#my beloved little eulogy singer

[vodka-and-ocs]

Dungeons & Inkwells 14: Drow bard

[ausetkmt]

It’s After the End of the World By Daphne A. Brooks

I remember how it ended. A bespectacled, lanky, light-skinned sister sporting two braided pigtails stepped up to the mic. She was rocking garden-green pants and a yellow spaghetti-strap tank top, and she came out late in the Black Rock Coalition Orchestra’s Nina Simone tribute set in New York on June 13, 2003. Armed with a startling mezzo-soprano that dipped into the outer limits of audible desire, she was covering “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl” like her life depended on it. Her crooning felt sexy and dangerous and inquisitive as she declared, “I want a little sweetness down in my soul...I want a little steam on my clothes.” The crowd swooned. We were suspended for a moment between the grief of having lost our Nina some three weeks before (April 21, the day that Prince would die 13 years later) and ecstatic remembrance as this then-unknown singer, Alice Smith, summoned the potency of our lost patron saint.

“Our Nina”—as she is sometimes called by black feminists who feel especially possessive and protective of her—was a musician whose body of work pushed us and challenged us to know more about ourselves, what we longed for, and who we were as women navigating intersectional injuries and negations of mattering in the American body politic. She was beloved as much for the emotional force of her showmanship as she was for the lyrical, instrumental, and political force of her virtuosity. That night (one I remember so vividly, perhaps, because it was the Friday before my father died), Smith was conjuring that revolutionary, climactic Nina feeling—the erotic kind, which women of color historically have rarely been able to claim for their own, and the socially transformative kind, that marginalized peoples have called upon to bring about radical change.

That revolutionary Nina feeling runs like a high-voltage current from her earliest American Songbook covers through her  Frankfurt School battle cries, folk lullabies and eulogies, blues incantations, Black Power anthems, diasporic fever chants, Euro romantic laments, and experimental classical and freestyle jazz odysseys. It is the signal she sends out to tell us that something is turning, that we may be closing in on some new way of being in the world and being with each other, or we are at least reaching the point of breaking something open, tearing down Jim Crow institutions. Often enough, it indicated that we were joining her in tearing up those unspoken rules about how a Bach-loving, Lenin- and Marx-championing, “not-about-to-be-nonviolent-no-more” musician and black freedom struggle activist should sound. 

Photo by Gilles Petard/Getty Images

Soothsayer, chastiser, conjurer, philosopher, historian, actor, politician, archivist, ethnographer, black love proselytizer: She showed up on the frontlines of people-powered mass disturbances, delivering the good word (“It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day”) or shining discomforting light on the stubborn edifice of Southern white power (“Why don’t you see it?/Why don’t you feel it?”). And even when illness set in, and exile didn’t soften her grief for fallen friends and their unfinished revolution, she faltered for a time but ultimately stayed the course. She was fastidiously focused, insouciantly exploratory, and ferociously inventive at her many legendary, marathon concerts—Montreux, Fort Dix—the ones in which her mad skills, honed during her youthful years in late-night supper club jam sessions, returned in full. She was epic, our journey woman, the one who was capable of taking us to the ineffable, joyous elsewhere in that “Feeling Good” vocal improvisation that closes out that track. 

Today, we return to her more passionately than ever before, looking to her for answers, parables, strategies—not only for how to survive, but how to end this thing called white supremacist patriarchy that some of us had naïvely believed was ever-so-excruciatingly self-destructing. Since her death, her iconicity has grown, spreading to the world of hip-hop (which, as  the scholar Salamishah Tillet has shown, frequently samples her radicalism), to academia, where studies of Simone—articles and conference papers, seminars and book projects—pile high, making inroads in a segment of university culture previously cornered by Dylanologists. We take her with us to the weekend marches. Our students cue her up, summoning her wisdom and fortitude during the rallies.  

This massive old-new love for our Nina is a way of being, and her sound encapsulates the pursuit of emotional knowledge and ethical bravery. She forges our awakening.  I said as much a few weeks before Nina passed, when I offered a conference meditation on the late Jeff Buckley’s cover of “Lilac Wine,” a song I had kept on a loop during my grad years and one that had taught me a few things about heartbreak and heroism.  Through the voice of that white, Gen X, alt-rock daring balladeer and ardent fan of Nina’s, I could hear Ms. Simone singing to me, “Leave everything on the floor, and face the end triumphantly.”

It was a message that she conveyed all on her own when I saw her in 2000 at the Hollywood Bowl—one of her rare, stateside shows in her waning years. That night, she kept a feather duster at the piano, and after each song, she raised it like a conductor’s baton, beckoning an ovation. I remember that it was a gesture that felt cold and distant at the time, a sign of her lasting, antagonistic relationship with her audience—all of which is no doubt true. But in hindsight, I think more about the lessons she was bestowing on us, yet again, that evening. At the close of every number, we were invited to recognize the wonder of her artistry and to listen with anticipation for whatever would come next, the next better world she would create for us and with us—a black space, a women’s space, a free space. All those endings which might lead to new beginnings.

Daphne A. Brooks is Professor of African American Studies, Theater Studies, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Yale University.  

Listen to Nina Simone: Her Art and Life in 33 Songs on Spotify and Apple Music.

Photo by David Redfern/Getty Images

“I Loves You Porgy”

Little Girl Blue

1958

Nina Simone’s first album,  Little Girl Blue, was just a run-through of the material she’d been singing in clubs, in the arrangements she’d already made. They were ready to go. “I Loves You Porgy” became a Billboard Top 20 hit in 1959 and established her career in New York. To hear it is to understand how Simone’s critical consciousness began early and never turned off. She approached the ballad from George and Ira Gershwin’s “folk opera” Porgy and Bess not as a classical musician, as per her training, or as a jazz or cabaret musician, as she had been called—only as herself. Even on paper, the song is emotionally loaded: a plea for protection to a man the narrator has come to trust. In emotional terms, Billie Holiday’s 1948 version feels optimistic, guardedly bright; Simone’s feels concentrated and gravely serious, almost private, even as she adds trills and rhythmic details to every line. When she sings, “If you can keep me, I want to stay here/With you forever, and I’ll be glad,” there is no way to know what “glad” means to her. –Ben Ratliff

Listen: “I Loves You Porgy”

“My Baby Just Cares for Me”

Little Girl Blue

1958

When Nina Simone cut  Little Girl Blue, she was still smarting from her rejection from a prestigious classical conservatory. Throughout the album, she proved her chops by dropping a reference to Bach in one swinging track and improvising with a fluidity that Mozart would have admired, and also by subtly changing a tune that American listeners thought they knew. The standard “My Baby Just Cares for Me” was first made popular by the 1930 musical  Whoopee!, and through such lyrics as, “My baby don’t care for shows/My baby don’t care for clothes,” its singer takes pride in a romantic prowess that can cut across class divisions. The vaudeville star Eddie Cantor performed it onscreen in a brassy, obvious way that fit the era (up to and including his use of blackface makeup). Simone’s reading is more soulful and complex. The tempo has been slowed, but the feel for jazz swing has been powerfully increased. In the middle of the song, over a finger-popping groove, Simone delivers a solo of pellucid elegance. Her vocals draw their power both from blues grit and crisp articulations, and from the way Simone bridges those styles. The way she plays this song, those old “high-tone places” and social codes no longer seem so untouchable—in the presence of such artistry, they only seem embarrassing and ripe for redefinition. –Seth Colter Walls

Listen: “My Baby Just Cares for Me”

“Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair”

Nina Simone At Town Hall

1959

Recontextualizing an Appalachian folk song, Simone transposed a mournful lament with roots in the Scottish highlands to 1959 America, where “black” was imbued with far greater heft. Coming early in her career, “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” promised an increasing political consciousness in her music, the intent clear in the cascade of loving, mournful, minor-key piano in the intro and her ever-profound, trembling contralto. The line “I love the ground on where he goes” held particular meaning in 1959, as the Civil Rights Movement was hitting a fever pitch but the racist laws of the Jim Crow South still held strong. Town Hall, where the album was recorded, was in midtown New York. It was the first concert hall she ever played, a venue where she would be venerated for singing her mind. The song arrived at the beginning of her fame but, more importantly, it was an incubator of her mindset to come. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Listen:“Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair”

Photo by Herb Snitzer/Getty Images

“Just in Time”

At the Village Gate

1962

Simone’s live albums, recorded in clubs or theaters, were fundamental to her work. All of them still feel charged. By 1957, when she was still playing in Atlantic City clubs, she had established a hard line: You paid attention or she stopped playing. By 1959, when she first played at New York’s Town Hall, she graduated in self-definition from club singer to concert-hall singer, which is to say she knew there was a sufficient amount of people who would come to hear her. And in April 1961, when she recorded  At the Village Gate, she could bring back that imperial attitude to club dimensions, leading her quartet from the piano.   

