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I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about... Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important.
Nina Simone
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Nina Simone
Age: 75 †
Born: 1933
Born: February 21
Died: 2008
Died: April 21
Composer
Jazz Pianist
Recording Artist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Tryon
North Carolina
Eunice Kathleen Waymon
High Priestess of Soul
Excellence
Spent
Freedom
Music
Many
Important
Pursuing
Years
Classical
Dedicated
More quotes by Nina Simone
I think the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor. I don't think the black people are going to rise at all I think most of them are going to die.
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When I choose material for an album all these songs I grew up with pour into my head.
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From the beginning, it has been a no-no for a black man to touch a white woman.
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I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.
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I don't like to go to strange places. I was in Italy for about five hours on my way to Africa.
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Since I was three I've been playing the piano. I've been onstage.
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This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.
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There's no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.
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You can't be different if you look at it. Being gifted is different. I had that in my piano playing. I'm very thankful for that. I'm very aware of that. The style and what I fed is just me. I never worked at it. It just happened.
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My love is like the wind and wild is the wind. Give me more than one caress, satisfy my hungriness. Let the wind blow through your heart for wild is the wind.
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Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.
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My job is not done. I address my songs now to the third world. I am popular all over Asia and Africa and the Middle East, not to speak of South Africa, where I'm trying to go to see Nelson Mandela.
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When I was studying... there weren't any black concert pianists. My choices were intuitive, and I had the technique to do it. People have heard my music and heard the classic in it, so I have become known as a black classical pianist.
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I do love to sing Jacques Brel songs, intensely. I get terribly excited, just by reading a couple of lines in any one of his songs.
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That's a very high goal to have, study eight hours a day to be a concert pianist.
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I don't like rap music at all. I don't think it's music. It's just a beat and rapping.
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I believe in racial memory too. I'm sure I've got ancient African blood in me that has something to do with what I am.
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I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.
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Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.
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I think if I were over there in America, protest music would be more important. But I'm not going.
Nina Simone
