Nina Simone

Latest news on nina simone

available now! 1 month bay view room, beautiful house (oakland lake merritt / grand) $600

hi...we are looking for a one month (or possibly longer) renter for a room in this beautiful house. wood, peaceful and views, trees, etc. a peaceful retreat.. good for writers and artists the room has hardwood floors and u can see the bay-- the house is up by oakland high, off park. there is a shared xtra room or office, and a washer drier. plus an extra magnificent attic. the back yard is like a park, with apple, orange, lemon trees. the room itself is unfurnished at this time WeÂ’re looking for good kind people who know how to be silly and also to question themselves. Open communicator s who respect the space. Influences we want to bring into this space: Thich nhat han, toni Morrison, music, rigoberta menchu, emma goldman, meena from rawa, our families but you dnÂ’t know them, barack obama, nina simone, joy harjo

available now- 1 month or more beautiful bay view room (oakland lake merritt / grand) $635

we are looking for a one month or longer renter for a room in this beautiful house. wood, peaceful and views, trees, squirrels, etc. a peaceful retreat.. good for writers and artists the room has hardwood floors and u can see the bay-- the house is up by oakland high, off park. there is a shared xtra room or office, and a washer drier. plus an extra magnificent attic. the back yard is like a park, with apple, orange, lemon trees. the room itself is unfurnished at this time WeÂ’re looking for good kind people who know how to be silly and also to question themselves. Open communicator s who respect the space. time frame is flexible Influences we want to bring into this space: Thich nhat han, toni Morrison, music, rigoberta menchu, emma goldman, meena from rawa, our families but you dnÂ’t know them, barack obama, nina simone, joy harjo

room in beautiful house w good people (oakland lake merritt / grand) $635

we are looking for a one month or longer renter for a room in this beautiful house. for real its one of the nicest houses I’ve been in. its a big old house with wood, peaceful and views, trees, squirrels, etc. the room has hardwood floors and u can see the bay-- the house is up by oakland high, off park. there is a shared xtra room or office, and a washer drier. plus an extra magnificent attic. the back yard is like a park, with apple, orange, lemon trees We’re looking for this to be a “community style” house… a resource where ppl can bring their people to recharge and refresh for the struggles ahead. Not hectic, but alive. Good food, music, passion for life and the world. 3-4 ppl, nice common space. Looking for good kind people who know how to be silly and also to question themselves. Open communicators. Influences we want to bring into this space: Thich nhat han, toni Morrison, music, rigoberta menchu, emma goldman, meena from rawa, our families but you dn’t know them, barack obama, nina simone, joy harjo

Miriam Makeba: 'I will sing until the last day of my life'

Miriam Makeba, the renowned South African singer and anti-apartheid campaigner who was forced into exile for more than three decades, died early this morning after collapsing at a performance in Italy. She was 76. Known as "Mama Africa" to her many fans worldwide, Makeba was at a protest concert against organised criminals when she suffered a heart attack as she was leaving the stage. She died soon afterwards at a clinic in the southern Italian town of Castel Volturno.As the first black South African to win international stardom, Makeba performed alongside the likes of Harry Belafonte, Nina Simone and Dizzy Gillespie in the US. Fusing township melodies with jazz ballads, she sang for world leaders from President John F Kennedy to Nelson Mandela, who led the tributes today, describing Makeba as "South Africa's first lady of song". "She was a mother to our struggle and to the young nation of ours," Mandela said in a statement. "Her haunting melodies gave voice to the pain of exile and dislocation which she felt for 31 long years. At the same time, her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us."It was "fitting", Mandela, said, that Makeba died supporting a good cause. Sunday night's concert was to support Robert Saviano, the Italian author who has lived in hiding since publishing Gomorrah, a best-selling expose of the Camorra mafia group who, among many other crimes, are blamed for killing six African immigrants in Castel Volturno in September.Makeba's family, who noted in a statement that she had performed one of greatest hits, Pata Pata - Xhosa for Touch, Touch - shortly before collapsing as the crowd called for an encore, said: "Whilst this great lady was alive she would say: 'I will sing until the last day of my life'."Born in a township in 1932, Makeba started performing in the fifties in Sophiatown, then the heart of black culture in Johannesburg, whose residents were soon to be evicted by the white government. She then collaborated with trumpeter Hugh Masakela, one of her four future husbands, in the hit musical King Kong, which went on to run in the West End for two years. An appearance in the anti-apartheid documentary Come Back, Africa, saw Makeba travel to the Venice Film Festival in 1959. But when she tried to return home for her mother's funeral she found that her passport had been revoked. In London, Makeba met Belafonte, who helped her gain entry to the US where she quickly recorded several of her biggest hits, including Malaika and The Click Song. She testified against apartheid at the United Nations in 1963 - losing her South African citizenship in the process - and won a Grammy with Belafonte three years later for an album describing black people's plight under minority rule. But marrying Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael cost Makeba her record and touring deal. The pair moved to Guinea, where they became friendly with President Ahmed Sekou Toure. While she continued to perform in Africa and Europe, Makeba never had much money, having unwittingly signed away her royalty rights. In 1985 she could not afford to buy a coffin when her only daughter Bondi died. Makeba returned to South Africa in 1990 following a personal request from Nelson Mandela. She starred in the film Safafina, about the 1976 Soweto riots, and in 2000 her album Homeland was nominated for a Grammy. At home, she was revered both as a singer and hero of the struggle. Radio talkshows were today flooded with calls from fans wanting to pay tribute to her. But Makeba played down her activism, telling the Guardian in an interview last May that she was "not a political singer". "No! I was singing about my life, and in South Africa we always sang about what was happening to us - especially the things that hurt us."Makeba announced three years ago that she was retiring. But, despite suffering from osteoarthritis, she found it impossible to stop performing. In the interview she talked about being unable to breathe properly during a concert in April. "But I'd rather cancel a show than go on stage and sit in a chair, or walk on with a stick," she said.World musicSouth Africaguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Gospel according to Antony and the Johnsons

