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"It was intense at times because of her artistry," Simone's longtime percussionist Leopoldo Fleming told me. "Sometimes, when I was on stage, I would get emotional because of the way she expressed herself, because she was so strong and unlike any other singer."In a time when blacks were struggling for full civic participation in America, Simone's quest to achieve some measure of the fleeting feeling of freedom she felt onstage underpins the soul-searching hour-and-a-half narrative that explores the pianist's life."She signified struggle," Garbus told me. "She was a person who grew up in the Jim Crow South and came up through the classical music world. But she was also someone who stood with Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and all of these folks."
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"I was not nonviolent," Simone declares toward the end of the film. "I thought we should get our rights by any means necessary." According to her guitarist and bandleader Al Schackman, Simone repeated this sentiment to none other than Martin Luther King Jr. Simone saw herself as an artist who reflected the turbulent times in which she found herself. She saw it as her duty to shape and mold the country along with the others of her generation in the 1960s and 1970s.As the civil rights movement gave way to the black power movement, we see Simone continuing her protest through her music. A Raisin in the Sun author Lorraine Hansberry penned Simone's black-power anthem "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black " and poet Langston Hughes wrote "Blacklash Blues" for Simone as she begin to tour the world to speak out against American injustice. "I could sing to help my people and that became the mainstay of my life," says Simone.
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