PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness ISSN: 1543-0855 Issue 6 (2007)

Tara Betts

“To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt and that's not what I play. I play black classical music. That's why I don't like the term "jazz," and Duke Ellington didn't either - it's a term that's simply used to identify black people.”

“My original plan was to be the first black concert pianist—not a singer—and it never occurred to me that I'd be playing to audiences that were talking and drinking and carrying on when I played the piano. So I felt that if they didn't want to listen, they could go the hell home.”

“I was hired to play the piano for forty-five minutes out of each hour for six hours a night, and since I hadn't played any popular music before, I had to incorporate jazz and classical motifs into what I was doing, and that developed into the difficult role I'm playing now. I didn't start singing until the manager of the bar told me that just playing wasn't good enough.”

I would probably say, “Nina Simone: Repackaged & Co-Opted.” This work as a whole feels mass-produced. One song sounds like the background music that you’d hear in a trendy Williamsburg restaurant, gentrifying as the mellow whir and thump filters out the other noise with nothing too outlandish or exciting that would make you listen to the lyrics.

What’s even more disturbing is that some of the songs that would have lifted this work another notch happen to be the songs that are more overtly political. Songs like “Mississippi Goddamn,” “Backlash Blues,” “Young, Gifted & Black” and “I Wish I Knew What It Means to Be Free,” for example. There could have been a selection of more adventurous and playful songs like “Pirate Jenny” [“Oh, for God's sake, there are pirates everywhere!”] or “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” as well. The selections here seem to do a disservice to the varied range of Simone’s repertoire. [They span the period from 1967 to 1974, only, the period of her recording for RCA Records.] Although the stand-out choices do include the triumphant opening of “I Can’t See Nobody” remixed by Daniel Y., which is followed by Jazzeem’s All Styles remix of “Funkier Than a Mosquito’s Tweeter.” Then there is Simone’s soaring through the vocals of “O-o-h Child” as reorchestrated by Nickodemus, but the singing itself really makes it difficult to lead the song astray.

On deck, there is an international roster of deejays and producers reinterpreting the songs of this album. Genre-wise, they come from mostly Drum & Base, Techno, House and Club music in general. Some of the artists are people who have an established (if non-commercial) following, or who have produced hits for notable artists in Hip Hop and R&B: Chris Coco in the U.K.; East Coast-based spinners such as DJ Logic from the Bronx; Brooklyn’s own Tony Humphries; as well as Nickodemus and MoWo (shorthand for the Mocean Worker), also known as Adam Dorn.

However, at the risk of sounding like a purist, the “who’s who” of this contemporary scene does little to reinvent what was already remarkable when Simone first recorded these songs on her own, in her day, in very own way. Consequently, and unfortunately, this compilation is more of a testament to Nina Simone’s dynamic versatility and distinct voice than her overall content.

“I address my songs now to the third world. I don't think you know it, but my song “To Be Young, Gifted and Black" is in Chinese. I am popular all over Asia and Africa and the Middle East, not to speak of South Africa.

“I don't like America, I never did, and I don't want to go back unless I have to . . . I think they'll sell themselves, their souls, and their brothers, sisters, and mothers for money. And prejudice there is so insidious and subtle—I've never seen anything like it! It's gotten crazy with so many skinheads, everybody gone mad, bang-bang shot dead—I don't know what's happened to the world.”

“We can get rid of slavery . . . Slavery has never been abolished from America's way of thinking . . . Desegregation is a joke.”

“I want to be remembered as a diva from beginning to end who never compromised in what she felt about racism and how the world should be, and who to the end of her days consistently stayed the same.”

— Nina Simone, Details and Interview (January 1997)

Citation Format:

Tara Betts. “Review On Nina Simone, Remixed & Reimagined, RCA/Legacy Recordings (Sony BMG Entertainment), 2006,” PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness: Issue 6, 2007

Copyright © 2007 Africa Resource Center, Inc.