CBJC Festival Magazine 2016

sound to Spirit is fundamental technology
for the Amazon. They all can do that and
differently too. The Amazon is a goddess.
A testimonial for Dr. Nina Simone required
no less than an army of goddesses.
Her army was there. Keep in mind what
it takes to be a goddess, then understand
that her army was there. These are the
troops that can eat their prisoners. Goddesses
do that too. A quality of your cool
is the level of your Nina Simone story because
she was impeccably divine, but humanly
accessible.
To speak of Nina’s strength, as with all
who came to praise her transition, is a redundancy.
In so many ways the feminine
image of accountability, she reigned supreme
as the Queen Mother for the tribe
of the unforgiving. In the Old World, the
title for such sovereignty is Iyalode: ‘the
adjudicator of market place issues’. It is a
chieftancy occupied exclusively by women
and not questioned in its authority. The
transition of an Iyalode is both the closure
and rebirth of eras by which people
live their lives-- conduct their business.
The so-called New World has no counterpart
translation for the Iyalode, due
mainly from the diminished valuation of
the woman gender. Iyalode is the woman’s
voice in the ruling Senate of Elders and
the appeal of last resort within the gender.
Such power carries the requirement of
impeccable demeanor and comportment.
Iyalode is a lonely place because it is the
top.
Nina Simone’s music is unlike anyone
else’s music. She infused her artistry in everything
she touched; possessed the soul
of any song she sang. Like it or not, you
always got the Nina Simone version of everything
she did. She continues to be quite
luminous, especially to those of us accustomed
to music that is alive. Nina accurately
interpreted love in the nappy-headed
fashion guys like me tend to experience
it. Love may start out a Gershwin tune but
always ends an opus Simone by the time
the kissing stops. Often long before. Dr.
Nina tinged the human need for intimacy
with reality bites, like the presence of diapers
latent in the love making act. You recognize
her priorities and make a surviving
culture by adherence to them. Nina’s is the
music that charts ‘love in a time of plague’,
the musical landscape of keeping it real.
When you connect the neighboring stars
in her constellation, you’ve linked to Billie
Holiday, Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey.
How these Iyalodes defined love is the
unimpeachable standard for Africans and
others in the
New World.
For male
members of
the tribe of
the unforgiving,
her music
declared the
reality that
we are not
forgotten, are
not strange,
are not alone.
She blended
the ‘sweet and
sour taste of
love’ in her
music more
consistently
and to more
memorable effect
than anyone you can name. No one
handles the scar tissue of romance like
Nina Simone. No one gives it more dignity.
The ‘going over ceremony’ for such an
accomplished spirit engages the most exacting
nuances of testimony because no
one is capable of saying it all. Ritual provides
the outlet by which many compose
a portrait of the one. Ritual is the social
mechanism that attacks the void and defeats
death. The footpath of ritual is much
grown over, but there are those who still
know the steps and tread it with the purity
of their initiation, for the salvation,
the restoration of us all. Words cannot
capture the ritual dance of the leaders as
they guide us up the ancient pathway, but
the landscape was indelibly, undeniably
Nina Simone. Without interpretation, the
non-initiate can only find release in tears
of loss. We’re only human after all. But that
is not the way of goddesses.
Perfectly, as an
invocation must
be, Sister Camille
Yarbrough ululated
a war cry for
the fallen before
she put everybody
on their feet
in a blood rushing
tribute to the
memory of Dr.
Nina Simone. She
scorched the earth
and made sacred
space for all to follow
within. Then
Ossie Davis, the
distinguished presiding
elder, leaned
Ms. Nina Simone on the mic
adroitly on his several
prerogatives to
interpret Simone’s signature, ‘Mississippi,
God Damn!’ right there at the pulpit. It
was quite a hit, built into his lesson on the
battle implications of the trumpet, and the
trumpet that Dr. Nina was for the world.
He sat down to a standing ovation and
the amazed approval of Rev. Butts. Then
flowed a river of other fascinating women,
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