Abstract
This article is concerend with the relation between Nina Simone’s trajectory and militant cultural production in the United States during the 1960’s. Taking the song “Pirate Jenny”, a 1928 composition by Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weil interpreted by Nina Simone in 1963, I intend to show how the artist translated the original conflict -class inequalities in Europe after World War I - into the situation experienced by black people in the United States in the 1960’s. Such translation, I argue, can be understood as a performative effect which grasps racial and gender relations as a kind of language (or social grammar) and materializes them through the body. I thereby wish to elucidate the forms by which social markers such as gender and race are “heard” in determinate contexts and through specific artistic conventions.
Keywords:
Nina Simone; revenge; performativity; jazz; civil rights movement
