A Nina Simone song is recognizable from its opening notes. First comes the piano, keys striking at the ineffable point where classical music meets jazz, blues, and pop. Then the voice, deep and searching, taking ownership of the words, whether they are Leonard Cohen or George Gershwin, traditional spiritual or original composition. Otherwise known as the “high priestess of soul," Simone was indisputably one of a kind, and Nadine Cohodas's new biography, “Princess Noire," tells her story in copious detail.
Born Eunice Waymon in 1933 in Tryon, N.C., Simone was marked for greatness from babyhood. She hummed recognizable hymns at eight months and played the church organ at two and a half. According to one of her brothers, We knew she was a genius by the time she was three. Self-taught at first, Simones repertoire bridged the hymns she sang with her mother, an ordained Methodist minister, and the blues, jazz, and popular songs secretly enjoyed by her father. She soon began taking piano lessons with Muriel Mazzanovich, whom she would later call “my white mama." Recognizing her gifts, Miss Mazzy introduced her to Bach and supported her dream of becoming a concert pianist.
Sponsored by several local white women, Simone attended the Allen School in Asheville, a private boarding school for black girls, where she was president of her class and the drama club, belonged to the NAACP, and continued to play the piano. After graduation in 1950, Miss Mazzy arranged a summer scholarship to Juilliard. There, the cognitive dissonance that underscored Simones life in North Carolina surfaced explicitly, as she negotiated the white world of classical music and the black community of Harlem. Cognitive dissonance sharpened into direct collision with racism when Simone was rejected by the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia because she was black.
Born Eunice Waymon in 1933 in Tryon, N.C., Simone was marked for greatness from babyhood. She hummed recognizable hymns at eight months and played the church organ at two and a half. According to one of her brothers, We knew she was a genius by the time she was three. Self-taught at first, Simones repertoire bridged the hymns she sang with her mother, an ordained Methodist minister, and the blues, jazz, and popular songs secretly enjoyed by her father. She soon began taking piano lessons with Muriel Mazzanovich, whom she would later call “my white mama." Recognizing her gifts, Miss Mazzy introduced her to Bach and supported her dream of becoming a concert pianist.
Sponsored by several local white women, Simone attended the Allen School in Asheville, a private boarding school for black girls, where she was president of her class and the drama club, belonged to the NAACP, and continued to play the piano. After graduation in 1950, Miss Mazzy arranged a summer scholarship to Juilliard. There, the cognitive dissonance that underscored Simones life in North Carolina surfaced explicitly, as she negotiated the white world of classical music and the black community of Harlem. Cognitive dissonance sharpened into direct collision with racism when Simone was rejected by the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia because she was black.
