{"id":23875,"date":"2023-04-23T11:48:58","date_gmt":"2023-04-23T11:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=23875"},"modified":"2023-04-23T16:15:22","modified_gmt":"2023-04-23T16:15:22","slug":"the-radical-politics-of-nina-simone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2023\/04\/23\/the-radical-politics-of-nina-simone\/","title":{"rendered":"The radical politics of Nina Simone"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article, written by Chardine Taylor-Stone, on the radical politics of Nina Simone was first posted by The Tribune <\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photo of Nina Simone Photo by Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nina Simone, who died on 21st April \u00a0in 2003, is often remembered for her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement \u2013 but she was also a socialist who saw revolution as the path to true equality.<\/p>\n

\u2018We never talked about men or clothes. It was always\u00a0Marx, Lenin and revolution \u2013 real girls\u2019 talk.\u2019 \u2013 Nina Simone<\/em><\/p>\n

Nina Simone\u2019s remark about not discussing fashion but \u2018Marx, Lenin and revolution\u2019 offers a glimpse into the daily political life of Simone away from her more well-known story as civil rights activist and musician. This \u2018girls\u2019 talk\u2019 took place with her friend and playwright\u00a0Lorraine Hansberry<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 a conversation between two Black women that, as Simone says, was not about men or clothes, but about the creative work they were producing, and how they saw its role in the liberation of their community.<\/p>\n

Referencing Hansberry\u2019s autobiographical play\u00a0Young, Gifted and Black<\/em><\/a>, Simone later wrote a\u00a0song<\/a>\u00a0with the same title in tribute to her friend and comrade after Hansberry died of pancreatic cancer at the tragically young age of 34. This friendship and comradeship demonstrates how intimate conversations between political Black women have the power to inspire. They take place away from the gaze of men, away from white people; they can be places of respite in which one can re-energise and rejoin the wider movement that often marginalises and erases the political insights of Black women.<\/p>\n

To say Nina Simone has been \u2018erased\u2019 would be absurd. She is one of the most celebrated musicians of the twentieth century. There\u2019s no need to write another article, biography or analysis of her political songs. But on the anniversary of her death, we can look at how the story of Simone\u2019s political life is told, and who is telling it; at what they choose to include, and what they do in fact \u2018erase\u2019.<\/p>\n

Nina Simone is often spoken about as a civil rights activist, and she was. But the civil rights movement encompassed many differing political views on what liberation looked like. Some like the NAACP wanted liberal reforms that were criticised for only being beneficial to the African-American middle class. Black nationalists sought economic independence and a new Black state separate from racist white America, although it was arguably unclear what that new state would look like beyond a Black version of capitalism. As such, not all civil rights activists were referencing Marx or Lenin as an example of the conversations that they had with friends.<\/p>\n

For a woman of fierce intelligence, talent, and brilliance, who knew exactly how she wanted to be heard through her music and performance, we can take this as a statement of purpose rather than as a passing comment. Nina Simone was telling us she was a communist, a comrade, a revolutionary.<\/p>\n

Sometimes Black women artists, and especially musicians, who demonstrate some form of left-wing politics get deradicalised into safer versions that make white listeners more comfortable, as white communist folk musician Phil Ochs humorously sang in his anthem \u2018Love Me I\u2019m a Liberal<\/a>\u2019. Liberal whites may go to civil rights rallies, Ochs sings, \u2018but don\u2019t talk about revolution, that\u2019s going a little too far.\u2019<\/p>\n

Simone wanted to go that far. Written in response to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in September 1963\u2014a white supremacist terror attack which killed four young Black girls aged between 11 and 14\u2014Simone sings in \u2018Mississippi Goddamn<\/a>\u2019:<\/p>\n

\u2018They try to say it\u2019s a communist plot<\/em><\/p>\n

All I want is equality<\/em><\/p>\n

For my sister my brother my people and me.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

This could be read as a response to the McCarthyite \u2018red scare\u2019, in which any talk of equality was conflated with communism and \u2018anti-American\u2019 sentiment. But when read in light of her \u2018girls\u2019 talk\u2019 with Hansberry and the politics of her social circle including\u00a0James Baldwin, <\/a>Stokely Carmicheal<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Langston Hughes <\/a>\u2014all activists that engaged with socialism\u2014these lyrics are a political statement. Simone is on the left because she sees it as the only route to true equality; \u2018go slow\u2019 reforms that placate a racist state are not an option.<\/p>\n

We also see reflections of an internationalist politic in \u2018Backlash Blues<\/a>\u2019, the lyrics of which were taken from a poem written for Simone by Langston Hughes:<\/p>\n

\u2018But the world is big<\/em><\/p>\n

Big and bright and round<\/em><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s full of other folks like me<\/em><\/p>\n

Who are black, yellow, beige and brown.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the last things Hughes wrote, the poem reflects on Vietnam and on African-American men being sent to fight an imperialist war while being treated as second-class citizens at \u2018home\u2019. Simone tells the listener that she and other racialised groups who are oppressed by the many incarnations of \u2018Mr Backlash\u2019 are, in fact, the majority in the world \u2013 a statement reflective of a political moment in which organisations like the Black Panther Party were seeking to build international coalitions with other people around the world suffering the effects of American imperialism.<\/p>\n

The political history of the Black US left is important to contextualising and understanding Simone\u2019s work, but I want to return to the \u2018girls\u2019 talk\u2019 between Simone and Hansberry. To my ear as a Black woman, socialist, feminist, and musician, the politics of these private and intimate conversations between radical Black women appear in Simone\u2019s music. Take \u2018Four Women<\/a>\u2019. Often called a feminist anthem, the song describes the enforced class and gender roles and stereotypes that Black women have found themselves trapped in:\u00a0the \u2018mammy\u2019<\/a>;\u00a0the \u2018tragic mulatto\u2019<\/a>; the sex worker; the angry Black woman.<\/p>\n

To me, the song goes beyond a simplistic analysis of slavery and the effect of its legacy on Black women today. Rather, I imagine Hansberry and Simone talking about their own lives and the lives of other Black women using a Marxist analysis that encompasses race, gender, and class; they would talk about how racism and capitalism created the lives of the women in the song, Aunt Sarah, Saffronia, Sweet Thing, and Peaches \u2013 the lives of Black women who find themselves constantly having to struggle, survive, and resist.<\/p>\n

The political life of Nina Simone cannot be done justice in one short article. She was a tour de force who brought the message of freedom, equality, justice and liberation to everyone who had the pleasure of hearing her music. But it\u2019s important we don\u2019t pigeonhole her as a civil rights activist: she was a revolutionary \u2013 a woman who engaged with the work of Marx and Lenin, and who brought that revolutionary praxis to her music in a way that continues to resonate with us today.<\/p>\n

21.4.23<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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This article, written by Chardine Taylor-Stone, on the radical politics of Nina Simone was first posted by The Tribune .\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Nina Simone, who died on 21st April \u00a0in 2003, is often remembered for her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement \u2013 but she was also a socialist who saw revolution as the path to true…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1858,1867,1859,1845,1868,8975,1863],"tags":[9191],"class_list":["post-23875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oppression-liberation","category-emancipation-liberation-and-self-determination","category-womens-liberation","category-us-imperialism","category-against-imperialism","category-black-liberation","category-cultural-celebration","tag-author-chardine-taylor-stone"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/mastodon.scot\/@rcfscotland\/110247971417088966","error":""},"views":2163,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23875"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23911,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23875\/revisions\/23911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}