Be Glad That You Are Free: On Nina Simone, Miles Ahead, Lemonade, Lauryn Hill and Prince

by Max S. Gordon

(This piece orginally appeared at The New Civil Rights Movement on May 15, 2016)

“Everybody is half dead. Everybody avoids everybody, all over the place, in most situations, most all the time. I know, I’m one of those everybodys…All I’m trying to do, all the time, is to open people up so they can feel themselves, so they can let themselves be open to somebody else.”

- Nina Simone

We forward in this generation, triumphantly. Won’t you help to sing these songs of freedom? ’Cause all I ever have, redemption songs, redemption songs. Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but our self can free our minds.

- Bob Marley, Redemption Song

“I wouldn’t trade my life for anything, because being black made me understand.”

- Lena Horne

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I’m thinking on Nina — marveling at her, really — and what it took to make that woman. Cynthia Mort, the director of the recently released film Nina, felt the need to create a fictitious story based on the life of the artist Nina Simone. Her decision is confounding when one considers that the true details of Nina’s life are so much richer than Mort’s…