From that moment onward she steered her music towards politics and made sure to use her position to bring about social change.
Simone was triggered when she heard about the arrest of the torchbearer of the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King, while she was walking off the Carnegie stage on 12 th April 1963. One of the few songs written by Simone, it was released in her 1964 album Nina Simone in Concert, a compilation of three concerts that she gave at Carnegie Hall earlier that year. This song marks Simone’s direct involvement with the Civil Rights Movement. Although a brilliant composition, the song has been rightly accused of linguistic subordination which operates on the gross generalisation of the oppressed community being linguistically deficit. In the lyrics, Bess who is a black woman from a poor neighbourhood, asks Porgy to convince her not to go and see her abusive lover Crown. The song was originally from the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess, sung as a duet, penned by Ira Gershwin and music by George Gershwin. The 10 best Nina Simone songs: ‘I Love(s) You Porgy’ Let’s take a look back at Simone’s outstanding body of work by re-assessing the value of a select few, that are considered to be some of her bests. She also succeeded at proving the myth of quantity and quality wrong, by producing more than 40 high-quality albums between 19. Simone was a skilled craftsman and brilliant singer, performer and pianist “separately and simultaneously.” From classical, gospel, jazz, blues, R&B, folk to rock ‘n’ roll and pop, everything was her forte.
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