For about one full, intense minute at the start of “Just in Time,” she winds up her quartet with dissonant, percussive chord clusters. Then she settles into the first verse, sung at confidential level, drawing out her vowels into quavers. Her piano solo is as hypnotic and repetitive as what John Lewis made famous doing with the Modern Jazz Quartet, but smudgier and more emphatic. This is comprehensive skill—singing, playing, bandleading—and the song is all zone: nearing it, then staying in it. –Ben Ratliff

Listen:“Just in Time”

“The Other Woman/Cotton Eyed Joe”

At Carnegie Hall

1963

Nina Simone once dreamed of becoming the first black female classical pianist to play Carnegie Hall, but when she finally made it there on April 12, 1963, she was working in a different idiom. Her set was filled with traditional songs and standards she made her own, including this striking mashup that closes her  At Carnegie Hall live album.

A staple in Simone’s sets, “The Other Woman” is a deceptively nuanced Jessie Mae Robinson tune with immense empathy for the mistress. It was first recorded by Sarah Vaughan, but Simone elevates the song further with her ability to conjure the loneliness of womanhood better than just about anyone, particularly when her accompaniments run slow and sparse. In performances over the years, the emotional burden of “The Other Woman” seemed to weigh heavier on Simone, as she experienced infidelity from both sides. At Carnegie Hall, though, she segues into the most elegant take on “Cotton Eyed Joe” imaginable, merging folk, jazz, and a touch of her beloved classical. –Jillian Mapes

Listen:“The Other Woman/Cotton Eyed Joe”

“Mississippi Goddam”

In Concert

1964

As the Civil Rights Movement gained traction, retaliation from racist whites became more intense, reaching a terrible apex in 1963, when the KKK murdered Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, and four children in a church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. Nina Simone’s frustration and desperation is palpable in the biting, cynical way she performed “Mississippi Goddam” at Carnegie Hall—a room full of natty whites, but the rare New York concert hall that was never segregated. Within her voice, unloosed so explicitly for the first time, a sanguine irony formed the tension between its sentiment, the very real possibility of being murdered for her race (“I think every day’s gonna be my last”).

During her set at Carnegie, which was recorded for her album In Concert, Simone referred to this song as a show tune “but the show that hasn’t been written for it yet.” Its frantic tempo reflected the urgency of the moment, a template for protest songs to follow, and the piano chords propelled the song’s existentialism with the determination of a steam engine train. It was gonna make it on time, but its destination was still unknown. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Listen:“Mississippi Goddam”

“Pirate Jenny”

In Concert

1964

Nina Simone seethes the lyrics to “Pirate Jenny,” taking every ounce of delight in openly threatening her audience. The song, penned in the late 1920s by the German theatrical composer Kurt Weill, is a revenge tale in which a lowly maid fantasizes that she is the Queen of Pirates and that a black ship will soon emerge from the mist to destroy the town in which she has been treated so poorly. In Simone’s hands, it transforms from political metaphor into dark and unchained spiritual catharsis. Her performance devolves from singing to whispering, with raspy venomous verses such as, “They’re chaining up the people and bringing ‘em to me/Asking me kill them now or later.” Accompanied only by piano and timpani, she allows for long pauses, using silence as a psychological weapon. You can all but hear the audience clutching their pearls. –Carvell Wallace

Listen:“Pirate Jenny”

“Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”

Broadway-Blues-Ballads

1964

Though the unremarkable  Broadway-Blues-Ballads followed “Mississippi Goddam”’s overwhelming reception a few months earlier, its opening number, “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” quickly emerged and remains a tentpole of Nina Simone’s identity. (Never mind that its lyrics were written by Bennie Benjamin, Horace Ott, and Sol Marcus.) After years of “inferior” show tunes and “musically ignorant” popular audiences, as she would later call them in her autobiography I Put a Spell on You, Simone was all too familiar with this song’s themes of lonely remorse, of seeming edgy and taking it out on the people she loved, of “[finding herself] alone regretting/Some little foolish thing...that [she’s] done.”

Though “Goddam” began a pivotal year in which Simone would refocus her life on civil rights and black revolution, “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” would continue to reflect her  personal struggles to come, including the bipolar disorder and manic depression that went undiagnosed and self-medicated until late in life. White audiences often saw her as the benign entertainer they wanted to; Simone long struggled to be seen as her whole, complex self. –Devon Maloney

Listen: “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”

Photo by Jack Robinson/Getty Images

“See-Line Woman”

Broadway-Blues-Ballads

1964

In the stretch between 1962 and 1967, Nina Simone was at her most prolific, releasing at least two albums per year—and three in 1964. Broadway-Blues-Ballads premiered several songs that became fixtures of Simone’s live repertoire, including the scintillating call-and-response number “See-Line Woman.” Built on the structure and rhythm of a  traditional children’s song, it tells the tale of four escorts, dressed in different colors that signify what they’re willing to do. In Simone’s rendering, the “See-Line Woman” is something of a femme fatale, who will “empty [a man’s] pockets” and “wreck his days/And she make him love her, then she sure fly away.” 

Simone’s performance showcases her voice as a powerful instrument, flirtatious and sly, backed by a stuttering hi-hat and flute arrangement that never outshines her vocals. The origins of the tune that inspired “See-Line Woman” remain uncertain, but Simone’s recording leaves little doubt that the song is hers. –Vanessa Okoth-Obbo

Listen:“See-Line Woman”

“Be My Husband”

Pastel Blues

1965

The lyrics of “Be My Husband” are attributed to Andrew Stroud, Nina Simone’s second husband and manager—a strong, guiding, sometimes violent hand in her career and her life. (Billie had one. Aretha, too.) The title seems mysterious at first: Is it a proposal, a bargain, or a command? Is she saying “marry me” or “act like a husband is supposed to act”? All of her musical and expressive genius is here. Her breath and guttural sighs seem to say, “This shit is work with an intermittent erotic respite.” Her voice dips, curves, bends, and flies, provides the melody and the rhythm. She demands, she pleads. She is all strength, then absolute vulnerability.  

The year Simone recorded “Be My Husband,” death came for both her closest friend, the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, and Malcolm X. Spring brought Selma, and Nina serenaded the marchers. In this season of mourning and wakefulness, “Be My Husband” revealed itself to have been all these things: a proposition, a bargain,  and a command.  Do right by me, Simone sings, and I’ll do right by you. Love for a man, a people, a nation is struggle—it is work. –Farah Jasmine Griffin

Listen:“Be My Husband”

“I Put a Spell on You”

I Put a Spell on You

1965

History remembers Nina Simone as nothing if not resolute, thanks in significant part to “I Put a Spell on You.” Slinky and confident, with flashes of destructive insecurity, her now-iconic cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ blues lament begins matter-of-factly, informative even, then whips itself into the controlled fury of a woman who has made up her mind and is bracing for the inevitable fight. Simone refuses to be taken advantage of throughout, claiming what is rightfully hers: “I don’t care if you don’t want me/I’m yours right now.”

Personal meaning aside—in 1965, she was halfway through a marriage—“I Put a Spell on You” also evokes Simone’s relationship with her audiences over the years. Its release, after all, came just as she was finding her own magic: As she wrote in her autobiography, “It’s like I was hypnotizing an entire audience to feel a certain way….This was how I got my reputation as a live performer, because I went out from the mid-Sixties onward determined to get every audience to enjoy my concerts the way I wanted them to, and if they resisted at first, I had all the tricks to bewitch them with.” –Devon Maloney

Listen:“I Put a Spell on You”

“Feeling Good”

I Put a Spell on You

1965

Throughout her life, Nina Simone rebelled against the tendency for her music to be categorized as jazz or blues, as it gave little acknowledgement to her classical training and her fluidity in other genres. I Put a Spell on You cemented her status as a singer at ease with popular music, who could command attention even when her exceptional piano skills played a secondary role. Simone’s version of “Feeling Good” is one of the album’s masterworks, and it became a standard in its own right. From the opening notes of the strictly vocal intro, she looks to nature to describe contentment: birds flying high, the sun in the sky, a breeze drifting on by. When the big band orchestration comes in, the horns and strings transform the song into a sermon of unbridled joy, peaking with a rousing scat solo that can only emerge from the depths of a free soul. –Vanessa Okoth-Obbo

Listen:“Feeling Good”

“Ne Me Quitte Pas”

I Put a Spell on You

1965

This song finds Nina Simone’s emotions at their most indulgent, her shivering voice at its most precise. Penned by the Belgian crooner Jacques Brel and originally recorded in 1959, its cloying lyrics “Do not leave me” were meant to poke fun at men who could not keep their hearts in their shirts. On Simone’s recording, however, the work becomes something else entirely: It is an agonizing mediation on the kind of existential desolation that only a broken love can bring. Andrew Stroud, a retired NYPD lieutenant, once held her at gunpoint and raped her; she remained in this relationship for nearly 15 years, during which she recorded most of her defining albums. Here, she expands and contracts, pianissimo to fortissimo, as though the entire song were a series of sighs; when she sings, “Let me be the shadow of your shadow,” in its original French, a cosmic rumble emits from the depths of her heart. The chorus is simply the song’s title repeated, and the fourth one sounds precisely like the last flicker of a candle’s flame. –Carvell Wallace

Listen:“Ne Me Quitte Pas”

Photo by Frans Schellekens/Getty Images

“Strange Fruit”

Pastel Blues

1965

In 1965, three very important marches took place between Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, in protest of laws that prevented black citizens from exercising their right to vote. The third and most successful of these culminated in a concert organized by Harry Belafonte, at which Nina Simone performed. There, Simone—who once declared that she was “not non-violent”—used music as her weapon in the fight for liberty. 

