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Nina Simone :: Feeling Good

I’m kind of working on this book. It’s the dissertation in African American studies I’d be working on if I lived in a part of the country with a PhD in African American studies. (Damn you Cornell.)

As a consequence of the project, I’ve been immersed in Black history in the era (or three) between about 1913 and 1985. It’s a fascinating period. For one thing, rapid changes in the Black condition during this time caused rapid changes in Black cultural perspectives. Duh, right? But I mean relatively constant and relatively damning 180 degree shifts. Values on which African Americans hung their hats would transmogrify into the values of a scraping Uncle Tom—and then into wholesomeness once again. What was once a welcome representation would become classic ‘coon’—and then back again.

But, of course, that’s just how it looks on the surface of things. In the roiling culture-making underneath, it’s all always alive and well: the church lady and the race man and the dealer are all present on the pre-riot corners of James Baldwin’s Harlem. Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson step into the ring together, necessarily of and by and for the same era.

Maybe that’s part of why I love Nina Simone so—for the way she swims seamlessly between perspectives and stances, never being any more Black in one moment than in the next. To my ears, Feeling Good starts in the mode of an old Negro Spiritual—elemental, solitudinous, hopeful, day lit. But at 39 seconds, the brass kicks in. Suddenly the song is all satin and hips and nighttime swing, even if Nina’s singing about dawn. It is my most favorite Nina song of all.

Feeling Good (3.5MB MP3)
Nina Simone (wikipedia)
(originally written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint—the Smell of the Crowd)

hiram said on thursday, july 10th, 2008

tina said on thursday, july 10th, 2008

anika said on sunday, july 13th, 2008