Nina Simone’s Political Romance

This essay revisits Nina Simone’s apolitical, debut headline performance at Carnegie Hall on April 12th, 1963. Playwright Lorraine Hansberry attended and asked her afterwards what she was going to do to support the civil rights movement? Within six months, Simone was performing at the March on Washington and had composed the civil rights’ anthem Mississippi Goddam.

This essay series, Full Moon on Progress Street takes a close look at a key moment and song to reveal the hidden lives and interests of some of the most important Black female artists of the 20th century – Ella Fitzgerald, Big Mama Thornton, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. Dr Rommi Smith, life-long jazz and blues listener, considers a key moment in the creative life of each artist, reappraising what we think we know about them from popular culture. Each essay “flips the script”, to show a different hidden story. All these iconic women are broadly misrepresented - history and discrimination airbrushing their interests, politics, sexualities, creative legacy and passions.

Dr Rommi Smith is a writer, performer and academic, whose research centres the performances of historical Black jazz and blues women within the context of civil rights. Rommi’s academic work is published by, amongst others, New York University Press and Routledge. Contributors to her research include: five-time Grammy-winning NEA jazz master, Dianne Reeves and five-time Grammy-winning musician, Dr Esperanza Spalding.
A three-time BBC Writer-in-Residence, Rommi is a guest curator of the BBC Radio 4 programme, Poetry Please and a contributor to programmes ranging from Front Row to The Verb, The Essay to Woman’s Hour.

The inaugural British Parliamentary Writer-in-Residence and Poet-in-Residence for Keats House, Hampstead, Rommi was also the Poet-in-Residence for the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere. Rommi’s fifth collaboration as librettist with the baritone and composer Roderick Williams responds to the oratory of Dr Martin Luther King. It will be performed by the choir of St Paul’s Cathedral in December 2024.

www.rommi-smith.co.uk
@rommismith

Writer and Presenter, Dr Rommi Smith
Producer, Polly Thomas
Exec producer, Eloise Whitmore
A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3