A defining voice of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements as well as a brilliant, genre-blurring musician and vocalist, the late Nina Simone’s revolutionary songs have taken on renewed significance in these tempestuous times. A classically trained pianist who was dubbed the High Priestess of Soul, Ms. Simone’s smoky contralto was a disarming vessel for her own searing lyrics that decried racism in songs such as “Mississippi Goddam” and “Old Jim Crow.”
Aiming to familiarize his own fan base with the fearlessness of Simone’s oeuvre, eight-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Stephen Marley has produced Celebrating Nina: A Reggae Tribute to Nina Simone, Billboard can announce. The seven track EP features as many female artists revisiting songs written or previously covered by Simone, with exquisitely crafted one-drop reggae rhythms further embellishing Simone’s category-defying sonics.
“Seven is a significant number to me and my brothers because Bob had seven sons,” explained Stephen, the youngest child of Bob and Rita Marley, in an interview with Billboard. “This project is about preserving Nina Simone’s legacy, passing it on to younger generations, including my children, because you don’t often find music this substantial. When we started the project, we reached out to Nina’s daughter (Lisa Simone Kelly) and to the Nina Simone Foundation to establish a connection; we want to donate a portion of the proceeds to the things that she was all about.” Simone, who survived an abusive marriage, battled alcoholism and suffered for years with an undiagnosed bipolar disorder, succumbed to breast cancer on April 21, 2003; in her will, she requested her estate’s residuary gifts be held in trust to create a charity supporting the musical education of Black children in Africa.
Celebrating Nina: A Reggae Tribute to Nina Simone will be released March 18 on the Marley family’s Ghetto Youths International imprint. The first single, “Four Women,” by Jamaica’s Queen Ifrica, dropped on April 26, 2021, the 52nd anniversary of the recording of the 1969 album Nina Simone Live At Berkeley. Simone wrote “Four Women” in 1965 about a quartet of Black females, each rejecting the stereotypes imposed upon them and seeking their own self-definition; Queen Ifrica’s expression of righteous indignation captures Simone’s intent.
Cedella Marley, CEO of the Bob Marley Group of Companies (formerly of the Grammy Award winning Marley sibling group The Melody Makers, alongside Ziggy, Stephen and Sharon Marley), renders “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” with soulful elegance. “That song is very fitting for Cedella,” notes Stephen, “as a strong woman in a man’s world, she is misunderstood sometimes.” Simone initially recorded the song, written for her by Bennie Benjamin, Horace Ott and Sol Marcus, in 1964.
Jamaican singer Etana, a 2022 Grammy nominee, interprets Simone’s empowering “Young, Gifted and Black,” the EP’s second single, with the joy and majesty its lyrics demand. Simone was inspired to write a song that would encourage Black youth, after hearing African-American playwright Lorraine Hansberry addressing a group of students as “young, gifted and Black.” Originally released in 1969, “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” was a celebratory anthem of the Civil Rights Movement; Simone wrote the music and collaborated on the lyrics with her bandleader, Weldon Irvine. Jamaican vocal duo Bob and Marcia had a U.K. top 5 hit with their lushly orchestrated reggae rendition of the song in 1970.
The visualizer for Etana’s spirited interpretation of “Young, Gifted and Black” premieres here on what would have been Simone’s 89th birthday.
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In the 1960s Simone covered a pair of haunting love songs made popular by iconic jazz singer Billie Holiday 20-some years earlier: on this collection, “Don’t Explain” and “No Good Man” are interpreted with grace and grit by Canadian singer Melanie Fiona and British vocalist Terri Walker, respectively. Joss Stone stunningly remakes The Beatles’ “Here Comes The Sun,” which Simone recorded in 1971 as the title track to her 13th studio album, and Maya Azucena (featured on Marley’s 2007 Mind Control album) smoothly reworks “Mr. Bojangles,” written by folk/country singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker and recorded by Simone in 1971. Marley chose to work exclusively with female artists on this project because “our queens deserve recognition as the mothers of creation,” he asserts. “These are beautiful, strong women and their voices do Nina’s work and reggae solid.”
Comparable to Nina Simone’s musical fluidity, Stephen Marley’s intricate, boundary-shifting productions are firmly rooted in reggae but incorporate a broad swath of influences. His 2016 album Revelation Pt. II: The Fruit of Life included “Father of the Man,” which sampled Simone’s “Keeper of The Flame.” Marley began working on the Nina Simone tribute EP over five years ago, motivated by his admiration for her musical genius.
“Music from the past, artists like Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, speak to my mood, my soul. Because of the racism they faced years ago, you can hear the commitment they had towards pursuing their talent and the passion they put into their music, which remains very potent today,” Marley offered.
Simone’s activism is something Marley would like to see more of from this generation. “The world is upside down right now and if more people spoke out directly like Nina Simone did, I think we’d be in a different situation. From her performances to her lyrics to her activist personality, Nina Simone is one of a kind and her spirit lives on.”
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