Celebrating Nina

I remember the first time I heard Nina Simone in the early '90s. My friend from California sent me a mixtape filled with the best in grunge/alternative music at the time. I remember singing to PJ Harvey, Natalie Merchant, and R.E.M., but it was the last song on the B-side that stopped me cold. “Birds in the sky, you know how I feel. Sun in the sky, you know how I feel.” I remember going back over my friend’s letter to try and find out all I could about this Nina Simone. Fast-forward about two years, and I was ecstatic to hear Lauryn Hill name check Simone in the hit song “Ready or Not.”

I thought Lauryn and I were the only Nina Simone fans, and then I met Jennifer. She dated a friend and had a small collection of songs that opened up my Nina Simone world even more. While everyone was getting into neo-soul, I was getting into Ms. Simone. By now, I’d amassed my own ever-growing collection of cds, and drove my friends nuts by playing “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” over and over.

Ms. Simone would have been 81 today. More than her voice and the way she sang songs that made me want my own brown-eyed handsome man with black hair, it was her politics that made me love this woman.

Check out Ms. Simone in her own words on the importance of being Black:

On her life, marriages, American politics, and the first Black president and religion and how she got on: 

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