Nina Simone: Carrying her music like a banner

Endowed with a unique style, ill-suited to the rigidity of the classical education imposed at the time, she would be recognized far too late by established structures. She nonetheless proved her talent and the importance of having a message. This desire to go beyond imposed limits led her to jazz where she would let her thirst for freedom explode. Later, praised by critics, she would not be forgiven for her commitment to Luther King, her subversive songs like Moon over Alabama, Strange Fruits, or the famous Mississippi Goddam!!. Revolted by this umpteenth moral judgment of segregationist America, she would push further the search for her origins and the recognition of the black cause, to the point of immigrating to Liberia, in West Africa. Temporarily soothed by this return to her roots, she would return to the stage, at the request of the public for a legendary concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival. This will be the occasion for a poignant speech in which Nina Simone reveals all the wounds and fragility that her fight has brought her, but despite everything, this ever-present desire to transcend it through her art.

For United Souls, Nina Simone will remain the one who influenced the era as much as she was marked by its violence. The choice to pay tribute to her, with one of our designs created by portrait artist Marie-Claire Laffaire, is a reminder that struggles, however harsh, find their echoes and relief in music. And Nina Simone's powerful and profound voice accompanies the commitment we, in turn, make in our artistic and human approach.

As usual, we invite you to discover this new United Souls visual set to music. A collaboration with Dr. Wax, a discerning music lover and host on Radio Campus, takes you on a journey through the whirlwind of African-American music from the 1950s to the 1980s. The years that transformed little Eunice Kathleen Waymon into the great Nina Simone.

To accompany the release of the new United Souls t-shirt featuring Nina Simone, here's a musical selection that mainly brings together her most militant pieces.

"Work Song" is to vocal jazz what Sam Cooke's "Chain Gang" is to soul music, a tribute to black prisoners sentenced to forced labor. "Mississippi Goddam" is the singer and pianist's first openly militant track, music of emergency, a vehement reaction to the murder of Medgar Evers (member of the NAACP) and the deaths of four little girls following a Ku Kux Klan attack on an Alabama church.

What better after this firebrand than "Old Jim Crow," in which Nina Simone makes her audience understand that the Jim Crow laws (segregationist decrees of the southern United States) are over! We then move on to "Strange Fruit," a cover of the classic by Billie Holiday and Lewis Allan (aka Abel Meeropol). A skin-deep interpretation for this moving piece where the metaphor refers to the lynchings and hangings of black Americans, always in this racist and ultra-violent south. "Four Women" paints the portraits of four African-American women: a slave, a mixed-race woman born of rape caught between two worlds, a prostitute, and finally a woman descended from slaves, tough and bitter, carrying the weight of her heritage.

Much more cheerful, "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free" carries a hope still in chains, but Nina Simone's music and message sublimate the state of affairs. "Backlash Blues," written by the poet Langston Hughes, refers the United States government to its institutional racism and criticizes the Vietnam War in passing. A solemn moment with "Why?", a song dedicated to Martin Luther King shortly after his assassination. Nina Simone emphasizes the benevolence and peaceful aspect of the leader, "What will happen now that he is dead?" It is to an entire nation that the singer addresses herself.

"To Be Young Gifted And Black" a song written with his friend, musician Weldon Irvine, and dedicated to his deceased friend Lorraine Hansberry (an Afro-feminist before her time) became a hit and was covered by many artists such as Aretha Franklin. To close this selection, I chose "Baltimore" in echo to the 2015 riots that engulfed the Maryland city when Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African-American, succumbed to his injuries following an arrest and violent treatment by law enforcement. Hugues Marly