{"id":60,"date":"2018-11-30T22:59:42","date_gmt":"2018-12-01T03:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus238-08\/?page_id=60"},"modified":"2018-12-12T17:13:50","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T22:13:50","slug":"nina-simone-in-concert-the-live-album","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus238-08\/nina-simone-in-concert-the-live-album\/","title":{"rendered":"Nina Simone In Concert: The Live Album"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is an image of the album cover of In Concert from the Allmusic review of this album. This picture is important to my argument because it helps to visualize Nina\u2019s presence on stage during the 1964 performance, as well as some of the instrumentation that accompanies her. Hunched, staring directly into the camera, it seems as though Nina is observing her audience (the viewer) with scorn and disdain, daring the audience to critique her performance. This uninviting stance is even more powerfully delivered through the bitter, intensely subjective vocal performance on this live album.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nina Simone In Concert<\/em>, the first for Nina Simone under the Phillips label, is a recording of her March and April 1964 performances in Carnegie Hall, and features Simone on both vocals and piano, backed by a small ensemble of bass, upright bass, drums and guitar.\u00a0 Carnegie Hall in New York City has historically been considered the peak of sophistication in European-style classical music.\u00a0 This live album, along with the prior live album recording in 1963 in Carnegie, is performed in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, marking a sharp artistic turning point in Nina Simone\u2019s career (Brun-Lambert 101).\u00a0 As Simone states herself, \u201cAfter the murder of Medgar Evers, the Alabama bombing and \u2018Mississippi Goddam\u2019 the entire direction of my life shifted, and for the next seven years I was driven by civil rights and the hope of black revolution\u201d (Simone 91). \u00a0Consequently, songs that appear on In Concert<\/em> are often only considered through the perspective of Nina Simone, the African-American Civil Rights activist.\u00a0 However, her activism, which she discusses in her autobiography, is also a musical resistance against unfair musical categorization.<\/p>\n

The album consists of 7 tracks, two of which I will analyze musically to support my argument (\u201cPirate Jenny,\u201d and \u201cMississippi Goddam\u201d).\u00a0 Both tracks portray anger musically, either through subjective, isolating vocal performances and a manipulation of classical piano techniques.\u00a0 Author David Brun-Lambert speaks of the anger in Simone\u2019s performance as such: \u201cMore direct, rougher, more brutal than the concert recorded at Town Hall, a complete break from the sophistication of Nina at Carnegie, this first record for Phillips was a taster of a radiant and unpredictable artist\u201d (129).\u00a0 The album is politically and racially motivated, but there are also musical<\/em> elements that unpredictably defy her audience\u2019s expectations, proving that female black musicianship is more than being considered just a \u201cjazz singer\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nina Simone In Concert, the first for Nina Simone under the Phillips label, is a recording of her March and April 1964 performances in Carnegie…<\/p>\n

Continue readingNina Simone In Concert: The Live Album<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4275,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-60","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus238-08\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus238-08\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus238-08\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus238-08\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4275"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus238-08\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus238-08\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/60\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus238-08\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}