You’d probably have to be very keen on Nina Simone’s music to want this book, and the author is, of course, just that. He’s also keen on very complex prose, quoting two chopped-off chunks of Malik Gaines’ observation that “In the black expressive context, as in Simone’s performance methodology, multiple positionality is a source of provisional power, and a way to act in excess of the permanent exclusion experienced in any one location.”
Fortunately the author himself mostly writes stuff that’s easier to understand. He’s obviously very familiar with Nina Simone’s entire oeuvre and skips around it nimbly, for reference or analysis, but one can’t escape the impression that he’s using her achievements as a line on which he can hang his own mental clothes.
The book is divided into eight sections with one-word titles such as Something, Covering, Audiences and, unsurprisingly, Fantasies. However, within these sections there are a great many subdivisions and untitled sections which may be as short as a page or a page and a half. This is possibly just as well because the author’s chains of thought may not hold a reader’s attention for long and skipping to a new subject avoids that problem.
For me the most interesting passages by far are those where the author engages with specific Simone recordings and makes them more interesting. Although I admire Simone and enjoy her music and its oblique relationship with jazz, I know only a handful of her recordings and was pleased to read astute comments on a great many unfamiliar ones. However, I would suggest that anyone considering buying this should seek out the possibility of leafing through a copy in a bookshop before reaching a decision.
Fantasies Of Nina Simone by Jordan Alexander Stein. Duke University Press, pb, 232pp and 65pp notes and bibliography. ISBN 978-1-4780-3070-6
