Nina Simone and her daughter, who recently caused a stir by criticizing the casting of Zoe Saldana as Simone in a bio-pic. Noting that a large part of her mother’s impact stemmed from her dark skin, wide nose, and full lips, Simone’s daughter asserted that casting another fine-featured, light-skinned woman simply reinforced the anti-black beauty standards Nina stood in defiance of.
 
A few seconds into this interview, I heard Nina Simone defend conservative Republican pervert and all-around dirtbag Clarence Thomas. Honestly, after that, I didn’t think there was anything else she could say that would shock me. But I was quickly taken aback by her response to the final question. The interviewer asks Simone (in French) if she sometimes has regrets of not pursuing a career in classical piano. Nina, who attended Juilliard, and was normally so confident and poised, breaks down. Her voice cracking, she admits quite frankly that she wishes she had become the first black classic pianist, and that she believes her unhappiness stems from the lack of that achievement.

It’s an incredibly vulnerable moment. Simone openly longs for a life that, in all honesty, would have reached far fewer people than the one she actually lived. She was notoriously dismissive of pop music, and openly maintained that classical music was a higher art form- a claim that ironically lead many to accuse her of adopting white artistic standards. It’s both heartbreaking and unfathomable to think that one of the most dynamic voices of black liberation, the woman who wrote “Mississippi Goddam” and “Young, Gifted and Black,” could yearn for any other legacy.