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To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.
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
Means
Black
Music
Play
Mean
Classical
People
Dirt
Jazz
White
More quotes by Nina Simone
I had heard blues and jazz all my life but I was never aware that it was associated with nightclubs and drinking.
Nina Simone
It's logical that people from bad times will reflect their feelings in their communication. Music is part of the communication. If you lived it, you can do it.
Nina Simone
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.
Nina Simone
You have to learn to get up from the table when love is not being served.
Nina Simone
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.
Nina Simone
Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.
Nina Simone
What is love but a prelude to sorrow...with heartache ahead for your goal.
Nina Simone
I'm sorry that I did not become the world's first black classic pianist. I think I would have been happier.
Nina Simone
The Beatles are lucky, very lucky. But what has happened to them has nothing to do with them, in a sense. They came along at the right time. Attention was focused on them. They've had the chance to grow in almost any direction they wanted. Very lucky. They are not exceptionally talented.
Nina Simone
Theory and harmony broadened my mind in music. I know what music is made of.
Nina Simone
You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.
Nina Simone
It is difficult to retain your standards with the pressure of trying to make money, which always has its rules...It's hard to walk the tightrope of doing what you think is your best and making money at it.
Nina Simone
This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.
Nina Simone
To be young, gifted and black!
Nina Simone
There are all kinds of things that can be done. You can change rhythms, you can change chords, you can change whole concepts. But it will only work, on a record or in a performance, if you can make the people buy it.
Nina Simone
I look forward to doing my own show, not someone else's. That's always been my dream.
Nina Simone
This may be a dream, but I'll say it anyway: I was supposed to be married last year, and I bought a gown. When I meet Nelson Mandela, I shall put on this gown and have the train of it removed and put aside, and kiss the ground that he walks on and then kiss his feet.
Nina Simone
From the beginning, it has been a no-no for a black man to touch a white woman.
Nina Simone
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.
Nina Simone
I think the rich will eventually have to cave in too, because the economic situation around the world is not gonna tolerate the United States being on top forever.
Nina Simone
