The High Priestess of Folk & Soul
Every Sunday in the summer of 1969, all 20-acres of Mount Morris Park became a cultural epicenter of jazz, soul & rock n’ roll.
For six weeks in a row, 300,000 hopeful humans gathered in the heart of Harlem to hear the most talented musicians and activists of their lifetime.
An ADMISSION FREE event with crowds the size of Woodstock, how have most of us never heard of of the Harlem Cultural Festival?
The entire festival was filmed throughout the summer of 1969, only to be hidden away in a basement for fifty years. It was deemed too controversial, erased and ignored by mainstream media.
It was a celebration of black pride; a brave stand in the midst of political, civil and social uproar.
The harlem cultural festival and the wildly talented musicians who led it were originators in the evolution of American music…
One of whom was “The High Priestess of Folk and Soul.”
Born as Eunice Waymon, the high priestess of soul was already a brilliant little musician by age 5. Her parents did everything they could to encourage her interest in music, with one exception. She was never to play worldly music like blues or jazz.
Her first ever public performance was at 11 years old. This is also the first time she protested racial injustice.
Her parents arrived early to the show and seated themselves in the front row. They were so proud to see their young, gifted and black daughter on stage. They were immediately asked to move to the back row.
Eunice refused to perform until her parents were allowed to sit in the front. They were promptly returned to their front row seats.
She continued learning and performing as often as she could. A few white patrons in Tryon, NC saw something special in her. They paid for her to attend the Allen High School for Girls, a private, integrated high school in Asheville.
In 1950, she graduated from Allen as the valedictorian, earning a scholarship for one-year at the Juilliard School in New York City.
Eunice couldn’t afford Juilliard after the year scholarship ended, so she began playing piano and singing at the Midtown Bar and Grill in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
That's when she made up the stage name “Nina Simone” so her mother wouldn’t find out. She was afraid to disappoint her parents by singing jazz and the blues.
Nina’s career took off quickly. She signed with Bethlehem Records to release her debut album- Little Girl Blue.
She became passionately involved with the civil rights movement. Using her music instead of bombs and guns: Nina wrote songs as battle cries against the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, the assassination of civil rights leaders, and the suffering of black women.
In 1965, Reverend Martin Luther King asked Nina to join a Civil Rights march against Jim Crow segregation. She sang and marched from selma to montgomery to empower protesters, along with Odetta, Ella Fitzgerald, and other black music legends.
As the hippies, folkies and eccentrics made their way to Woodstock in 1969, Nina chose to headline in the heart of harlem with the likes of Stevie Wonder, B.B. King and countless others.
Amid racial tensions, Nina knew music was one unifying part of society, so she took the stage at the Harlem Cultural festival to be the voice of countless black Americans. She sang “Revolution,” offering a wish for a future filled with hope and change.
Nina once said:
“When I go, I’m going to know that I left something for my people to build on. That is my reward.”
There is no musician more closely associated with the civil rights movement than Nina Simone. Without question, she left something to build on.
Celebrate Nina Simone with my handmade art print — "The Heart of Harlem"
and read her illustrated children’s book Nina: A Story of Nina Simone.
“You’ve got to learn to leave the table when love’s no longer being served.”
— NINA SIMONE
