Nina Simone

 Nina Simone is a very powerful women who is intriguing to listen to and watch as she sings such powerful songs. Mississippi Goddam is a very informative song about not only Nina Simone's feelings but other African American musicians and artists out there who just didn't speak up themselves about the situations they see. Nina sang lyrics addressing the horrible tragedies that left people dead, making the listeners believe she stopped believing in hope that this would all end and saying all she wanted was equality among everyone. In the Netflix documentary we watched in class, one of the men being interviewed, said "everyone was thinking it, just no one said it." Her lyrics were very too the point and there was no dancing around the subject. The title of the song is important to look at as well. The documentary was saying that the word "Goddam" just emphasizes the frustration that people are feeling and Mississippi was the latest tragedy against the African Americans. Her daughter spoke in the documentary and said that after her mother performed the song her voice broke from being so mad and no other version of her singing it sounded the same. That is so powerful and just hearing that from her daughter leaves an impact on how important it is to her. 

We also listened to Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday. This song is much different from Mississippi Goddam in the sense of the tone. The energy of them as well is different I would say because Holiday's song is much more slow and has a dragged out beat to it. It addresses issues like racism and lynching that were occurring then. Songs in this time period were typically about issues like this and the artists would address them in their music even if they would face backlash from it. 

I think it's really important for people to voice their opinions especially for something they feel passionate about. These singers did so through their music and a lot of people applaud them because they agreed in the moment they were issues that were needed to be addressed. Even if the singers knew they would receive some backlash, sometimes it didn't stop them. Plenty of artists to this day don't care what they'll face after a performance or releasing a song, they still do it because they feel strongly about it in some way. It's really cool to me that singers have this power to address issues in such ways that allows the whole world to hear what they have to say. Nina Simone is very well known for this song and it leaves a mark and there are artists doing the same thing today.