#BlackSpring in “BALTIMORE" from the forthcoming Nina Simone tribute album

Nina Simone: The Intensity of Beginning

Reading the artistic contributions of  Nina Simone through Frantz Fanon

by Fezokuhle Mthonti

But the constancy of my love had been forgotten. I defined myself as an absolute intensity of beginning. So I took up my negritude, and with tears in my eyes I put its machinery together again. What had been broken to pieces was rebuilt, reconstructed by the intuitive lianas of my hands.

(Fanon,1952:106)

After Fanon, African criticism cannot feign ignorance of history. But neither can they plead captivity to its consequences. Fanon is our pathfinder in that ‘conversation of discovery’ whose mission is to gather the voices of history and common dreams into the work of the critical imagination.

(Sekyi-Otu, 2003:14)

Stacked to the side of an old, rustic-looking glass and wooden cabinet is large pile of vinyl records. Positioned in the corner of our open plan dining room, is this cabinet and therein sits my mother’s prized gramophone. Each Sunday, as the pot roast was thickening in flavour and the vegetables; coming alive to the steam of my mother’s Hart pot was the scratching of the gramophone pin as it moved from song to song. The room already scented with the smells of simmering rice and curried meat would be transformed by the raw quaver and deep register of Nina Simone.

Nina Simone : Mississippi Goddam

Nina Simone: Revolution & Strange Fruit (plus comments on artists & politics)

Nina Simone: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free

Nina Simone: To Be Young, Gifted and Black