The High Priestess: A Misunderstood Legend

April 13, 2020

“I felt more alive then than I feel now because I was needed, and I could sing something to help my people.” What Happened, Miss Simone is a 2015 biographical documentary film directed by Liz Garbus, and is distributed by Netflix. The documentary film chronicles the life of American singer/songwriter, Nina Simone, as well as the legacy she left behind. It features never before seen archival footage and interviews featuring Miss. Simone, along with additional interviews from her daughter, family, and friends. The title of the film refers to a quote said by American singer and poet, Maya Angelou, alluding to one of the film’s main explorations: what happened to Miss Simone? “Miss Simone, you are idolized, even loved, by millions now. But what happened Miss Simone?” One of the main contributions as to what makes this documentary film such a deeply moving story, is that we are witnessing how Simone was identified and shaped as a person. It clearly exhibites that those who are deeply troubled are often misunderstood. And these feelings of misunderstanding is what can lead to one’s destruction. It is no secret that Simone’s life was filled with melancholy and tragedy. What happened in her childhood is what shaped her as an adult, and the problems that arose during her adult life were deeply rooted from problems of her childhood. Nina Simone’s legacy is held through her music and her contributions to the civil rights movement during the 1960’s. However with that being said, the documentary also highlights her personal struggles in life and how that greatly contrasted with her life as a celebrity. While the documentary does praise her, the film’s strength is presented by excellently examining the singer’s legacy, and how that eventually led to her unfortunate destruction from society, and most importantly, from herself. The film’s main idea explores and answers how and why this tragedy befell on her. It serves as a potential warning that what happened to Nina Simone, can happen to anyone.

The documentary begins with Nina Simone’s daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly narrating how her mother was a genius, a legend, and someone who was deeply immersed in stardom. “People seemed to think that when she went out on stage, that was when she became Nina Simone. My mother was Nina Simone 24/7. And that’s where it became a problem.” (06:04, Lisa Kelly, daughter.) From that statement alone, the film’s idea is presented. And it answers the question as to why Simone had fallen from grace. Nina Simone was deeply troubled because she was Nina Simone. However, while this fact may reign true, I think it is important to note that her becoming Nina Simone is not what drove her to her fall. Rather, it was simply the beginning of it. We learn from the film early on that Eunice Kathleen Waymon was born in 1933 to a poor family in Tryon, North Carolina. She rose to fame after being discovered at a nightclub in Atlantic city, where she was working to make ends meet. After she was discovered, she kept Nina Simone as a stage name, which she used while working at the nightclub. For me, I like to think of this like a tug of war between who she originally was, and to who she eventually became. Nina Simone and Eunice Kathleen Waymon were two different people in one body. One was a singer who lived the lavish lifestyle. The other was a poor girl struggling from financial instability, and racial discrimination. Unfortunately, these two identities of herself clashed, and she herself eventually became torn between the two. The moment she became Nina Simone, marked the beginning of a feverish, slow downward spiral. “From the beginning, I felt there was something eating at her… And gradually, that got stronger.” (16:01, Al Schackman, friend.)

As Simone’s popularity got bigger, the pressure on her became stronger. The documentary perfectly sums this up by acknowledging the fact that while Nina Simone lived through her music, she also felt trapped in it as well. As an article from the Guardian puts it, “Not fitting in made her great, but it also made her angry and very lonely.” Her slow descent can be alluded back to the film’s idea that when she became the ‘high priestess,’ that is when her troubles began to eat at her. Simone’s friends and family state that during the times when she was out performing, one had to be careful with her. If the wrong buttons were pushed, she could get angry.

To explore why she was driven to anger so often, we have to look back at her background. Nina Simone’s original dream was to become America’s first female, Black classical pianist. However knowing how she ended up, this aspiration of hers was never fulfilled. Simone’s daughter, and she herself argued that by not fulfilling this aspiration of hers, she was left feeling empty, and incomplete. “But she wanted something more. There was something missing in her, some meaning.” (40:01, Lisa Kelly, daughter.) So to be playing music, but not the one that made her feel joy, to me I think, became a burdensome chore for her. Eventually, she became Nina Simone because she was forced to become her. Not the Nina Simone that was her own. She could not be Eunice Kathleen Waymon, the one who loved music. She was forced to become Nina Simone that was owned by the people, by showbusiness. The one that pressured her to forget who she originally was. The New York Times summarizes this idea by saying that, “For Simone and the country she lived in and left, the country that made her famous when she played one role and rejected her when she played another, appearances were never just skin deep; they cut to the bone of her existence, much like her voice.” Music was Simone’s salvation. Although it also served as a contribution for her own self-destruction.

