Nina Simone: the growing legacy of a dazzling, defiant talent

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jun/19/nina-simone-home-national-treasure-north-carolina-recognition-legacy
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Nina Simone always felt underappreciated during her lifetime. She had a right to. After 1960, her albums never put more than a dent in the lower end of the pop charts. And her singles made no greater impression. More, the press, the industry and even some audiences found her uncompromising performances and adamant character either off-putting or baffling.

Thankfully, time has a way of correcting such perceptions. Over the last three years, there’s been an escalating appreciation not only of Nina Simone’s depth of talent, but of her defiant character. Attention for her work has been greatly amplified by Liz Garbus’s unflinching 2015 documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone?, as well as her richly deserved induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year.

Today, another step in her reassessment takes place. Simone’s childhood home has been named a national treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Fewer than 100 homes in the US have earned that designation. The organization, joined by the World Monuments Fund and other groups, plans to turn the now vacant and dilapidated property, located in Tryon, North Carolina, into a salute to the artist’s legacy. Today a series of events will occur around the house where Nina Simone taught herself to play piano, and where she grew up experiencing the severe restrictions of the Jim Crow south. To honor those events, there’s a deep catalogue of Simone’s work available to savor on every streaming service.

Some of the pieces Simone composed herself became classics, including her blunt response to the violence of the civil rights era south in Mississippi Goddam, and the pride anthem To Be Young, Gifted and Black.

Over the years, Simone’s politics became increasingly radical. By the late 60s, she had no trouble asking black audiences if they were “ready to kill” for the cause – a quote captured in Garbus’s movie. Small wonder, Simone later became a kind of godmother to gangsta rap’s hardest artists.