DO YOU KNOW NINA SIMONE?
Nina Simone was an iconic singer and civil rights activist. Born in 1933 as Eunice Kathleen Waymon in North Carolina, Simone aspired to be a concert pianist. She was, however, denied acceptance into the Curtis Institute of Music due to the simple fact that she was black. Undiscouraged, she applied for Juilliard School of Music. From there, her music career was began, and reached its peak around the 1970’s, making some of history’s greatest music hits including, “Blackbird” and “Feeling Good”. Simone was the sixth out of eight children for her parents John and Mary Waymon. Her mother was a Methodist preacher and housemaid, while her father was a handyman. Simone began playing the piano at church at the young age of three, but when her parents were forced to move from the front row of the church to the back to accommodate the church’s white members, she refused to continue playing. Thus began her involvement in the civil rights movement. Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone when she started working in a club to earn money to pay for school. She decided to change her name so that her mother would not find out that she was practicing the “Devil’s Music”, which comprised a mixture of the genres jazz, blues and classical music.Her debut album, “Little Girl Blue,” came out in 1958, and was a major success.