nina simone!

I was just introduced to nina simone.  Well, not truly introduced, i always knew who she was, but i never actually knew that she is the pianist as well.  She most definitively kicks ass. majorly.  She is a great person in art.

In youtube there are comments, as we know.  One of them said something like - I love Nina Simone, she is a true capacity and a wonderful artist.  Wonder if artist nowadays considers her level of skills?  compared to the crap we're presented with it's a huge difference.  (or something like that - this is a blog, not a thesis)
It's for sure implied that todays artists are not that good, (and most of the time they aren't that good at all - she was extraordinary)

So this thought fell into my head, watching her perform, she is splendid, but she is not the most charismatic artist in terms of being outgoing.  She's working with the audience, but in a way that it's impossible to decide weather she enjoys having the audience there or if she'd rather be by herself.

I read in some biography that she really wanted to become a classical pianist (she's got the skills) but she couldn't due to her ethnicity.  That's sad.  She never even intended to sing, and changed her name in order to hide her singing from her family.  She sings in a kind of raw and perhaps a bit indifferent manner (hence the raw feeling) and she spices her accompaniment in the piano with elements from the classical tradition such as fugues and romantic pathos.  She can refrase and mess up the time in pieces in ways that are far out compared to other recordings of same song (for instance summertime).  It's like she's mainly a kind of composer - that's what fascinates her, how to compose the elements in an interesting manner.

It seems as she might have thought that "this is not what i really should do.  I really should play great piano classics.  the singing and the popular tunes is only additions to the production because then i get gigs."  Of course this is not what she thought, she did compose heeps of music in this genre, and the way she put her personal touch to the most famous tunes indicates a great interest in doing this as good as possible.

But what i wanted with this phantasy thoughts of  simone, is that she seems to be an artist with a lot of excess possibilities, she could do a lot of things and this in particular comes easy to her,

IS THIS THE PROBLEM OF ME AND MY FELLOW YOUNG CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS?  WE ARE NOT REALLY IN POSITION TO BE ABLE TO CLAIME TO BE AN ARTIST, WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH EXCESS ENERGY TO BE ABLE TO MAKE PERFECT INTERESTING STUFF.  WE ONLY THINK OF MAKING CAREERS, NETWORKING, FORMALITIES, NOT ON MAKING GOOD RELEVANT ART PRODUCTS THAT PEOPLE CAN FEEL FILLS SOMETHING THEY ARE MISSING?

I love the fuguated parts in the middle of the jazz! (though i wonder how much of it was planned.)

sometimes i feel like being on the edge of art is not the right place to stay on if you want to make things of importance, it's rather a place you swing by whenever it's called upon by your art.

But of course i'm not totally right about this.  i'm also a bit wrong.