Superb site. Keep it going.

Mod
England

Just go ‘head and do it.

Lynn
New York

the occasion of nina simone’s transition a few years ago allowed my eyes to see beyond the 2 percent to which i had been exposed

a similar situation to rosa parks

and i know you know this, but i need to tell you that your work provides some of the missing elements in people’s lives which is consistently left out by currently dominant media..

just needed to say thanks.

I once saw Nina cuss out Babatunde Olatunji at the Mahalia Jackson Theatre for the Performing Arts in New Orleans during a performance at Jazz Festival. Nina was trying to get Baba to accompany her on stage. Baba was ill and had barely made it through his opening set.

After struggling with body aches and fever trying to change from sweat drenched clothes, the spent Nigerian master drummer was standing in the wings waiting to pay respects to the preeminent culture bearer, Simone. Now mind you, Baba was visibly miserable and could barely walk and talk because of the effects of flu symptoms so after that bangin Drums of Passion set my man was fit for the bed.

Half way through the first number Nina spotted her dear friend, Olatunji and immediately demanded he join her on stage. The former Morehouse College SGA president and football star did his best, using hand gestures and facial expressions, to decline. Well, Nina lit into Baba like a spurned lover. That shit was hotter than the bluest flame and it was all said in the microphone. A murmur rose from the shocked and confused audience. And what did Baba do? He stood there and took that shit like a man.

I suppose my man’s Euro Ba was telling him to be all hurt and shit but Nina was havin none of it. Now, I am ready to accept the fact that there are those who may not agree with what Nina said and did to this humble, Yoruba priest. The brother just smiled and walked off nodding his head. Baba explained to me later that Nina is the only one who can do that and get away with it. Now, this man who was deep into traditional African culture and Nina who was – well I really don’t know what Nina was into - had reached a very personal understanding, a knowing of one another, a very ‘rootical’ level of kinship. Olatunji knew exactly where Nina was commin from. Nah see, that’s one of them hard to explain phenomenon of Blackness. It has to deal with the differing levels of Blackness: God, deities, wo/man, African, Negroid, nigger, Negro, Black, Afro-(insert), Black, god, nigga. Black people can, at the drop of a dime, manifest any one of these attributes at any given point in space and time. The audience was shocked and confused by how Nina was talking to Baba. But not the fact that Baba had white women playing drums in the band. There was a very subtle dynamic going on there. Nina was saying I know you ain’t gone so far as to think you can play with them and not play with me. To put this in more Gershwinesque terms, Nina was saying “you is mines, Porgy!” This is proof positive that pimpin ain’t easy and though sometimes Black love can be tough, there’s nothing else like it in the world. I know y’all feel me. And if you don’t know what I’m sayin, you might have to be born again, Godspeed.

Thanks for reintroducing me to Nina Simone.

As for your thoughtful writing about history. The history we normally get to read is that which the winners have edited to create their vision of the past and of themselves. It often bears only a passing resemblance to reality.

Blue