk to R&B (I always find artists like that more interesting because you never know what they'll come up with. However, this means a lot of the time that they can forget about having consistant commercial success,too---because if an artist can't be put into a certain box/catagory music-wise, they're considered too difficult to market to an audience,which s why you're only hear them on college stations, and never the mainstream ones, unless they have that one big hit that opens their work to said mainstream.)

The only good thing about all the unnecessary (and stupid and misguided) hate being thrown at the indie biopic about Simone starring Zoe Saldana is that more people will probably watch this very good documentary (it's currently on Netflix) to see what the fuss is all about, and learn more about who Ms. Simone is and what happened to her in the process.

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