Pastel Blues was not an overt protest record, but “Strange Fruit” was an unequivocal rebuke of the lynchings that claimed so many black lives. The song was originally popularized by Billie Holliday, who often performed it under strict conditions to avoid backlash over its severe message, but Simone was no longer held back by fear, having already put her career on the line with the similarly frank “Mississippi Goddam.” Over somber piano keys, she recounts the horror of seeing black bodies hanging from the trees like fruit, in one of the most startling metaphors ever set to wax. At the song’s apex, when describing how the bodies would be left “for the leaves to drop,” Simone wails the third word with an anguish that’s as unforgettable as the painful history that the song decries. —Vanessa Okoth-Obbo

Listen:“Strange Fruit”

“Sinnerman”

Pastel Blues

1965

One of Nina Simone’s most recognizable recordings, “Sinnerman” has been repurposed by everyone from David Lynch to Kanye West. What remains in its original form, however, is the pure punk of it. This live recording rides hard on a driving 2/4 backbeat, one that accelerates a full 10 bpm over its 10-minute run. Simone’s backing band is sharp, the rimshots and high hats insistent, the piano work both velvety and forceful. It is a song of apocalypse, of bleeding seas and boiling rivers and the inability to escape God’s wrath no matter where you turn. 

As a child, Simone learned “Sinnerman” from her mother, who sang it in revival meetings to help sinners become so overwhelmed as to confess their transgressions. Hellfire, brimstone, and damnation were the lullabies on which she was nursed, and it explains her disdain for the fearful. “Sinnerman” is an attack; its hypnotic repetition is designed to induce you to God or madness, whichever comes first. She unleashes her voice, sharp and wide, like sunlight glinting off the blade of a knife. Here, Simone—whose life was as violent and lawless as her music was transcendent—channels heaven and hell equal measure. –Carvell Wallace

Listen:“Sinnerman”

“Lilac Wine”

Wild Is the Wind

1966

“Lilac Wine,” a woozy torch song, originally appeared in James Shelton’s if-you-blinked-you-missed-it 1950 Broadway musical revue “Dance Me a Song.” In 1953, Eartha Kitt dropped a cover and the song became a standard. Nina Simone’s arch-dramatic reimagining is as exotic and dizzying as the titular intoxicant, veering drunkenly between minor and major keys. Simone slows down the tempo to a dirge-like crawl; her classically inflected piano accompaniment is spare and insistent like a metronome. But it’s her trembling singing that really delivers the devastation: The way she captures crestfallen confusion and inebriated fogginess in her vocal performance is astonishing, and no easy feat. Even more astonishing: The way she balances the song’s damaged gloom with a heaving romantic tenderness. –Jason King

Listen:“Lilac Wine”

“Wild Is the Wind”

Wild Is the Wind

1966

Nina Simone debuted her elegant take on “Wild Is the Wind” on 1959’s At Town Hall—a year after Johnny Mathis scored an Oscar nod for the standard—though it would be another seven years before Simone introduced her ominous studio version. Wild Is the Wind, one of three albums Simone released in 1966, is filled with songs that yearn for understanding and romantic resolution, but few capture the feeling with as much uneasiness as the title track. One minute she’s completely swept away by love’s rapture with classical-piano opulence; the next her vibrato purrs on its lowest setting. The music cuts out. Nina smirks sharply. “Don’t you know, you’re life itself,” she coos. Some annotations of this line end it with an exclamation point, but Simone sings it more like a question. She knows how she feels, but there’s still something uncertain about it, perhaps a reflection of her own turbulent private life at this moment. –Jillian Mapes

Listen:“Wild Is the Wind”

“Four Women”

Wild Is the Wind

1966

While most of her records featured interpretations of songs written by others,  Wild Is the Wind is special for a composition penned by Simone herself. On “Four Women,” she deconstructs the shameful dual legacies of slavery and racism in America, narrating from the perspective of four black female characters. Aunt Sarah is forced to work hard and be strong, lest a whip be cracked on her back; the biracial Saffronia exists between black and white worlds, shouldering the knowledge that her father “forced [her] mother late one night”; Sweet Thing is the little girl forced to grow up too fast, who has come to understand her body as something that has a cost. The song is set to a simple melody of bass and percussion, with Simone on the piano, but the tension builds with each vignette. By the time she gets to Peaches, the most vengeful character, Simone is yelling with the fury of many generations, and the instruments crescendo. With “Four Women,” Simone took a stand for black women, whose suffering at the nexus of race and gender discrimination is often rendered invisible. Shortly after its release, it was banned by several radio stations for supposedly incendiary content—a possibility that Simone must have anticipated. But she was a fearless fighter, and the song was her affirmation that black womanhood would remain at the heart of her activism. –Vanessa Okoth-Obbo

Listen: “Four Women”

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Stringer

“I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free”

Silk & Soul

1967

Though urban America was unraveling in 1967, with riots exploding in Detroit and Newark, Simone was being encouraged by RCA Records to go easy on the activism and focus on her career. She released three studio albums that year, the final being  Silk & Soul, which was mostly filled with love songs and strings. However, right at the top of Side B was a track that would become an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement: “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free,” written by the jazz pianist and educator Dr. Billy Taylor.

The song’s swinging melody and finger-popping performance belies its message, summarized in the yearning ambiguity of its title. The contrast between the emotion of the lyrics (“I wish I could share all the love that’s in my heart/Remove all the bars that keep us apart”) and the upbeat, gospel-based arrangement added depth and power. Out of this tension, the song rang out as a hopeful but realistic vision of emancipation. –Alan Light

Listen:“I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free”

“Come Ye” 

High Priestess of Soul

1967

“Come Ye” is the sparest track on  High Priestess of Soul, an album produced with a fairly heavy hand by Hal Mooney. By then, Simone was seen widely as not just a musician but as a kind of power station of black consciousness, with the ability to politicize audiences—even white and American ones. In vocals and percussion alone, this is an original African-American folk song: polyrhythmic, in a single tonal center, played with hand drums. In four verses, Simone gradually raises its stakes until it all ends direly: “Ye who would have love,” she sings. “It’s time to take a stand/Don’t mind the dues that must be paid/For the love of your fellow man.” This is the intersection of cultural memory, passion, and action—medicine, warning, and alarm. –Ben Ratliff

Listen:“Come Ye”

“Backlash Blues”

Nina Simone Sings the Blues

1967

Simone’s friend Langston Hughes mailed her the lyrics to this song in poem form, and she took immediately to his indictment of “Mr. Backlash,” a personification of white oppression of black America’s small gains (and the “black, yellow, beige and brown” among them, equally oppressed). Simone delivered these promises and threats with a slinky blues rasp, forecasting that the person to receive the backlash would be the oppressor himself. Its lyrics also dovetailed with the rise of the Black Panther Party, which had begun exercising their right to open-carry in their efforts to protect the black people of Oakland from police brutality. Simone sang easily, measuredly, with the confidence that one day a score would be settled: “Do you think that all colored folks are just second class fools?” –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Listen:“Backlash Blues”

“I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl”

Nina Simone Sings the Blues

1967

In the 1960s, Simone left her first label, Colpix, ended up at Phillips, and then hopped over to RCA Victor. In 1967, she recorded her debut album for RCA: Nina Simone Sings the Blues, a hard-driving, tough-talking collection of originals and covers. On “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl,” she borrows the basic blues progressions from “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” a 1920s cautionary standard originally popularized by Bessie Smith. But Simone comes up with an original lyric that bypasses social commentary and conjures up bawdy flirtatiousness and lust instead: “I want a little sugar in my bowl/I want a little sweetness down in my soul/I could stand some lovin’, oh so bad/I feel so funny, I feel so sad.” Impressive in her thematic range, Simone had no problem mixing double entendre lyrics about ribald sex and in-your-face politics on her albums: “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl” appears alongside her classic civil rights protest song “Backlash Blues.” Songs like this serve as a reminder that the revolutionary activist who can’t occasionally admit to being horny isn’t really the revolutionary activist we need. –Jason King

Listen:“I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl”

“Why? (The King of Love Is Dead)”

’Nuff Said

1968

What and whom are we mourning? How will we mourn, and can we transform the depths of our despair into living in a way that honors what we’ve lost? Nina Simone turns each of these questions over and over from multiple vantage points in this nearly 13-minute performance, recorded on April 7, 1968, at Long Island’s Westbury Music Fair, three days after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. She and her band learned the song, written by bassist Gene Taylor, earlier in the day.

