Remarks:
Nina Simone wrote this in memory of her friend, the late Lorraine Hansberry,. It reached the top ten on the US R&B charts in 1970. In the video she sings it on “Sesame Street” on February 18th 1972.
Lyrics:
To be young, gifted and black,
Oh what a lovely precious dream
To be young, gifted and black,
Open your heart to what I mean
In the whole world you know
There are billion boys and girls
Who are young, gifted and black,
And that’s a fact!
Young, gifted and black
We must begin to tell our young
There’s a world waiting for you
This is a quest that’s just begun
When you feel really low
Yeah, there’s a great truth you should know
When you’re young, gifted and black
Your soul’s intact
Young, gifted and black
How I long to know the truth
There are times when I look back
And I am haunted by my youth
Oh but my joy of today
Is that we can all be proud to say
To be young, gifted and black
Is where it’s at
She appears on Sesame Street with this song. Makes me smile every time! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-f3PYJT5mU
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Great song…I was lucky to catch Nina Simone playing opisite of Miles Davis group and the Herbie Mann group at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago in 1969…If Miles want on the bill, I might have never gone to see the show
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heh…in the last few seconds of the video, a bunch of white cops keep an eye on the crowd–haha!
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I so love Nina Simone, believe it or not, I found her through one of Janis Joplins songs that Nina did first, Little Girl Blue… Nina, to me, had the most incredible personality that very few of even the most talented musicians possess. I watched her sing “Feelings” on you/tube, a song I wouldn’t even like, and had to stop for a minute, did I just really see that? It’s a disgrace the way her bio movie is being handled without regard to who she was or how she carried herself, but more, that this is for Europe and not America, that a crying shame.
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Lovely, very lovely song.
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Beautiful, soulful. They better choose wisely who will portray this diva. Don’t insult people’s intelligence with someone that can’t fit the bill.
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Ha , SW6, I wish you could have been there..
I remember she had an African percusionist and at one point , she got up off the piano and did a little AFrican style dance…I wonder if they will have something like that in the movie…that is why movies about music can fall short, there is no way they can convey some of the things that make a musician special in a cinimatic film based on a script
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