nina simone: four women meaning


Peaches is an english name and not I believe, widely used in America.

Nina Simone would have chosen this name with purpose. Baltimore song meanings Add your thoughts 3 Comments. Composed of four verses, the song told the story of four black women, of whom Simone wrote, ‘their skin tones range from light to dark and their ideas of beauty and their own importance are deeply influenced by that.’ Of the song, she added, ‘all the song did was to tell what entered into the minds of most black women in America when they thought about themselves: their complexions, their hair… and what other women thought of them.’ But the main point the song made, according to Simone, was that ‘Black women didn’t know what the hell they wanted because they were defined by things they didn’t control, and until they had the confidence to define themselves they’d be stuck in the same mess forever.’Through these three women, Simone exposed the dilemma that black women in America faced: that they were not, and ultimately had never been, in control over their own lives, bodies, sexualities or portrayals.
The song gradually builds in intensity as it progresses, and reaches a climax during the fourth and final section. It doesn’t touch on the use of the name Peaches though for her fourth woman. Home / Music / Four Women / Lyrics ; Four Women / Lyrics × Close Cite This Source. sort form View by: Highest Rated ... More Nina Simone Lyrics. Intro ; Lyrics ; Meaning ; Technique ; Influences ; Listen (BETA) Best of the Web ; Table of Contents ; Lyrics. "Four Women" is a song written by jazz singer, composer, pianist and arranger Nina Simone, released on the 1966 album Wild Is the Wind.It tells the story of four different African American women. These four women—Nina Simone, Nikki Giovanni, Elizabeth Catlett and Ntozake Shange—were prominent artists during the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s through the early 1980s.

Close. The Jezebel stereotype, for example, was part of the ‘myth of promiscuity’. Each of the four characters represents an African-American stereotype in society. The song blamed the racial situation in the U.S. for her inability to recognise her beauty and love herself, making the point that she would realise her true beauty if she were given the chance to return to her ancestors’ surroundings.

In the south, they used to BACK; NEXT "My back is strong / Strong enough to take the pain / Inflicted again and again" Quick Thought. In this way, the song linked the woman’s beauty directly to her African roots, showing that she was beautiful This idea was not only a theme of Simone’s songs; it was also a strongly-held convictionIt was thus through the gendered aspects of Simone’s largely racial work that she created early black power perspectives which insisted on the centrality of female power. Seeing that their oppression came from both sources, Simone recognised that ‘along with everything else there had to be changes in the way we [black women] saw ourselves and in how men saw us.’ Ultimately, black women needed to carve a space out for themselves, and Simone undertook a leading role in empowering women to do so.

Sweet Thing’s apparent sexual availability, so at odds with Mammy’s supposed asexuality, (yet tragically echoing Saffronia’s mother’s ultimate powerlessness over her own body) revealed the extent to which black women lacked control and had been defined by others in contradicting terms. Such a view would not be altogether mistaken; though Simone defied all conventional expectations and could never be fit neatly into the artificial restraints of one genre, she was the unmistakable voice of the black revolution. SongMeanings is a place for discussion and discovery. Peaches reflected the ‘angry black woman’ stereotype, but importantly, this anger was justified, righteous, and loudly, unapologetically proclaimed. Partly, this lasting legacy of Simone as a race leader, rather than a feminist leader, was created by the popularity and longevity of some of her biggest hits, including “Mississippi Goddam” (1963) and “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” (1969).While Simone therefore may have prioritised the black struggle, she recognised that the problems plaguing black women did not stem from racism alone, but that they were oppressed by the ‘double burden’ of race and gender. This was one of the many tragic consequences of the aforementioned stereotypes and persistent racist onslaught, and was something to which Simone was not immune, but which she was determined to fight. The song was written for a 1964 musical. Four Women by Nina Simone.

“Four Women” was a watershed moment in Simone’s career, as the first song in which she addressed so frankly the problems confronting women of colour. On looking in the mirror, she wrote: ‘I saw two faces, knowing that on the one hand I loved being black and being a woman, and that on the other it was my colour and sex which had fucked me up in the first place.’ “Four Women” thus also addressed these problems, bringing critical commentary to black vulnerability to white standards of beauty. 1,097,225 Lyrics; 110,886 Artists; 1,737,493 Comments; SongMeanings. Does the name Peaches impoverish her status even more, perhaps even ridicule?Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: When one thinks of key feminist role models of the twentieth century, the mind most likely wouldn’t jump to Simone. Not only did black women face racism from whites, they were also confronted with the sexism of black men, being largely excluded and marginalised by both the white-dominated women’s movement, and the male-dominated civil rights movement.

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