Nina at Newport

An incandescent set from 1966 rewires expectations, and issues a challenge.

Nina Simone at the BBC Television Centre in London, 1966. (David Redfern)

One of the finest books I’ve encountered in the last several years is a picture book: Nina, by Traci N. Todd. It’s a biography of Nina Simone aimed at grade-school readers, with an emphasis on her devotion to social justice. Tonight I read it to my youngest daughter as a bedtime story, and was reminded of its perfect calibration of elements — the way that it frames the historic struggle for civil rights in accessibly personal terms, with gorgeous, evocative illustrations by Christian Robinson.

Here is how the book portrays the fateful gig in June of 1954 — at Midtown Bar and Grill in Atlantic City, NJ — that transformed Eunice Waymon into Nina Simone.

The first night, Eunice wore a delicate dress and walked in like a queen. She opened with a Bach concerto, but this was not a Bach-friendly crowd. So Eunice played the popular songs of the day, sneaking in some Bach where she could. When she got more confident, she mixed in some of Daddy’s good-time jazz, and now and then took the bar to church.

And then she sang. In a voice that was rich, sweet, and like soft thunder.

This depiction strikes a chord with me at the moment, because I’ve been listening almost nonstop to Nina Simone’s stunning performance at the 1966 Newport Jazz Festival. Issued by Verve as You’ve Got to Learn, in celebration of what would have been Nina’s 90th birthday, it’s a transfixing (and for more than half a century, tantalizingly elusive) testimonial from the absolute peak of her expressive powers.

Since its release on July 21, the album has received due acclaim: Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, in a perceptive Pitchfork review, observes that “its political urgency translates through a particular serenity in her performance, like she was both eye and the hurricane.” But what I keep returning to is something that’s been underplayed: how beautifully the album captures a magic trick that Nina made her inimitable trademark. Her festival set, like the anecdote above, finds a productive tension in the play of formality and informality, art and entertainment, sacred and profane.

Sociolinguist Einar Haugen coined the phrase “code switching” in the mid-1950s, just as Nina Simone was embarking on her professional career. Whether or not she knew the term, there can be no question about her mastery of the practice. As this newly unearthed Newport set so brilliantly demonstrates, Nina didn’t just understand the power of code switching; she effectively wielded a code switchblade. And because this shifting affect is so critical, the only way to truly “hear” her performance at Newport in the summer of 1966 is to take the full measure of relevant context: hers, and the festival’s, and the nation’s. Let’s take a moment to consider that scope.