Antony and the Johnsons/ LSOBarbican, London EC2Antony Hegarty isn't what you'd call the complete performer, I think it's fair to say, though he is in fine voice - and what a voice, crystalline and plaintive, filling the sedate Barbican Hall tonight. But no, he could be in his own bedsit - the light off, singing in the dark. Yes, the dark! He is performing - you can just about see the odd flailing arm - but he's lost in himself, as though he's just got back from an unsuccessful night out and is consoling himself with a couple of weepy ballads before bed. The audience, after giving him a rapturous welcome, is reverent and watchful. No one thinks it odd that Antony is singing in the dark. He is the one. Behind him, the London Symphony Orchestra (and a small handful of Johnsons) labour studiously in their own little pools of light. Antony, large and ungainly (but hardly the Elephant Man - let's see him for goodness sake!), is wearing something long and diaphanous over his day clothes. Are those tracksuit bottoms? 'I got kissed by a turtle dove ... ' he sings, his hands enacting some private torment. Your heart goes out to him.We're three songs in before a chink of grey dawn appears. He stands merely shadowed now, black hair parted, his skin pallid, his expression effortful as he glides into 'Cripple and the Starfish', a majestic and poignant anthem about the unhelpful blindness of love in an abusive relationship. It's about having your fingers cut off and them growing again, like a starfish. It's about coming back for more. The strings are a little busier, the woodwind twiddling with menace. It's quite beautiful.The crowd, having sat through two unfamiliar works (this concert is one of a handful of autumn dates in which the band are previewing their third studio album, The Crying Light, due next January), responds with the sort of wildness you reserve for having something to be wild about. Antony, more at home now - or perhaps still at home, but in the glow of an open fridge - sings a flawless 'For Today I Am a Boy' from his flawless I Am a Bird Now album, his hands stroking the air. Apart from a murmured 'thank you' he is silent between songs, which ebb and flow with their own mini-dramas. Visually, you might want for more. Antony - alabaster in the half-light, like a statue of one of the bulkier Greek goddesses - is full of grace, but I'm afraid not in a physical way. My eyes roam the stage for novelty: the bass players banging their instruments during a rare tribal passage; the conductor shutting someone up with a sudden gesture. I did wonder how much of Hegarty's austere, visceral quality would survive the might of the London Symphony Orchestra tonight - or rather the arrangements of New York boy-wonder composer Nico Muhly, whose esoteric atonal 'soundscapes' (he has a day job working for Philip Glass) have been skittering round my iPod this week. 'He paints the sky with his work,' Hegarty has said, though I was still dimly expecting tapes of running bath water or someone frying eggs in a strong wind. There is the odd drone (at one point effectively reducing the three chords of a lovely new song, 'Another World', to one) but the orchestra is restrained joy itself. 'I fell in love with a dead boy,' Antony sings, with understandable concern, his arms reaching for the clouds, dry ice drifting like mist over a wet lawn.For most of us, Antony Hegarty swooped out of nowhere when he won the Mercury Prize in 2005 for the Bird album - descending from heaven itself, it seemed, judging by the terms in which his startling, tremulous vocal style (lauded to the skies as 'ethereal', 'sublime', 'transcendent') came to be described. Was this the 'Gay Messiah' as prophesied by Rufus Wainwright, 'reborn from 1970s porn'? He didn't quite fit the bill. He's not Freddie Mercury, or indeed Rufus, who cheerfully ends his own shows looking like he's stepped out of an Ann Summers window display.He is compelling, though: an androgynous, goth-haired, gentle man-boy giant who arrived with a starry siblinghood of disciples - Wainwright himself, Lou Reed ('When I first heard Antony I knew I was in the presence of an angel'), Björk, Boy George, arty pranksters Devendra Banhart and Yoko Ono all smitten collaborators. His sexual mystery and stoic aura of suffering, his New York drag-punk apprenticeship (though he was born in Chichester, West Sussex), his homage to fallen Warholian sirens Divine and Candy Darling, seemed calculated to excite an adoring gay following. But the Church of Antony is broader than that. His intimate, radiant songs may be autobiographical, with their cross-gender issues and talk of guilt or pain or hopes of growing up to be a beautiful woman ('I feel the power in me'), but they also speak more generally of struggle, suggest less specific sorts of hope. They have the core self-belief of devotional music - psalm-like sometimes, but more often gospelly and soulful, capturing the spirit of Nina Simone (Antony's big heroine), her jazzy vocal dips, her dignity; even, somehow, her moral authority. If Hegarty is not the light, he seems at least to have seen it. For his encore he finds his tongue and an endearing sense of humour to tell us the rambling story of a New York transvestite prostitute who used to throw tins of catfood at passing cars, but who drowned in the Hudson River. Antony named his band for her (she was called Marsha P Johnson) and wrote her a song, which he now sings. 'River of sorrow, don't swallow this time ... ' Now that is sublime.? Kitty Empire is awayAntony and the JohnsonsPop and rockguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds