Her skin was black. Her manner was tough. She was awfully bitter in her days, because her people were once slaves. What did they call her? Her name was Nina Simone. I borrowed these lines from the song “Four Women,” a biographical sketch of four negro women growing up in segregationist America. Nina Simone wrote this haunting ballad in 1966 in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, two years before the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Spell-binding, compelling and at times scathing and foreboding, the songstress was dubbed the “High Priestess of Soul” for her imposing stage presence and readiness to use her music to take on social injustice. The high priestess Nina Simone embarked on her musical journey at a time when racial tension in America was coming to a boil and the country could no longer turn a blind eye to the widespread oppression and violence against black Americans. In “Mississippi Goddam,” she responded to the 1963 Birmingham church...
A biweekly column on Hong Kong by Jason Y. Ng