Shaped by the improvisational urgency and rawness of the moment, the live rendition of “Why?” captures many Ninas: the sermonizer accompanying herself on piano and leading her congregation through the wilderness; the Civil Rights dreamer delivering a delicate jazz tale of a nonviolent folk hero; the anguished pallbearer voicing a funeral hymn; and the master of the black freedom struggle jeremiad who laments, “Will the murders never cease?” before slipping fully into her militant “Mississippi” self. She mourns not just for King but for the numerous slain leaders, martyrs, fellow freedom-fighting artists, and “many thousands gone,” as her friend James Baldwin put it—the black subjugated masses who shape the epic sorrow and weariness of her subdued vocals. This dirge-turned-protest-song absorbs the weight of all these bodies but also defiantly affirms the presence of she who remains on the battlefield. “We’ve lost a lot of them in the last two years, but we have remaining Monk, Miles,” Simone reflects slowly, speaking to the audience. From the rafters, a stentorian voice finishes the list: “Nina.” –Daphne A. Brooks

Listen: “Why? (The King of Love Is Dead)”

“The Desperate Ones”

Nina Simone and Piano!

1969

Nina Simone never had the widest vocal range or the purest pitch, but she had a once-in-a-generation talent for conveying the meaning of a song through tone and phrasing. With few exceptions, once she sang a song, it was hers, and she was never afraid to make bold choices that could seem downright strange at first listen. Throughout the 1960s, that incomparable voice appeared in many settings, from huge orchestral arrangements to minimal ballads, as she moved confidently from one musical genre to the next. And at the tail end of the decade, she made an album that returned her to the milieu of her first days as a performer.

Nina Simone and Piano! closes with “The Desperate Ones,” an oblique song by Jacques Brel that depicts, with heavy romantic imagery, the weariness of the ‘60s youth trying to remake the world. It was always a quiet song, both when Brel sang it in 1965 and after it was translated into English for the 1968 off-Broadway show Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. But Simone’s performance takes the hushed intensity to an almost frightening level, showcasing her staggering ability to convey feeling with simple elements. She just barely hints at a melody as she reframes the song’s story as something passed between strangers in a darkened alley. Singing in a raspy whisper, her voice is filled with yearning and empathy and wonder, and the starkness of the arrangement highlights its eerie magic. –Mark Richardson

Listen: “The Desperate Ones”

“To Be Young, Gifted and Black”

Black Gold

1970

Lorraine Hansberry, the first black woman to have her work produced on Broadway (A Raisin in the Sun), was a friend and mentor to Simone, and a key figure in her political awakening. When Hansberry died of pancreatic cancer in 1965, at age 34, the singer was devastated—and when Malcolm X was killed the next month, her radicalization was complete.

In 1969, Hansberry’s ex-husband adapted some of her writing into an off-Broadway play called “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.” One Sunday, Simone opened the newspaper and saw a story about the production. She called her musical director, Weldon Irvine, to help with the lyrics, and the song—which would be her final contribution to the protest canon—was finished 48 hours later. With its simple, direct message of racial and personal pride and forceful melody, the single was a Top 10 R&B hit and Simone’s biggest crossover success since “I Loves You, Porgy.” It would be covered by Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, and Solange, and CORE named it the “Black National Anthem.” Simone even performed the song on “Sesame Street.” –Alan Light

Listen: “To Be Young, Gifted and Black”

“Just Like a Woman”

Here Comes the Sun

1971

In the early 1960s, as Simone’s star was rising at New York’s Village Gate club, a young Bob Dylan was scratching at the door of the folk scene brewing across the street, doing parody songs between sets by bigger names. Less than a decade later, Simone had five Dylan covers in her discography, none more necessary than “Just Like a Woman.” 

In Simone’s hands, Dylan’s half-improvised song about watching an ex-girlfriend walk away became a heartfelt paean to all women. Each once-bitter read from Dylan—“she takes just like a woman,” “she breaks just like a little girl”—was now delivered as an affirmation of female resilience and vulnerability, a human frailty that invited empathy rather than contempt.

Voiced by a woman—especially a famously forthright, tenacious one like Simone—the song got a first-person adaptation; rather than infantilizing the “woman” in question and separating her from the world, Simone’s interpretation closed the gap. Released near the height of her influence as a political artist, it’s a feminist treatment with an inversion that feels contemporary, even half a century later. –Devon Maloney

Listen: “Just Like a Woman”

“22nd Century”

Here Comes the Sun

1971

As Nina Simone tells it in her memoir, by the early 1970s, everything was coming undone for her; she had “fled to Barbados pursued by ghosts: Daddy, [sister] Lucille, the movement, Martin, Malcolm, [her] marriage, [her] hopes…” On its surface, “22nd Century” translates this personal moment of peril into big, broad, metaphorical strokes that wed the apocalyptic with cathartic possibility and radical euphoria. “There is no oxygen in the air/Men and women have lost their hair,” she prophesizes, holding steady at the center of an intoxicating swirl of flamenco guitar and calypso steel drums. “When life is taken and there are no more babies born....Tomorrow will be the 22nd century.”

In the future that is Nina’s, things fall apart so that notions of time, space, and the human can be razed and take on new shape. But in this era in which she sought out Caribbean maroonage, there is perhaps an even deeper connection forged by way of this hypnotic, nearly nine-minute odyssey. Covering Bahamian “Obeah Man” Exuma’s stirring, hybrid mix of junkanoo, carnival, and folk, she sticks close to his original recording from that same year and merges her Afrodiasporic revolutionary vision with his:  “Don’t try to sway me over to your day/On your day,” her reaching vocals insist. “Your day will go away.” –Daphne A. Brooks

Listen: “22nd Century”

Photo by David Redfern/Getty Images

Medley: “My Sweet Lord/Today Is a Killer”

“Emergency Ward!”

1972

No artist ever wielded power over an audience as deftly as Nina Simone, but the same can be said of her talent for turning covers into transcendent events. By 1972, she’d perfected—several times over—both delicate alchemies. She used her crowds’ expectations to lure them in before delivering uncomfortable yet necessary truths, all while constructing what one academic, quoting theorist William Parker, called “inside songs”—covers that dig up the song lying “in the shadows, in-between the sounds and silences and behind the words” of the original.

That creative electricity is palpable on this gargantuan, 18-minute live jam that takes up an entire side of Emergency Ward!, the record now considered Simone’s major anti-Vietnam War statement. Backed by a gospel choir, she invites the audience in with George Harrison’s then-two-year-old mega-hit, locking into a mesmerizing church sing-along before revealing the Trojans within: David Nelson’s brutal poem about the desperate, decaying hope of the Civil Rights era. Lines like "Today/Pressing his ugly face against mine/Staring at me with lifeless eyes/Crumbling away all memories of yesterday’s dreams,” dropped into the rhythm of Harrison’s exaltations, inflate the performance like a hot air balloon, making it the ultimate testament to Simone’s ability to turn even a simple interpretation into a political masterpiece. –Devon Maloney

Listen: Medley: “My Sweet Lord/Today Is a Killer,”

“Funkier Than a Mosquito’s Tweeter”

Is It Finished

1974

Nina Simone’s palate was always broad, but with this reimagining of a Tina Turner barnburner, she used minimalist funk arrangements as a platform for her unleashed vocals—mewling and crawling at alternate intervals, the disgusted cursing of a woman highly over a dusty dude. The openness of the 1970s served her more adventurous impulses well, though by the time she cut “Funkier,” she was fully spiraling into depression and alcoholism. (Who could blame her, with the serrated knife that had been the late 1960s, from Civil Rights to Vietnam?) Her edge showed in this song: Her voice cracks with exasperation, alluding that the predator she sings about might well be the good ol’ US of A. Spent, she wouldn’t record another album for four years. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Listen: “Funkier Than a Mosquito’s Tweeter”

Photo by Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images

“Baltimore”

Baltimore

1978

Following the death of Freddie Gray in April 2015, Simone’s 1978 recording of Randy Newman’s “Baltimore”—“Oh, Baltimore/Ain’t it hard just to live”—was widely circulated on social media, illustrating the continuing endurance and power of her work. The song was the title track from a particularly fraught album that appeared as Simone was living in poverty in Paris and her recordings were getting increasingly rare. She fought so much with Creed Taylor, who had signed her to CTI Records, that she insisted he not only leave the studio, but the country. She finally cut all of her vocals in a single, hourlong session.

