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VIDEO PODCAST: John Dante Prevedini leads a discussion about The Creative Spark, including contributions from Ryan Ash, Sean Neukom, Adrian Rumson, Stephen Francis Vasta, David Arditti, Halida Dinova and Andrew Arceci.
Nina Simone, the legendary black American singer, and also a composer, arranger, pianist and songwriter, was born at Tryon, North Carolina on 21 February 1933 as Eunice Waymon.
She studied at the Juilliard School of Music as a classical pianist, discovering her voice by accident. She became famous with her 1959 performance of the Gershwin song I Loves ya, Porgy.
To call her a blues or a jazz singer would be to belittle her catholic performing tastes, which encompassed African, gospel, blues, jazz, rock and western classical songs. Her phophetic anti-racist song Mississippi Goddamn put her in the limelight as a black civil rights campaigner, and made life in the USA for her unbearable. She left in 1973, eventually settling in France, where she died on 21 April 2003 in Carry-le-Rouet, aged seventy.