Nina Simone holds a very powerful voice in the world and fight of woman’s rights. She was also a very powerful woman in the black rights movement.  Many of the songs she produced later on in her career held very political meanings.  In class when we watched part of “What Happened Nina Simone,”you could see when her songs start to become more political and angry.  At the beginning, her songs still held feminist and black power views but they seemed to be more civil and less violent.  In her music you can see how much passion she had, from the lyrics, the real life events she chose to write about, and even the facial expression she makes during her performances on stage.  Her music was real and not just words put together to form a song.

   I found it interesting that in the documentary, Nina told her daughter that after she produced her song “Mississippi Goddamn,” she couldn’t quite get her voice to reach the same octaves as before. That fact alone just shows you how much anger and passion she put into this song. This song was very controversial because songs around that time did not use foul language and it was unheard of for words like that to come out of a woman’s mouth.   I find it strange that the word goddamn created such havoc because now day’s songs use words that are way more vulgar.  It almost seems as if foul language in music has now become a norm.

   Racism and oppression drove the violent side out of her. It was very intense to watch her preform on stage and chant out to her crowd that they should be ready to fight.  Nina lost many fans because of the violence she promoted.  I’m sure Nina cared very much about losing fans, but I admire that she didn’t let worrying about that stop her from expressing how she really feels in her lyrics. She was willing to kill and commit whatever violent act was necessary to gain the rights for black people and woman themselves.  Nina’s passion definitely drove her into a crazy state of mind.  Our beliefs and what we are passionate about takes a huge toll on our behavior.  It is surprising to that think that something we feel so strongly about can affect us in a negative way and can actually consume us.