She did acknowledge, however, that she liked this song, which Newman had recorded the year before. The narrator of “Baltimore” is worn down by the American economy and malaise—“hard times in the city, in a hard town by the sea”—and finally decides to pack his family in a “big old wagon” and send them out of town. Having fled the U.S. years earlier, Simone’s reaction to the lyrics was personal. “And it refers to, I’m going to buy a fleet of Cadillacs,” she said, “and take my little sister, Frances, and my brother, and take them to the mountain and never come back here, until the day I die.” –Alan Light

Listen: “Baltimore”

“Fodder on Her Wings”

Fodder on My Wings

1982

In the early ’80s, Nina Simone was living in France and she was deeply lonely; her family life was strained, and she was suffering from encroaching mental illness. A new song on her 1982 album, Fodder on My Wings, captured with startling intimacy the pain of this period, and she returned to it frequently through the next decade, cutting another studio version three years later (the synth-heavy take on Nina’s Back!) and including it on several live albums, including an awe-inspiring performance on 1987’s Let It Be Me. The title of the song itself is titled “her” wings while the album it appears on uses “my”; the slippery point of view underscores its heavily personal nature, as Simone sings of a bird that traveled the world, from Switzerland to France and England—all places she herself had spent time—and then crashed to earth. “She had dust inside her brain” is the harrowing image the sticks with you, but Simone’s vocal makes a song of weariness and defeat carry an air of defiance, a wise word from someone who survived to tell the tale. –Mark Richardson 

Listen: “Fodder on Her Wings”

“Stars”

Let It Be Me

1987

Simone first covered Janis Ian’s searing, mordant meditation on fame during her infamous set at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival; suffering from bipolar disorder, she goes through something like a mental breakdown during the performance. (The scene is a highlight of Liz Garbus’ Oscar-nominated documentary What Happened, Miss Simone?) This spine-tingling 1987 version—Simone’s best, most coherent rendition—was recorded live at Hollywood’s intimate Vine Street Bar & Grill for Let It Be Me.

Written by Ian when she was just 20, “Stars” is a potent critique of star-making machinery: The narrator is both a weary observer of fame, watching faded stars who live their lives in “sad cafés and music halls,” and a tragic figure undone by fame herself. Simone’s embittered, conversational phrasing transforms the song into a cosmically exhausted, stream-of-consciousness rant. She sounds so nakedly weary and afflicted with pathos, you worry she might not even make it to the last verse. But ultimately, Simone’s piano accompaniment builds to a rousing, show-must-go-on climax: “I’ll come up singing for you even though I’m down.” Break out the Kleenex: Few other songs in Simone’s arsenal can make you truly grasp the toll she paid for being alive and giving us her music. –Jason King

Listen: “Stars”

“Papa, Can You Hear Me?”

A Single Woman

1993

In 1993, Nina Simone recorded and released her last studio album, A Single Woman. Living in Southern France, she was lured back into the booth by Elektra A&R executive Michael Alago, who brought major label marketing dollars and seasoned producers and orchestrators. Taken from the 1983 Barbra Streisand film Yentl and penned by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman, and Michel Legrand, “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” is a powerhouse musical theater showstopper that no one would mistake for a conventional jazz standard. But Simone—who starts the song with an allusion to the Negro spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”—slyly reconstructs it as an interior, howling lament for her father, who passed away in the early 1970s while they were estranged.

Backed by swelling strings, Simone pulls every ounce of melancholic emotion out of the heart-wrenching lyrics. As the chords ramp up, so does her quivering voice; every time she tackles the song’s falling Middle Eastern vocals runs, it sounds like tears streaming down her face. One of her most dramatic performances captured on record, “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” finds Nina Simone working through the despair of her own orphanhood, exorcising her troubled relationship with the men who defined aspects of her complicated life. How fitting that her final album—a musical commentary on what it means to be a mature, single woman living in exile—captures such pure, unadulterated human feeling. –Jason King

Listen: “Papa, Can You Hear Me?”

[lifestreamsblog]

Harry Belafonte: A Eulogy for a Mountain of a Man

Harry Belafonte passed away today at the age of 96, of congestive heart failure.

I grew up with Belafonte. My maternal grandpa (my parental grandparents had passed away before I was born) was a huge fan, and got the rest of the family into him as well. Thus, my maternal grandparents loved him, and my parents loved him. My maternal aunts and uncles also loved him. And of course, I loved him.

When I was little, for many, many years, I would listen to music while falling asleep at night. This went on into my teenage years, too. During my earliest years, there was a rotation of The Limeliters, The Weavers, and of course, Harry Belafonte. All on audiocassete, taped by my maternal grandpa for me to listen to. He got me into all of this music. Thus, Belafonte was a personal favourite of mine since I was a tiny child. My favourite album of his was Belafonte at Carnegie Hall.

As I got older, I began to look into him more. My first exposure was an AARP article in the actual magazine (now long lost) at my maternal grandma's apartment. It was there that I first learned of his activism and his anger at society's injustices towards the American black community.

At first, I was shocked. I could hardly believe that this man I had always seen as loving and passionate, had such a darkness to him. I was still a very naïve kid, so I filed it away in my grandma's bookcase, and thought little of it.

I wouldn't understand until I was older that Belafonte was both a beloved singer and a strong activist for America's black community. I learned later in life that this side of Belafonte was not only not dark, but justified. The injustices against the black community were horrible, and he was right to be angry about it.

Aside his musical career, he worked tirelessly as an activist to advocate for America's black community strongly. He worked alongside allies that would one day turn against his activism (including the man on the right in the above picture), and spoke out all the time. He used his fame and his breaking of the colour barrier to push his message, and did so with passion.

As a singer, Belafonte sang songs that came from all over the world, specialising in music from the West Indies and the music slaves in the Antebellum South sang. His overall message was to treasure culture and diversity, and that all people had value. Also, that we should do our best to lift up those who are especially marginalised in our world, like the black community in America. In doing so, he provided a vital voice that was heard by white Americans as well as black Americans. Thus, he blended his activism with his music very effectively.

The world is poorer for Belafonte having passed away, and he will be very missed...

Play some Belafonte today, in memory of a mountain of a man.

Thank you, Harry Belafonte, and rest in peace.

[faceglitchsworld]

Today my dear moots, we gather together to mourn the loss of one of our moots, a mosquito one. Today, the South Korean singer Han Seungwoo released the first concept pictures for his upcoming album Frame, which made our @certified-mujin-simp dying in the process. It was her last straw.

So, in regards to this tragic event, I decided to celebrate the funeral and write an eulogy for her.

Beedee was a really good mutual, a little annoying towards the others, a little noisy, like all the mosquitoes are, but still a good mutual.

We weren't mutuals for a very long time but we immediately got along. We understood each other immediately and started having fun conversations. I still remember the loud laugh she made at every funny thing I said, whether it was a joke or just me saying something mean about Seungwoo. Oh boy, the amount of mean things I said towards him when I saw the release date of his album...sniff, I'll never find someone who will understand the pain like Beedee did.

We could have do so many things together like torturing me with videos where people destroy my cousine in every way, screaming and crying about N.Flying (especially Hun), getting ready to cheer for Hi-Fi Un!corn's debut and going crazy over Kiyoon and Hyunyul or making our plan to bring back Seungwoo to the military for more than 20 years.

You were even planning to listen to LUCY for the love of Wonsang beloved. I wonder if you could have loved their music, we could have had so much fun and we could have lived a wonderful life as K-Bands degenerates together. But life is hard and we should accept these tragic losses too. Me especially. It will be hard surviving Seungwoo's next attacks without her, believe me.

Beedee, I'll take this eulogy to say that I'll fulfill another wish of yours and I'll make sure that Seungwoo will step on a Lego. It will take years, even my entire life, but I'll make sure it will happen. Also I'll steal his credit card when I have the occasion I just need to find him.

Farewell, little mosquito, Seungwoo is not gonna hurt you anymore.

Tonight I'm gonna light a candle for you as a way to remember and celebrate you 🕯️

And now, let's have a minute of silence while we listen to the funeral march.

[talesofealdancynedom]

Pretty new plumage for the cute young couple: Artemis(crimson), and Matcha(white), in the royal raven kingdom nest.

Tale 11: Artemis Craweleoth & The Griminthrope (chapter 5 - Beloved Princess 5/5) part 3. Stories of Fey

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A year after Artemis and Matcha decided to tour magic forests, Morgen as hosting all his and Emilia’s children, and new grandchildren, on the gate. All except Artemis. Their other children had all flown the coop, and become accomplished mages; but not above having family reunions. They all took comfort in the knowing that Artemis was happy, in the shadow veil or some magic forest somewhere. It had been months since Matcha and Artemis were last spotted, but they did visit everyone individually on ocassion. But not this harvest gathering. Cadence, the eldest, insisted that no one go look for their littlest sister so late; unlike Calliope, the second eldest, who sided with Patrick. They missed their youngest sister, wanted to invite her. But Cadence was right; it was well in the evening, and everyone was too tired to hunt Artemis down. But as Cadence woke at dawn, to feed the stag fey with her children, she noticed something; silence.

