What Happened, Miss Simone? Review

The title of the documentary comes from a poem by Maya Angelou. I went in knowing next to nothing about the amazing singer and musician Nina Simone. Nina Simone was born Eunice Waymon in North Carolina in 1933. Her mother was a maid, and her employer took an interest in her piano talents, and paid for her lessons with an English piano teacher in town. She was trained to be a classical pianist and attended Julliard in New York. She was denied admission to a prestigious musical college in Philadelphia due to her race and then began to earn money playing in nightclubs in Atlantic City. So that her mother would not know, she took the stage name Nina Simone.

This excellent documentary starts with amazing concert footage of Nina Simone, and intersperses the narrative with several amazing concert clips. There are interviews with her daughter (a singer herself who went on to voice Nala in The Lion King), her ex-husband and manager, and her music director. The film traces the rise of her career in the jazz festival circuit, and how she became a huge part of the civil rights movement. Her song "Mississippi Goddamn" was pivatol. She once walked up the Martin Luther King, Jr. and said, "I am NOT non-violent!" Her home in Mt. Vernon, NY was literally next door to Malcom X and her daughter became almost another member of his family of 6 daughters.

Nina became increasingly volatile, and was diagnosed as being bi-polar. After she and her husband divorced, she moved to LIberia, Africa and stopped touring. As she became broke, some friends got her a series of concerts in Paris. There is a recording of her playing one intricate song on the piano and singing a completely different song. MIles Davis was shown the footage, and said, "How did she DO that?!"

The documentary is simply excellent and well paced. We saw the premiere the opening night of the Sundance Film Festival, and the surprise treat at the end of the film was that John Legend performed three of Nina Simone's songs LIVE in the theater. It was an incredible night.