Radiolab - Nina

Episode Date: June 6, 2020

Producer Tracie Hunte stumbled into a duet between Nina Simone and the sounds of protest outside her apartment. Then she discovered a performance by Nina on April 7, 1968 - three days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Tracie talks about what Nina’s music, born during another time when our country was facing questions that seemed to have no answer, meant then and why it still resonates today.  Listen to Nina's brother, Samuel Waymon, talk about that April 7th concert here.

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From WN. Y.

C. See? Yeah. Ooh, no, no, that's awful. Putting my headphones back in. This week at a staff meeting, our producer, Tracy Hunt, told us story. Really, it was a story of a moment. Sorry.

from the weekend, as the protests in response to the killing of George Floyd were really escalating. Can you hurt through my headphones? I just asked her to tell me that story again on tape. Okay, so you were listening to a certain song. Yeah. What happened exactly? Can you set the scene? Yeah.

Yeah, it was Saturday, and I had been feeling pretty sad all day, just feeling kind of grumpy, and I was like, okay. You know what? Self-care Saturday. Let's just take a really long hot shower, wash your hair, smell good, feel good. And so I did all of that, you know, and I was just feeling very good physically,

for the first time in a while, actually. And I decided I was going to play Nina Simone. Baby, you understand me now. I just typed in Nina Simone in Spotify and just let them. Put a smell on you. to start, you know, picking songs for me, basically. I wasn't really being really specific. And I opened, so I have a balcony in my apartment,

and I opened the door to let some errand. And I'm just instantly barrage with all this sound, this cacophony of police sirens, people chanting. And then all of a sudden, In my room, the song that was playing was Backlash Blues by Nina Simone. And I was like, whoa, what is going on? Like, wow, this is a very weird sound experience right now.

What is that, what is that song just for people who don't know it? So Backlash Blues, she actually wrote it with Langston Hughes, great Harlem Renaissance poet. He wrote the lyrics and she wrote the, I guess, the music. And the song is just like Who do you think I am? Who do you think I am? Raise my taxes and freeze my wages Send my son to Vietnam

You got me in second class houses Second class schools Do you think all colored folks Are just second class schools? Or just second class schools Mr. Backlash. I'm going to leave you with the Backlash Blues. Wow.

I mean, Other than the Vietnam reference, you're singing really on the nose for right now. Yeah. Like, wow, like, this is Nina Simone in 1967. Singing this out and is like a warning of prediction or something. Like talking forward to us 50 years. Yeah. And one big question over this weekend, and I think we're going to have this question for a lot,

is like everyone was like, why is this happening now? And I'm like, literally, this is why it's happening. This is, it's right here. When things keep piling on, piling on, piling on, you know, there's going to be released. And, you know, you look at the last couple months and it's just been pile on on, pile on, and pylon. It's coronavirus that's killing mostly black and brown people.

It's, you know, unemployment. And then you have, like, three really horrific killings of black people in three months, it just felt like there was a building up of stuff. And it kind of made sense. Yeah. And so it was just a really bizarre moment. And then I listened to Sunday and Savannah.

At the beginning of this recording, she's saying something like, I'm glad to see you happily surprised that so many obvious we really didn't expect anybody tonight. Oh, I'm so glad you guys came out tonight. night, I didn't know that you would because of everything that happened. And I was like, wait, what happened? And I did some Googling, and I found out that she performed three days after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. One more, Sunday in Savannah.

hear the whole creation shot and praise the Lord so she had dedicated the whole show to him and she sings Mississippi God damn and then there's like a couple moments of Mississippi God damn which also once again feel kind of pathetic.

Like this is a very angry song already but then she kind of has like a moment where she's, she just kind of like has this like kind of ad lib moment where she's saying. Good God. You know, the king is dead. The king of love is dead. I ain't about to be nonviolent, honey. We're not about to be nonviolent.

And there is something very, I don't know if alarming or strange, or I don't know the right word is. But there's something kind of amazing to think, like, these are the songs that she's singing for Martin Luther King Jr. And she's saying, yeah, let's get violent, you know? And I should point out that, you know, when she was performing, several cities in the United States were burning because there were riots in reaction to Martin Luther King's death. She also, she has like a period where she just sorts. talking and she's talking about other black artists who've died. Cold train lefters.

Oldest Redding lefters. In the last few years. You can go on. Do you realize how many we have lost? It really gets down to reality, doesn't it? Not a performance. Not microphones and all that crap. But really something else.

Lost a lot of them. Like she's just, And she even says, I don't know how to feel anymore and just so numb. We can't afford any more losses. Oh, no. Oh, my God. They're shooting us down one by one. Don't forget that.

Because they are. Killing us one by one. And hearing her say that, like just, they're shooting us one by one. Yeah, it's just, I don't know. She's just so necessary. We just need her so much. And I just keep thinking, like, what would she be thinking about this moment? What would she have to say?

And I don't know. It feels like she already said it. Yeah. I found this quote that she said, how can you be an artist and not reflect the times? That, to me, is the definition of an artist. And I know that, like, one thing we were thinking about, doing just reaching out to musicians finding out how they're reflecting the time and

I'm just going to be having um and I think even just in my work I'm going to be thinking about this challenge how can you not reflect the time that's what you're supposed to do yeah you know you know I kind of don't know if I'm up to it honestly you know I've got I think we're all feeling that from very different vantage points yeah I think we all are, we're all feeling a little. Like, you know, I feel like every black journalist has this, whenever this happens, a lot of black journalists, we get on our little, in our group chats and we're like, is journalism really the thing we should be doing right now? Is that going to save us? You know, like, we go into this profession knowing that, like, we're going to be entering mostly white spaces, but we do it because we really believe in serving our community.

community. And, you know, when moments like this come up, you doubt it. And you're just like, is this really, what else should I be doing? And I, you know, I keep coming back to like, I think I'm in the right place. I do, but everyone, I'm not sure. It's hard. It's really hard. Yeah.

And he knew he could not stop always living with a thread.