{"id":89,"date":"2018-12-01T15:59:19","date_gmt":"2018-12-01T20:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus238-08\/?page_id=89"},"modified":"2018-12-14T09:31:24","modified_gmt":"2018-12-14T14:31:24","slug":"how-nina-simone-subverts-her-audiences-expectations-through-vocal-performance","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus238-08\/how-nina-simone-subverts-her-audiences-expectations-through-vocal-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"How Nina Simone Subverts Her Audience\u2019s Expectations through Vocal Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On songs from <em>In Concert<\/em> such as \u201cPirate Jenny\u201d and \u201cMississippi Goddam,\u201d Nina Simone employs various vocal techniques such as varied dynamics, strained and raspy timbre, and a conflict between pitched and unpitched vocal inflections to work against the expectations of her audience.\u00a0 These vocal deliveries are supported by, or at times disconnected from, the instrumentation with Simone and her piano on the Carnegie Hall concert stage, specifically a small ensemble of bass, upright bass, drums and guitar.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Pirate Jenny (Live At Carnegie Hall, New York, 1964)\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WLJ3kw-1sPg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h5>This is an audio recording of the 1964 performance of \u201cPirate Jenny\u201d featured on the live album <em>In Concert<\/em>.\u00a0 This YouTube video gives my reader the ability to interact with the music I analyze.<\/h5>\n<p>Anger seeps into Nina Simone&#8217;s vocal delivery and performance of the song \u201cPirate Jenny\u201d in the form of varying dynamics and inflections.\u00a0 Appearing as the third track on In Concert, &#8220;Pirate Jenny&#8221; was created originally composed for Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht&#8217;s 1928 show The Threepenny Opera, first being introduced to Nina Simone in an adaptation at the Theatre de Lys in 1963 (Brun-Lambert 129).\u00a0 Supported in this case by the structure of the song itself, Nina Simone commands her audience, drawing them into the lyrical verses of the song which also act as complete phrases or ideas.\u00a0 These phrases are broken up by Simone\u2019s intense growls and whispers, and maniacal laughs, detached from any sort of instrumentation.\u00a0 For example, each verse of the song grows as the narrative of the song progresses, becoming increasingly louder.\u00a0 By the end of the verse, Simone practically shouts over the instrumentation, paying less attention to the accuracy of her pitch and instead straining forward, seemingly unconstrained by the very structure of the song.\u00a0 To quote an example, the second to last verse of the song erupts with intensity as Simone\u2019s vocal delivery becomes unstable, especially as she harshly strains out \u201cAnd they\u2019re chaining up people, and they\u2019re bringing them to me, asking me, \u2018Kill them now, or later?\u2019\u201d\u00a0 At this moment, just like the previous verses, the tempo of the song slows down until the textured instrumentation of piano and drums halts, leaving Simone\u2019s raspy, biting delivery as the only thing to be heard. \u00a0Exposed and raw, the Simone forces the audience to submit to the power of her voice along with the power of the song\u2019s character Jenny.\u00a0 She then repeats the lyric, \u201cAsking me! \u2018Kill them now, or later?\u2019\u201d for the audience with enough intense inflection to affectively isolate and disorient the listener.\u00a0 On this track especially, Simone uses her voice sparingly, understanding the value of the silence between her threats as a source of tension. \u00a0As biographer David Brun-Lambert urges, \u201cListen to Nina\u2019s performance of \u2018Pirate Jenny,\u2019 above all, listen to the silences she creates between each of the death threats uttered by her character.\u00a0 No one in Carnegie Hall moved an inch\u201d (Brun-Lambert 130-31).\u00a0 Overall, each verse invites the audience to listen to the story just for Simone to strip it away and turn her anger, in all its intensity, toward the audience itself.\u00a0 This extremely varied vocal delivery gives Nina Simone agency over her music because she is in full control of her audience\u2019s reactions, whether they want to be along for the performance or not.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Nina Simone: Mississippi Goddam\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LJ25-U3jNWM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h5>This is a video recording of a performance of \u201cMississippi Goddam,\u201d live at the Antibes Juan-les-Pins Jazz Festival in July of 1965, a little more than a year after the recording of <em>In Concert<\/em>.\u00a0 Although this is not the exact visual to match the audio recording of \u201cMississippi Goddam\u201d from the 1964 album, it still exhibits the same unpredictable anger that serves to subvert her audience&#8217;s expectations.<\/h5>\n<p>Similar to its intentions on \u201cPirate Jenny,\u201d the last song of the live album entitled \u201cMississippi Goddam\u201d employs vocal techniques influenced by Nina Simone\u2019s anger, specifically through varied dynamics and her strained vocal breaks at the top of her range. \u00a0This performance of \u201cMississippi Goddam\u201d in Carnegie Hall, the first live recording of the notable civil rights anthem, was politically inspired by race violence in the American south in 1963, specifically the death of activist Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi and the bombing of the 16<sup>th<\/sup> Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama (Graines 42). \u00a0The anger that Simone experiences after learning about these tragic injustices translates musically in \u201cMississippi Goddam\u201d in the very form of the song itself.<\/p>\n<p>During the performance that appears on <em>In Concert<\/em> specifically, Simone speaks directly to her audience, exclaiming \u201cThis is a showtune, but the show hasn\u2019t been written for it, yet\u201d.\u00a0 As Simone clearly acknowledges, the song exists within a \u201cstructural impossibility\u201d that operates both lyrically and musically, this \u201cimpossibility\u201d stemming from a contrast between the light theatricality of the arrangement and the intensely subjective vocal performance (Graines 32). \u00a0Showtune-esque qualities, such as the song\u2019s fast-paced tempo at approximately 159 BPM and the 2\/4 time signature, establishes an upbeat instrumental performance that Simone undermines with an angered, subjective voice.<\/p>\n<p>Dynamically, Nina Simone\u2019s voice crescendos from piano to forte as the piano instrumentation during the chorus climbs along a g major scale. \u00a0At the moment the piano reaches the climactic g major chord at the end of each chorus, Simone reaches her loudest, most strained exclamation of \u201cGoddam!\u201d \u00a0She powers through this moment of each chorus by almost shouting the pitch, often breaking between the two syllables of the word, as if in disbelief of the constant, rapid struggles enumerated lyrically and experienced physically in the labor of her voice. \u00a0The anger expressed in this moment of the song is not just a response to the immediate injustices of 1963 but is also taken out against her audience. \u00a0For example, another performance method which serves to isolate the audience is the clear separation between herself (\u201cme\u201d) and those listening (\u201cyou\u201d). \u00a0The lyric \u201cYou\u2019re all gonna die and die like flies\u201d is not the only way Simone distances herself from the listener, since her bitter, shout-singing at this moment also creates an isolating, subjective effect. \u00a0Furthermore, the sharp vocal inflection in this line on the consonants \u201cd\u201d and \u201cf\u201d contributes to the uninviting performance of the song.\u00a0 By analyzing the musicality of the song in relation to Nina Simone\u2019s voice, her unpredictable anger expresses itself in response to two injustices: the racial injustice illustrated in the lyrics and her audience\u2019s expectations, who are unmistakably under the control of Simone\u2019s subjective performance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On songs from In Concert such as \u201cPirate Jenny\u201d and \u201cMississippi Goddam,\u201d Nina Simone employs various vocal techniques such as varied dynamics, strained and raspy&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus238-08\/how-nina-simone-subverts-her-audiences-expectations-through-vocal-performance\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">How Nina Simone Subverts Her Audience\u2019s Expectations through Vocal Performance<\/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-89","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus238-08\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/89","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=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus238-08\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/89\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus238-08\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}