At first, Cadence ignored the quiet; but then Calliope and her wife noticed, and then Patrick and his girlfriend noticed. Where was the morning calls of cockatrice at dawn? The two of albino peacock phoenixes that bickered all their childhoods? The song of the orphan birds, or metallic flap of Stymphalians. Not even gryphons perched along the edge of the tower. The Sibling’s curiously looked around, and then got their father and mother to check as well. All the raven children were missing. Morgan, being Mage of Tiberius gate, could feel all the fey and people on it, but accounting for an entire kingdom of fey was beyond his scope. Tiberius gate was too dense with fey to sort. Morgan sent his familiar Icarus to help search from above. Even with teamwork, the two couldn’t sense any raven children. Each fey they asked, noticed their plumaged mythical cousins were missing, yet had no idea why this was. Many said the raven fey had vanished during the night. Tiberius Gate was a sanctuary, inhabited only by the king mage, his family, and fey. If there were no children of the raven king here, there weren’t anywhere. This had happened before; when Morgan was King mage and in school. All the wolf children vanished, and almost claimed his enfeyed best friend. The propect of one tenth of all magic disappearing, terrified him.

Morgen feared the worst: The Raven King may have been killed. Such a good friend since they met: going for karaoke and flipping TV channels. The Raven King was always good for a laugh, and giving an unhelpful yet whimsical perspective. Morgan’s greif of the loss of fey and magic quickly became overshadowed by the fear for his raven brother’s life. He was experiencing a special kind of tragedy all over again. As much as Emilia and his children comforted Morgan, they would never understand that the death of a beast king, to the King Mage, is like the loss of a sibling. Flustered, Morgan ran to the Raven Door with his children, only to find a twelve-year-old girl, weeping on beneath a tree, when they entered the shadow veil. She had no colour, except her icy eyes; she was human mage. She looked like a princess, dressed as old Anglian nobility. Her dress was black crushed velvet, with feather ruff; Fairy robes like mage Queen Meriam Craweleoth of the Grand West. Like she was from a time when Tiberius made the gate. The sobbing girl was dirty, worn, and grey. Morgan knelt to her.

“Are you ok? Raven Queen Odette? You wear your mother’s fairy robes.” Morgan said calmly.

“My husband and children are dead. Their song silent, and my true love, all lost. I do not care that I am no longer immortal, cannot fly, or have returned to being a human girl; I weep for my children and husband, I weep, for I no longer want to sing or live without them,” Odette responded in tears. “All I have is my name; I have been Raven Queen here for so long, it is all I know. The veil takes your memories, as the surrounding magic does not know time. But enough of me; I need to aid Artemis and the new Raven King. They may need help adjusting to their new roles, but I can’t move myself to do anything but cry for my late husband.” She sobbed. Everyone was speechless. As if they had heard a eulogy. Morgan’s children could not comfort Odette; for no one but him, had been able to read Meriam’s journals about her daughter’s mortal life. Morgan knew the story well, and it reminded him of his own daughter, Artemis.

Long ago, the now widowed Raven Queen was a princess kept in her father’s palace. There were talks of wedding her off in the name of peace. She was the only heir of the Great West of Anglia. Odette’s future was to be decided by lordly men. Even if her mother, the mage queen, protested. Odette stood gracefully in her finery at the edge of the courtyard pools, watching the birds. Princess Odette Craweleoth was her full name. She always wore soft blues, and had pale hair and icy eyes; she had magic move through her, at a very young age. Thus, changing her colours to that of a swan. Odette starred into the skies yearning to fly, and be as elegant as one of the birds she watched. Yearning to be a charmer of the Raven Gate in the Capitol instead, of its princess. Her mother, Meriam Craweleoth, sadly watched her only child resent her circumstances; like she once did.

Meriam, knowing the ways of magic, had figured out that her princess was a mage. In these olden times, mages were the only people who could use magic. Therefore, mages were used as weapons, if not exterminated; and Odette was oblivious to this fact. She only knew about a royal existence inside a palace. Odette was a girl who only wanted to love and live, and was innocently unaware of the trial of life. This resulted in Odette, not yet a fully grown lady, feeling no shame in indulging in the impossible. Meriam covered any tracks of her daughter and nephew finding joy in magical ways, least the people who call themselves wizard’s protest. More importantly, she wanted them to have their youthful pure wonder, a little longer.

Meriam dared to defy her values, and lie to her king husband; and withhold her knowledge of the fine large raven adorned in treasure. The Raven King visited the balconies uncomfortably often. Odette had grown to love and had befriended him. It was sweet, and heartwarming. Odette and the Raven King talked when he visited each night; bringing her shiny junk, and telling her jokes, as she complimented him and confessed her woes of having no choice in her future. The Raven King then revealed his more human face, to confess that he loved her so much, that if she requited his love, they could fly off together. Odette could be his beautiful swan. thrilled by his offer, she agreed and kissed him, becoming enfeyed with his magic as a beast queen. She loved him back. At last, she determined her fate, and could fly.

Queen Meriam did not see her daughter, the princess, fly off with the Raven King. but knew and said nothing; her little girl would be safe, and live long and happy in the shadow veil. But common men would not understand such things. By the time the guards, and Odette’s father, arrived to her chambers, she had gone without a trace. Meriam now guarded the Raven Gate she had made, for her daughter’s sake. Anything to keep her only child safe, and meet her raven grandchildren. And Meriam died in her age guarding it from her people. People who had been given tools to wield magic, and wished to eliminate magery form the world.

All Odette could recall of this, is once being a princess, the birds she watched, and wanting to be herself. It felt like it was only a dream. Odette had forgotten the name of her kingdom, and the faces of her human family. The people who loved her centuries ago. Odette was raven queen no more, but still felt a mother to the bird fey. She, in her emptiness, wished to help Artemis and her remaining royal children, the richen raven and griminthropes, which were now presumably human mages somewhere. Odette wanted to help her daughter in law be the queen she once was. To protect what remained of what she loved most. It was all she had to fill a hole, where love once was.

Morgan was struck with sadness as well. He was close to the Raven King, who was quite the beloved personality among all the beast kings and mages. No doubt the other beast Kings and Queens would grieve him too. The King’s of fey were like the only siblings Morgan and Emilia ever had. They were like aunts and uncles to their four children. Everyone felt cold and empty; as nostalgia reared from pleasant to bitter. There was no more innocent prankster, funny hat wearer, bad dancing crackly singer. The Raven King sung badly purposefully, because his real voice was so beautiful it caused any living thing that heard it to die. The first Raven King was terrifying and glories, in all his majesty. As pure magic should be. Even if The Raven King was made only of magic itself, he felt like a physical person. He was as old as the world itself, and had met his eventual end. Infinity always has eventually. Even though he lived so long, it felt so short. The Raven King was now just a story in books of magic. In his stead, Matcha would now have to be all of these things.

Suddenly it dawned on Morgan, Emilia and their children. Where is Artemis and Matcha? Are they alive and the new king and queen of the raven kingdom as Odette said? Patrick approached Odette firmly, and requested the widowed queen to take them deep in the forest; to the secret nest. The giant raven nest that was forbidden to anyone but the Raven King, Queen and any newborn heirs. The Raven King had decorated an orchard of trees in dazzling gems, armor, jewelry and ornaments in the most spectacular way. Centuries of careful tweaking and crafting; It was art. It was what inspired Matcha to bead and decorate. The nest sat upon the largest tree in the circular orchard. It was made of felt, down, straw and twigs. As Odette lead the concerned family into the clearing, they saw a large four-winged crimson bird with a skulled head in the nest. Perched above her, another large snow-white raven with Icey eyes, that was adorned handsomely with jewelry about his neck and talons. It was like Odette and the Raven King were still there. The family cautiously approached behind Odette; her face still wet from tears. She pointed to the massive birds, which turned to look at them.

“Mother?” the new Raven King said in a familiar voice. He swooped down into his human form, revealing himself. It was Matcha, and he looked exactly like his father had; taller and with more dazzling feathers, and a crown. Except his eyes, which were his mothers. He waved to the visiting mages with a wide smile. Even as King, Matcha was himself.

“My condolences of your father. All the folk of magic will miss your little siblings, and the gifts he gave to us,” said Patrick “but where is my sister Artemis?” He asked. The red bird ruffled and turned into her human form; It was Artemis peering over the edge of the nest down at them. Everyone’s faces lit up to see her in good health. She had gone white and scarlet, just as Odette had when she became queen. Her collar and trims sparkled, and she wore a clear robe, like a veil embroidered with glittering feathers. The regal plume of feathers around her neck was as soft as clouds. Artemis was nearly unrecognizable. Her trademark autumn blacks of her eyes, hair, and clothes were now a regal white and blood red. Artemis jumped down, and landed before her family, surprising them a little. Even as Raven Queen, she was still herself.

