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Since I was three I've been playing the piano. I've been onstage.

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
Since
Three
Onstage
Piano
Playing

More quotes by Nina Simone

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Music has been a burden and a joy for as long as I can remember.
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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.
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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.
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Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking.
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I know I'm different, but I don't think about it.
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Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.
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Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, a song that was written for Simone, she confronted the band's lead singer, Eric Burdon. So you're the honky, she said, who stole my song and got a hit out of it?
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It's a good time for black people to be alive.
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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.
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This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.
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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.
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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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When I choose material for an album all these songs I grew up with pour into my head.
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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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How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it
Nina Simone
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Desegregation is a joke.
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Theory and harmony broadened my mind in music. I know what music is made of.
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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.
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I'm sorry that I did not become the world's first black classic pianist. I think I would have been happier.
Nina Simone
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From the beginning, it has been a no-no for a black man to touch a white woman.
Nina Simone