Simone shakes me by the shoulders and forces me to denounce a politics that would encourage black women to wear their prettiest dresses on Sunday, only to be attacked by segregationist mobs the following Monday. Simone’s rejection of a paradoxically not-so-radical strategy of non-violent racial tactics pushes me away and pulls me forward. “Four Women” continues to serve as a stark reminder of how difficult it can be to establish oneself in a world that might potentially devour or applaud you, while struggling to stay connected to a community that might alternately nurture or scorn you. And like such pronouncements, it’s one that can be picked apart and qualified. So too, within the tight confines of Nina’s lyrical game of shapeshifting, the classically trained pianist-composer made a stark pronouncement that still holds true today. Like the song’s four protagonists-Aunt Sarah, Saffronia, Sweet Thing, and Peaches-I was then realizing my positionality within a continuum of black women’s ethos. The song with the dance had become inextricably fused in my mind. It was in that moment that I first understood the meaning of “literal embodiment” through my own black female experience. The movements of the dance composition, like Simone’s plaintiff timbre, were both graceful and coarse. Her suspended repetition provided backdrop as a performing arts major danced for the auditorium.

I can still hear Nina Simone’s wailing moans, rising, and hovering above sharp piano licks. Although the song was new to me at the time, it had been more than two decades since its 1966 release.

I first heard “Four Women” as a high school senior on a 5-city HBCU tour at the Atlanta University Center on the campus of Spelman College. An html5-capable browser is required to play this audio.

Nina simone compositions