Nina Simone

What defines Nina Simone is that voice that oscillates between a whisper and a shout, between the intimate and the epic. Her contralto, with its characteristic tremor, moves between jazz, blues, and soul without being pigeonholed, yet always with an intensity that seems to come from something more than just a song. The piano, in her hands, doesn’t just accompany: it dialogues, improvises, and sometimes almost competes with her voice, as if each note were another argument in a conversation where there’s no room for superficiality. There’s something of Bach in her playing —that Baroque precision that blends with jazz’s controlled chaos—, but there’s also something of the church music where she grew up, where emotion is measured in silences and glances. When you listen to Feeling Good, for example, it’s not just a performance: it’s an act of resistance, a challenge to stay still when the body demands movement.

It all began in a club in Atlantic City, where she played piano to survive. They asked her to sing, and there she discovered that her voice could be as powerful as her fingers on the keys. The name "Nina Simone" came from her then-partner —"Nina" for affection, "Simone" after the French actress— and with that alias, she hid from her family, who disapproved of a young woman from her background pursuing popular music. But the deception didn’t last long: in 1959, I Loves You, Porgy took her to the 19th spot on the Billboard Hot 100, her only massive hit in the United States. She wasn’t a star in the conventional sense: she was a frustrated classical pianist who had found in jazz and blues a language to say things that academic music wouldn’t allow her to express. And that same year, when she recorded Little Girl Blue, it was already clear that her music wouldn’t be mere entertainment.