Nina Simone On freedom

This is an excerpt from "Nina: An Historical Perspective" by Peter Rodis 

Nina Simone & Lauryn Hill - The miseducation of Eunice Waymon

 

Repost from Soul Mates Project: 

With his latest Soul Mates Project, Amerigo Gazaway imagines a studio session between The High Priestess of Soul, Nina Simone, and living legend, Ms. Lauryn Hill. Continuing the “collaborations that never were” theme of his previous releases, the producer seamlessly connects the dots between Hip-Hop and the genre’s predecessor, Soul.

Download the full album here...

This is an epic piece of work, thoughtful and detailed, an absolute must listen for the die hard Lauryn fan. Gazaway is a genius. On his 2018 release he writes:

Repost continued:

Back in 2016, I had the pleasure of discussing my conceptual collaboration projects via a roundtable discussion at MoPOP’s annual POP Conference in Seattle. During our discussion, a fellow panelist, writer and professor, Zandria Robinson, posed an interesting question: “where’s your project celebrating women artists?” 

Two years later and I’m excited to finally share the answer with my new Nina Simone + Lauryn Hill mixtape, “The Miseducation of Eunice Waymon”. Given the project was, in part, inspired by Zandria’s question, she got the first listen and has written a few words on the album below. -AG 

“Soul Mates’ “collaborations that never were” enters new territory with a now familiar deft and verve, this time highlighting intergenerational conjurings between two black women cultural workers from the civil rights and hip-hop generations. With Nina Simone and Lauryn Hill seated together at the table, collaboration transforms into vivid conversation, call and response, and a call to action--private, personal, and public--across space, time, and realm. 

With "The Miseducation of Eunice Waymon", Amerigo Gazaway renders listeners children in the backseat of a shiny black Chevy, transfixed by the mysteries of grown women’s conversations. We ride along and listen quietly as Hill drives down South to retrieve Simone from North Carolina and the two travel back north together, to New Jersey and then to New York, and onward to woman-ish soul eternity. 

Gazaway does a different kind of labor in this mashup, creating a private, interior space for these women to speak the truths of their lives, both to themselves and to each other. As they come to know each other across the project’s apt sample and song combinations and interview snippets, Simone’s piano accompanies and buoys Lauryn and Lauryn sings back Nina’s words and sounds a resonant understanding with her acoustic guitar. They become gold- and white-framed mirrors, dancing to breakbeats around each other’s personal and political struggles and triumphs with all the freedom being seen, being recognized, brings. 

In this curated interior space, audiences are compelled, at last, to listen to all of what and who these women were and are and to really hear those truths: to listen and learn about care, alienation, desperation, motherhood, women’s work; about the unending strivings for interpersonal peace and understanding; and about the necessity for liberation.” - Zandria Robinson

The MC Covers Quincy Jones - Everything must change

Now that I've stopped crying 

Eveything Must Change a song by Benard Ighner performed by Quincy Jones for the album Body Heat, then later by Randy Crawford, Barbera Streisand, Nina Simone and others.


The best part of my work day is just before I leave... Can’t believe I heard this song for the first time just a few years ago. I give thanks to Chinna who shared this one with me visiting #InnaDiYard Simple, moving, timeless, and timely. Now I take the time to learn this song and own it.

Four Women (Nina Simone) by Kelly Price Marsha Ambrosius, Jill Scott, Ledisi

Jill Scott, Ledisi, Marsha Ambrosius and Kelly Price brought the house down as they musically embodied “Aunt Sarah,” “Safronia,” “Sweet Thing” and “Peaches.”

“Four Women” first appeared on Nina Simone’s 1966 album, “Wild Is the Wind” and addresses stereotypes of African-American women.  Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek recorded a song inspired by this called “Four Women” on their debut album Train Of Thought.

I usually end up impressed and disappointed all at once to see a tribute/cover at an awards show. Worse with how Divas of no relation tend to be miss matched with each other and the song. Need I go further and say award shows nowadays aren't what they used to be. Well I was done having a Jill Scott night already (she could put me to bed anytime, ehem), Sunday dinner had me slipping into a food induced coma so I was nice, and then out of nowhere...Four women just got owned. 

Don't get it twisted though, were talking Nina Simone here, this is how its done, grab a blanket...