Aside from the pressure from stardom itself, part of what made Simone lose control of herself was from the abuse she suffered from her manager and husband, Andrew Stroud. Not only did he beat her physically, but psychologically as well. Apart from Simone’s friends and daughter, the documentary also uses archival footage of Stroud narrating about his life with her. One could argue that this was one of the film’s biggest flaws. A review from Indiewire argues that it was irresponsible to allow Simone’s abuser to be a part of telling the story. “Clearly, Nina Simone is one of America’s greatest geniuses. Her story is complex. But, the fact that this woman survived America and created such searingly beautiful music, is worthy of respectful documentation. This documentary is not that.” However, I’d like to argue that while this seems like a flaw in the film, it serves a narrative purpose. It adds more complexity to an already complex story. Throughout the film, we learn that Simone eventually became abusive herself towards her daughter. And this abuse perhaps could be traced back to the abuse she suffered from her husband. By seeing her husband narrate some of the story, it allows us to intimately get close to their complex relationship without any biases, as well as help us understand why she became the person she became.

With all that being said, I think one of the biggest main factors as to why Simone eventually lost herself, was due in part to her playing a role during the civil rights movement in the 1960’s. While it can be taken as a positive that she was actively fighting for the freedom and rights of Black people in America, by doing so also negatively impacted her career as an artist. “At a certain point, Nina started to only play political songs and nothing else, and that started to hurt her career.” (1:02:16, Roger Nupie, friend.) Simone’s views and her activism proved that she was an extremist, going as far as admitting that if she had her own way, she would have been a killer. Her views and ideologies can be traced back once again to her childhood. When we look back, Simone recalls that she was rejected from studying at Curtis Institute of Music because she was Black. When she had her first recital at twelve, she refused to perform because her parents were forced to watch in the back to make way for the white people to sit in the front. This racist discrimination she felt during her childhood, to me, obviously became the catalyst for her to become an activist in her adult life. And the people could not accept her as that. She became violent in her activism, using music to make a statement. She was so passionate about doing both music and being an activist. However going back to the idea that she was Nina Simone, she could not be both those things. She had to choose between being Nina, or being Eunice. That tug of war between choosing either of those identities destroyed her further until she was left with nothing. “I think that artists who don’t get involved in preaching messages are probably happier. But you see, I live with Nina, and that is very difficult.” (1:06:46, Nina Simone.)

When Simone was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the late 1980’s, her life and career was in shambles. She no longer loved music, the ones who she loved were gone, and she was neither Nina Simone or Eunice Waymon. A review from the site RogerEbert says, “Nina Simone could hold an audience in such rapt attention that when she stops a song at one point in “What Happened” and orders someone to sit down, you almost don’t blame her.” By giving insight on who she was as a person, the film answers what exactly happened to her. Why and how she fell from grace. A warning that this can happen to anyone, if pushed to their limits. Simone was forced to choose who she had to be, and she could not be both. It was either Nina or Eunice. This tug of war between her two identities broke her beyond repair.

The film’s constant highlighting of Nina Simone’s background and early childhood set itself to help us understand that what she went through in her early life, is what became the catalyst for her own melancholy and self-destruction. It is frustrating to see how her fall could have been avoided, if she was just allowed to breathe. However it is also moving yet heartbreaking, as her complex story shaped her to become one of the world’s most influential musicians of all time. “What makes this documentary remarkable, then, is its voiceover testimonials from the subject herself and interviews with family and friends, offering smaller but illuminating details of how depression, abuse and stardom wore Simone down before her Eighties-era resurgence.” (The rolling stones.)

This is an essay analysis edited for a client that was submitted on April 13, 2020