“Told you I would never leave him Patrick.” Artemis said, smirking. Then her expression faded to sorrow. “The Raven King was murdered upon trying to rescue a flock of his captured daughters. The wizards must have been so scared to see him, that they lashed out on instinct like trolls. the beast kings can be verry shocking when you first meet one; as they are so big and all. He must have let his guard down because mages have returned, and have been keeping fey safe. I for one, did not know a beast king could die. I thought they may retire by choice, or turn human or something…” Artemis said. She was hugging Patrick, and melting into the fur of his coat. “I will miss him. He named me, and has been an accepting uncle all my life. Now I am Raven Queen, and I do not know how to be a step mother to an entire kingdom of fey. My husband will have to recreate his father’s work to restore balance. It’s a lot, and it’s not fair. I fear that, along the way, I will also forget you.” Artemis cried. Odette gently clasped Artemis’s hand, and looked away.

“I want to help, and stay, but I also need to find my royal children. They will have survived, and are now mages running amok; they must be confused to be human. Similar to Wolf Queen Flowen’s royal children, if I recall.  I am no longer enfyed, and will age now; my time is precious. I will do my best to help you be a good queen and mother to the raven kingdom. Our kingdom. I think we are all happy to see you both are well.” Odette said coldly. The family stood in the clearing of trees, decorated like a festive ballroom, as they stayed silent in memory of a lost friend, father, leader, and husband. Morgan ran up to Artemis, pulling her away from Patrick to embrace her.

“I and your family, can visit. As King Mage I come often; If the new king sees me worthy of being a brother, and gives me back the kingdom stone.” Morgan whispered. Matcha pulled a palm sized rock with the raven kingdoms rune on it. He smiled and put it in Morgan’s pocket, like it was another Tuesday.

“You look beautiful. This must be how Queen Meriam felt when Odette, her daughter, became a beast Queen. I am happy to hear my child will outlive me, prosperously for centuries; caring for fey like any proud mage. Though I know the veil can fog the mind, I hope you try to remember us.” He continued. Artemis’s family took turns giving her and Matcha comforting embraces, before parting. They took Odette with them to find the last of her children, wishing the best for the new royals. They saw their family off with a gentle smile in return; in spite of the events that had occurred. On the surface, it all seemed so scary, but underneath it was kindness. In time, and with tender love and care, the raven kingdom will once again have a happy ending. In a way, this new beginning already was one.

TABLE OF CONTENTS --->

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[latestnews2018-blog]

Stars, politicians mourn Aretha Franklin at funeral

New Post has been published on https://latestnews2018.com/stars-politicians-mourn-aretha-franklin-at-funeral/

Stars, politicians mourn Aretha Franklin at funeral

The service, a celebration of the life and legacy of the music icon, was full of song, uplifting eulogies and humorous anecdotes

Paster Charles Ellis (C) begins the funeral service for Aretha Franklin at the Greater Grace Temple in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., August 31, 2018.

DETROIT: Political dignitaries and music royalty led the tributes to Aretha Franklin at her star-studded funeral on Friday, joining her family and members of the public in bidding goodbye to America’s “Queen of Soul.”

The service, a celebration of the life and legacy of the music icon, was full of song, uplifting eulogies and humorous anecdotes at the Greater Grace Temple in her hometown Detroit.

The 76-year-old singer, beloved by millions around the world, died of cancer on August 16, closing the curtain on a glittering six-decade career that spanned Gospel, R&B, Jazz, Blues and even classical music.

Former US president Bill Clinton was among the guests, while letters were read out from his successors George W. Bush and Barack Obama extolling her contribution to America and her cultural importance.

Franklin’s golden casket was flanked by enormous blooms of lavender, cream and pink roses, while the church packed with smartly dressed mourners.

It was an upbeat and jubilant service celebrating Franklin, uplifting her family in their time of grief and celebrating her gospel legacy. Worshippers were even urged to get to their feet and dance at one point.

Smokey Robinson spoke movingly of the childhood friend he would miss for the rest of his life and broke briefly into acappella song.

“I miss you my buddy, I miss you my friend, I know that my love for you will never end, will never end,” he sang. “I’m going to love you forever,” he finished, blowing a kiss toward her coffin.

 ‘Long live the Queen’  

Ariana Grande powered through Franklin’s 1968 hit “Natural Woman” supported by gospel backing singers with further tributes expected from Stevie Wonder and Jennifer Hudson.

“I’m so proud of you, I know you’ll be watching me from the windows of heaven and I promise to carry our family legacy with pride,” said Franklin’s very emotional grandson Jordan, tearing up. “Long live the Queen.”

While television stars and politicians mingled inside, fans queued overnight in their funeral finery or Aretha T-shirts, desperate to be among the 1,000 members of the public allowed into the service.

“Aretha is my icon. She’s everything to me, like my mother,” said Ugochi Queen, a 46-year-old Franklin tribute artist dressed in black ruffles from Gary, Indiana, who got in line at 4:00 am.

“I need closure and that’s why I’m here.”

Dozens of people crowded around a large screen broadcasting the funeral at a nearby gas station, camping out in beach chairs or standing in the shade, cheering at the sight of the rich and famous inside.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said the city would rename Chene Park – the riverside amphitheatre that hosted a tribute concert for her on Thursday – in Franklin’s honor. The announcement was met with a standing ovation.

Franklin influenced generations of singers from the late Whitney Houston to Beyonce, with unforgettable hits including “Respect” (1967) and “I Say a Little Prayer” (1968).

She won 18 Grammy awards and was feted for her civil rights work, raising money for the cause and inspiring activists with her anthems.

 Pink Cadillacs  

Franklin was voted the greatest singer of all time by Rolling Stone magazine and for African American women in particular was a role model and a benchmark for success, feminism and empowerment.

Detroit considers Franklin royalty. For three days she lay resplendent in a different outfit each day, and visited by thousands. On Friday, she wore a golden sparkling dress for her funeral.

Thousands upon thousands of people lined up in the past days to see the late singer one last time – first at the Charles H. Wright Museum for African-American History, then at her father’s New Bethel Baptist Church.

Pink Cadillacs – some having been driven across the country – parked en masse outside the church, expected to follow her cortege to the cemetery where she is to be buried alongside her father and siblings.

They are a nod to her 1985 hit “Freeway of Love,” an anthem to her Motor City hometown, in which Franklin sang about a pink Cadillac, the car company that was founded in Detroit in 1902.

Franklin is expected to make her final journey in the same ivory 1940 Cadillac LaSalle used at the funerals of her father and of civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

The daughter of a prominent Baptist preacher and civil rights activist, Franklin sang at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr., as well as the inaugurations of presidents Clinton and Obama.

She was awarded America’s highest civilian honor by president Bush in 2005.

[danaeekh3573-blog]

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Neil Young: Trans

It’s the end of the world. The sky is an ominous shade of red, and the air is thick with poisonous fumes. Some people are silhouetted with an eerie glow while others are dying of radiation poisoning. “It shoulda been me that died,” Neil Young says, riding a bike alongside actor Russ Tamblyn. Tamblyn shrugs him off, and the two make plans for the evening. Tomorrow may never come, but tonight they’ll take their dates to the drive-in, where Tamblyn begs Neil not to play his ukulele or to sing “in that high squeaky voice.” So goes the opening scene of the 1982 film Human Highway, an apocalyptic comedy written and directed by Neil Young under his long-standing nom de plume Bernard Shakey. It’s a muddled and paranoid work, filled with forced slapstick humor and wild jams with Devo. In one scene, the members of the Ohio new wave group haul toxic waste in a flatbed truck down a lonesome highway. “I don’t know what’s going on in the world today,” Devo’s Booji Boy says to himself as images of skulls flash across his bandmates’ faces, “People don’t seem to care about their fellow man.”

This is where Neil Young’s head was at the top of the ’80s. Human Highway—Young’s third picture, following the psychedelic Journey Through the Past and his quasi-concert film Rust Never Sleeps—shares a title with a song from 1978’s Comes a Time. “Take my head, and change my mind,” he sang in its chorus, “How could people get so unkind?.” With its gentle acoustic guitars and fantasies of misty mountains, “Human Highway” plays like a eulogy to a specific type of Neil Young song. The Canadian hippie who sings in a high squeaky voice about packin’ it in and buyin’ a pick-up is only one side of Young. In fact, a decade into his solo career, Neil Young had developed a reputation more like an actor, someone remembered more for the parts he played than the unifying presence behind them all. After Comes a Time, he stepped away from his role as a ’70s folk singer, with 1979’s Rust Never Sleeps introducing a decade of restless exploration. The world was getting meaner, and Neil Young was tired of being typecast as merely an observer: He wanted to take part in the madness.

