Liz Garbus’ 2015 documentary; ‘What Happened, Miss Simone?’ which details the complex yet compelling story of one of the world’s most iconic performers, Nina Simone stands out for its brilliant title.

The title resonates with every Simone fan, deeply curious about the incredible complexity of her world, her roller-coaster of conflicting emotions and numerous regrets amidst her musical fame and splendour.

In essence, why was she always caught between regretting her failure to actualize her dream of becoming a classical pianist and venturing into civil rights activism; how did she pour out so much into her music, yet concealed so much still, from the world; why was she often so cold and difficult to approach; why did she almost regret doing music; why didn’t she exit her abusive marriage earlier than she did?

In an attempt to understand Nina Simone, one must explore the peculiarity of her background. Nina Simone, originally Eunice Kathleen Waymon was born in the 20th century America where life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short! It was an era of one of the most intense forms of racial segregation, characterized by lynching and various kinds of racial assaults on Black people in America.

As a child, Simone’s dedication to her ‘genius’ musical talent would cost her association and isolate her from her pairs. This was as she was said to have rehearsed the piano 7 hours everyday. As she grew older, her first encounter of racism was when 12-year-old Simone was asked to give a piano recital in a library while her parents stood at the back of the room because they were Black. She would also allude to her ‘racist’ rejection of scholarship to attend the prestigious Philadelphia Curtis Institute of Music as an event that significantly broke her, consequently dashing her hopes of becoming the world’s foremost Black female classical pianist. “I never really got over the jolt of racism at the time”, Simone related in the documentary ‘What Happened, Miss Simone?’.

Curtis’ rejection onwards, Simone’s fate was at the mercy of whatever die life threw. Her future was as uncertain as it was unplanned and fear was inevitable. She would insinuate in a 1988 interview with The Wire that she stumbled into show business by chance. “When I first got into show business, I wasn’t a blues singer and I wasn’t even a love song singer. I was a classical pianist, so when I first got into show business, I only sang about love because I didn’t have it at the time…It is a fact that I don’t get enough love, I never did get enough love, and the only time I really got it were in Africa and at the beginning of my career so it makes sense for me to think of it first.”

Her music genre would oscillate intensely, everytime depicting an untameable emotional vortex buried within. In 1954, her music took a bold leap from classical to Jazz with an infusion of pop, blues, folk, ballads and even gospel. In the early 60’s, Simone’s career took another turn when her music took a distinctly political tone. Enraged by the 1963 racially inspired bombing of a Black Church in Birmingham, Alabama, the outspoken Simone wrote the song “Mississippi Goddam”, cussing out White supremacy in the only way she knew how. These actions she would come to slightly regret in the later years of her life as she related in an interview with The Wire: “What I regret is not being one of either being actively involved in politics at this time [1988] in America, or the fact that I’m stuck with them, and people don’t think about the fact that I’m a woman, [that I] sing as much love songs than I do. That bothers me”.

Simone held very ‘daring’ views and ideologies about womanhood and femininity for a woman in her era. She was not going to subscribe to any form of feminine suppression and made her stance clear to Hard Talk’s Tim Sebastian in a 1999 interview when she was asked if men were nervous of her: “They are very” Simone remarked. “[and I don’t try hard to put them at ease], I refuse to cook and to clean and they’ve got to take me as I am and recognize that I am a star as well as a woman and they have to deal with the two”.

These distinct beliefs may not be unconnected to the reason for the hellish experiences she faced in her first marriage to Andy Stroud and her numerous misadventures with love.

Nina Simone spent the most of her lifetime fighting countless demons. It began with her risky waltz into the land of uncertainty after a dashed hope. It was her love for her people conflicting against her love for herself, leading to her many regrets. It was the fact that the world was unprepared for her kind of genius that made her conceal as much as she revealed through her music. It was the overwhelming complexity of show business that made her smile an expensive commodity at shows, and it must have been the ‘bizarre’ place of ‘pain in art’ that kept her in her abusive marriage longer than necessary.

Lisa Simone, speaking on the physical abuse described her mother in the 2015 documentary as one who had a “love affair with fire”. “That’s like inviting a bull with a red cape, ‘just come into my kitchen and we would see what we can do” she said of her mother. Simone also once wrote in her diary of how she loved physical violence in love-making and war.

In all, Nina Simone was no more a legend than she was a genius and genius is complex. It is way more complex and frightening than it is captivating. Until we take a walk in her shoes, we may never really understand what it means to experience rejection, unrequited love, hurt, exhaustion and still keep it together like there was nothing. That’s enough to make one mad!

Simone’s life screamed the need for freedom. She fully expressed this feeling in her rapturous rendition of the song, “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free” at the Village Gate nightclub in New York City, 1968. Simone fans believe the song is arguably one of the best soulful performances the world would ever again witness. She outdid herself as the ‘High Priestess of Soul’ with that song. She danced, she sweated, all the while taking her audience along through her ‘short lived’ ecstacy. She knew what she wanted; only to be free.

Author: Okiemute C. Abraham.