Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone

Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone

From the author of the acclaimed Dinah Washington biography Queen comes this complete account of the triumphs and difficulties of the brilliant and high-tempered Nina Simone. Her distinctive voice and music occupy a singular place in the canon of American song.
Â Â Â
Tapping into newly unearthed materialâ€”including stories of family and careerâ€”Nadine Cohodas gives us a luminous portrait of the singer who was born Eunice Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina, in 1933, one of eight children in a proud black family. We see her as a prodigiously talented child who is trained in classical piano through the charitable auspices of a local white woman. We witness her devastating disappointment when she is rejected by the Curtis Institute of Musicâ€”a dream deferred that would forever shape her self-image as well as her music. Yet by 1959â€”now calling herself Nina Simoneâ€”she had sung New York Cityâ€™s venerable Town Hall and was on her way.
Â
As we watch Simoneâ€™s exciting rise to stardom, Cohodas expertly weaves in the central factors of her life and career: her unique and provocative relationship with her audiences (she would â€œshushâ€ them angrily; as a classically trained musician, she didnâ€™t believe in cabaret chat); her involvement in and contributions to the civil rights movement; her two marriages, including one of brief family contentment with police detective Andy Stroud, with whom she had her daughter, Lisa; the alienation from the United States that drove her to live abroad. Alongside these threads runs a darker one: Ninaâ€™s increasing and sometimes baffling outbursts of rage and pain and her lifelong struggle to overcome a deep sense of personal injustice, which persisted even as she won international renown.
Â
Princess Noire is a fascinating story, well told and thoroughly documented with intimate photosâ€”a treatment that captures the passions of Ninaâ€™s life.
Country USA
Manufacturer Pantheon
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 2010-02-02
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780375424014

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Pantheon
Binding	Hardcover
ReleaseDate	2010-02-02
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780375424014

Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone

You might also like...