Although they both speak to the increasingly uneasy state of Young’s mind, “Human Highway,” the song, never appears in Human Highway, the film. Instead, the movie is mostly soundtracked by a record called Trans, released that same year. In the film, Young gets into character by contorting his face, wearing a pair of dorky glasses, and slapping motor oil on his cheeks. On Trans, he transforms himself by setting his songs in a distant future and filtering his voice through a variety of synthesizers, most notably (and infamously) a vocoder. The warped new wave of Trans suits the movie’s otherworldly (if endearingly chintzy) backdrops. You believe that this is the music that would play in the film’s shoddy roadside diner, where Dennis Hopper cooks sausage patties and swats at radioactive, laser-pointer flies. In fact, the movie might be the best context to hear Trans—an album that’s often treated more like a symbol (for artistic reinvention, for failed experimentation, for creative self-sabotage) than an actual entry in a body of work characterized by prolificacy and versatility.

Part of what makes Neil Young’s discography so rewarding for new listeners is that it’s filled with great entry points: the classic rock radio staples with more depth than you imagined (After the Goldrush, Harvest); the intimate passages that, even after all these years, feel like uncovered secrets (Tonight’s the Night, On the Beach); and the bizarre left-turns like Trans that inspire cult fandom just for existing. And while Trans sits comfortably along with Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait in a lineage of puzzling-if-fascinating failures, its mythology is only part of the appeal. Reed and Dylan always felt like provocateurs—for Dylan, even finding Jesus felt like a means of snapping back at critics. But Young’s transformations have always felt less divisive, more natural and earnest and instinctual. Even when he followed Trans with Everybody’s Rockin’, a slight collection of anti-capitalist rockabilly songs, he held the latter record in high esteem: “As good as Tonight's The Night, as far as I'm concerned,” he’s said.

Young has made similar claims about Trans. “This is one of my favorites,” he said grimly, holding the album art to the camera during a 2012 interview, “If you listen to this now, it makes a lot more sense than it did then.” Even if Trans is still confusing, it’s a point well taken. In the context of Young’s discography—rich with remakes and sequels, major reunions and minor pet projects—Trans has only grown more triumphant and singular as it’s aged. He would do new wave again, he’d mess with his voice some more, and he’d even return to the idea of full-on concept albums. But he would never make anything quite so conceptually confrontational—a challenge to even his most ardent followers’ understanding of what a Neil Young album sounds like. “If I build something up, I have to systematically tear it right down,” he’s said, referring to his penchant for moving quickly from one project to another, carrying with him few traces of the previous work. It’s remarkable, then, that Trans—an album ostensibly designed to “tear down” a specific image of Neil Young—ends up standing for exactly what’s great about him.

Like so many of Neil Young’s albums, Trans is filled with mysteries and unanswered questions (Why is his 1967 Buffalo Springfield song “Mr. Soul” on here? Why is a track called “If You Got Love” listed in the lyric sheet but not on the actual album?) It’s hard to think of an artist with as many classic albums who has wrestled so constantly against the medium: even his canonized work has a raw, unfinished quality to it. “If anything is wrong, then it’s down to the mixing,” he’s said about Trans, “We had a lot of technical problems on that record.” Fittingly, much of Trans concerns man’s fight against technology. A song called “Computer Cowboy (aka Syscrusher)” details a team of rogue computers robbing a bank, with Young’s voice zapped down to a digital squelch. In “We R in Control,” a choir of robots lists the aspects of daily life—traffic lights, the FBI, even the flow of air—in which humans no longer have a say. Thematically, these songs—with their dystopian images of a world run by screens and numbers, where humans have everything at their fingertips but remain unhappy—have aged pretty well.

It’s the sound of the record that makes it more of an ’80s relic. No matter what format you listen to the album on (and it’s still never been released on CD in the U.S.), you feel as though you’re hearing it from the tape deck of a passing car. Even with longtime collaborators like producer David Briggs, guitarist Ben Keith, and drummer Ralph Molina, these songs sound very little like Young’s timeless ’70s work. The goofier, beat-centric tracks from his previous release, 1981’s shaky Re-ac-tor, certainly set a precedent. But despite its reputation for being aggressive and inscrutable, Trans is, at its heart, a pop record. It’s filled with hooks and beats and synths informed equally by krautrock and MTV. In “Sample and Hold,” guitarist Nils Lofgren—whose solos added an element of bluesy desperation to Tonight’s the Night but would soon light up football stadiums on Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. tour—points to future hits like Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” and Oingo Boingo’s “Weird Science.” When the Trans Band played “Sample and Hold” during the album’s comically over-the-top tour—an endeavor that Young claims in Jimmy McDonough's authorized biography Shakey lost him $750,000 (“And we sold out every show,” he adds)—Neil and Nils stalk the stage with rock star charisma, trading solos and bleating into their talkboxes. In the sweet, melodic “Transformer Man,” Neil’s vocoder actually adds an element of purity to his voice, as layers of wordless choruses shower him. Listening to these songs, it’s not impossible to imagine that Trans could have maybe, possibly, in another world, been a pop hit.

But that world is in a galaxy far from this one. While the critical reception to Trans was not nearly as harsh as legend would have you think (Rolling Stone compared it to Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy; Robert Christgau gave it a higher mark than Harvest), it was a commercial dud—a rough start for the fledgling Geffen Records label, who also released Joni Mitchell’s adult contemporary turn Wild Things Run Fast the same year. Trans wasn’t the album that convinced David Geffen to sue Neil Young for making uncharacteristic records—that would be its follow-ups Everybody’s Rockin’ and Old Ways, the country record that plays like a made-for-TV adaptation of Harvest. But the idea had to be floating through David Geffen’s head when he first heard this record. At once Young’s coldest sounding album and his most vulnerable, Trans makes its flaws immediately apparent as soon as you press play—from the murky production to the mixed-bag tracklist.

When you listen to Trans, you’re really only hearing two-thirds of it. Only six of the album’s nine songs were intended for the actual project. The other three came from a different album entirely, one that concerned young love and ancient civilizations. It was to be titled Island in the Sun, and Geffen Records quickly steered him away from the concept. Album opener “Little Thing Called Love” stems from those sessions, and it’s the record’s clearest connection to Young’s more celebrated talents. Its chorus riffs on the title of one of his most beloved songs (“Only love,” he barks in a chipper tone, “Brings you the blues”) and the ensuing chord progression would eventually find a new home in the title track of 1992’s Harvest Moon. While demonstrating the fluidity of Neil’s catalog, the song also makes for a striking introduction in its own right: a singalong before the apocalypse, when human connection would become as archaic as LaserDisc copies of the Solo Trans live show are today.

The Island songs also help highlight a major theme of Trans: it’s an album about affection. At the start of the decade, Neil Young and his wife were enrolled in intensive therapy with their son Ben, who had been diagnosed with cerebral palsy. The program’s long hours slowed Young’s hectic work schedule and opened him up to writing about fatherhood. His struggles to communicate with his child and the technology that connected them inspired the lyrics of Trans and even informed the way he recorded his vocals: “You can’t understand the words, and I can’t understand my son’s words,” he explained in Shakey. In that context, Young’s naked voice in respective side-openers “Little Thing Called Love” and “Hold on to Your Love” represents the catharsis of an emotional breakthrough. You understand the words he wants you to understand—and most of them just say, “I love you.”

Even with Human Highway serving as a vehicle for the album, Trans was originally conceived with a different film project in mind. “I had a big concept,” Young said in Shakey, “All of the electronic-voice people were working in a hospital, and the one thing they were trying to do is teach this little baby to push a button.” That metaphor pops up a few times throughout the record, most squarely in “Transformer Man,” a song Young's openly dedicated to his son. “You run the show,” he sings to him, “Direct the action with the push of a button.” The Trans film might not have moved the album to the commercial heights Neil and Geffen imagined, but available evidence suggests that it would have at least made its digital world feel warmer, more grounded and productive—the qualities fans had come to expect from Young’s work. Instead, the songs would have to stand on their own, their meaning buried inside them, like a constellation of stars you have to connect based on your own perception.

Near the end of Human Highway, a concussed Young enters a long, inscrutable dream sequence in which he, among other things, gets bathed in milk, attends a desert ritual, and becomes a world-renowned rock star. When Russ Tamblyn wakes him, they celebrate the mere fact that he’s alive. For the film’s final 10 minutes, Neil lives with a newfound sense of purpose and ambition (“We could do it,” he says, “We could be rhythm and bluesers, we could go on the road!”). Even with the fiery explosion on its way to squash his dreams and reduce the world to a pile of ash, it’s a brighter ending than what Trans leaves us with. In the lost paradise of “Like an Inca,” Young envisions himself in the aftermath of a nuclear bomb, crossing the bridge to the afterlife, at once happy and sad and totally alone. It’s a fitting finale for a heavy album, one whose only brief glimmers of hope come from our connection to one another. “I need you to let me know that there’s a heartbeat/Let it pound and pound,” Young sings in “Computer Age.” His voice is masked beyond recognition, but the pulse—steady and wild—is unmistakably his own.