Nina Simone: Love Sorceress (1998)
Note: Some spoilers
It's hard to imagine a more passive/aggressive
performer than Nina Simone. Forget punk posturing,
forget Jim Morrison's poetic superiority complex,
Simone is the real thing, a living breathing icon
with a voice of enormous power and skilled hands that
play the piano with the most amazing combination of
ease and confidence. In "Love Sorceress," we actually
get to see her having what seems like a nervous breakdown
on stage. Later we realize she is just tripping. Literally.
Simone performs at the Earshot Jazz
Festival in Paris in 1976 in this short video (it
runs about 75 minutes - but what a fucking amazing
75 minutes it is). She immediately challenges the
audience when arriving on stage by standing by her
piano is a frozen pose that leads us to wonder if
she truly is ever going to break free from it and
perform. In this single introductory moment, we find
Simone as much performance artist as performer and
she immediately challenges our notions of concert,
performance, performer, icon, audience, fan, and adulation.
Simone begins by begging the audience to notice her
and look at her then, within seconds, her pose changes
although she herself does not move and the attitude
becomes one of derision and disdain. Simone is taunting
the audience, chiding them for their ignorance and
phoniness. The audience stops applauding and Simone's
pose remains rigid, questioning if the group's initial
applause were sincere at all. It is an amazing moment
that is as vibrant and breathtaking on video as it
must have been live.
One also has a moment to contemplate
the real facade of an icon that is, in actuality,
rarely seen. I've seen a few pictures of Simone and
even saw her live in 2002, but I've never really seen
her live on video before from her most prolific era.
Her facade is amazing. Gaunt, slender and dark, she
also almost seems to be a man posing as a woman. Her
image is so strong and her sexual prowess so evident
that in just a single look one cannot help but question
her gender and her facade. The image is riveting.
Captivating.
Simone begins by playing "Little
Girl Blue." She seems shaky discombobulated, nervous.
The song is a horrible rendition of one of her most
amazing works. Her timing is all off. Her vocals ramble
and she can't find the right words or the right notes.
We are disappointed. We wonder what kind of concert
we are going to see here.
But just as amazingly, Simone immediately
comes back with a perfectly compelling rendition of
"Backlash Blues" on which she doesn't miss a beat.
Joined here by a drummer, who remains for the rest
of the concert, Simone finds her beat by the use of
this percussionist who seems to anticipate and match
her every move. The beat never wavers and Simone delivers
a string of songs that are amazing to see and hear.
In the middle of this comes one
of the most amazing and emotional moments I've ever
seen a performer undergo in a live setting. Simone
slips into Morris Albert's "Feelings," one of the
most sappy, syrupy and fluffy songs of the 70's, a
song that has come to personify the cheesiness of
the era's wimpy pop songs. Simone sings it here with
such an emotional sincerity that it seems as if she
is tearing her heart out. Never has this song been
more real nor more emotional. Simone takes pop fluff
and turns it into one of the most amazing and poignant
live moments ever to be captured on film or video.
It will leave you in tears.
I saw Simone in 2002 in Austin when
she was an old, senile woman. She only did four dates
in the USA that year (she lived out her years after
the turbulent 60's in France where she was regarded
as a genuine artist) and died soon after but even
in the short performance, even with her older age
and wandering mind in obvious evidence, she still
put on an amazing show. She did the Beatles' song
"Here Comes the Sun" and when she sang, "It's all
right..." you truly believed it was going to be all
right. One sighed with happiness to be informed that
all was truly going to be okay, such was her command
of her voice, the song and the audience.
Watching Simone interact with the
audience here is as amazing as seeing her play piano
and sing. She gets up between nearly every song and
rambles. She even looks for David Bowie in the audience
and tells everyone she is good friends with him. She
talks about her recent trips to Africa. She talks
about her disdain for jazz festivals and their audiences.
She talks about her then recent move to France. She
confesses, chides, loves, laughs, entertains, enraptures
and amazes the audience with her banter as easily
as she does with her music. It is an amazing performance
and one that makes one curious as to how unique each
one of Simone's performances must have been. Could
there be more filed performances of her live out there
somewhere?
The segment ends on an odd and yet
still interesting note. After a long bit of head-scratching
banter where Simone admits she's "half-high" and rambles
on and on about this and that, she eventually calls
a young percussionist up from the audience (an awkward
edit here leads us to believe that it took a long
time to find him and get him up there) and as the
boy and Simone's percussionist play, she oscillates
between doing nothing and dancing native from Africa.
Or at least her interpretation of them. It is odd
and yet beautiful.
Released in 1998 in France and now
being shown more and more, this concert video is sadly
augmented with some dumb footage shot from the inside
of a car or taxicab as it travels through Paris. Not
only is it unnecessary but, sadly, it is obviously
not period footage as the shot from the inside of
car reveals that the vehicle couldn't possibly have
existed in 1976. The radio has a digital LED clock.
Luckily, Simone's performance is
timeless. As relevant now as it was in 1976. As it
was in 1998.
Notes:
I first discovered Simone when Sandra
Bernhart covered her song "Four Women" in her film
"Without You, I'm Nothing."
The official website for the singer
is http://www.ninasimone.com
Viewed at the Alamo Drafthouse in
Austin in February 2004 with my friend Johnny Oh!
This was pretty much Johnny's introduction to the
performer and I gave him a copy of Simone's "17 Jazz
Masters" CD after the show which he loved.
