Time and again, critics write about the power and charisma of Nina Simone through the civil rights movement. She sang the words of an entire movement: “All I want is equality/ for my sister, my brother, my people and me./ Yes, you have lied to me all these years” (Simone Mississippi). She sang throughout her run, and in a “smoky” voice, when four young girls were killed in the church bombing (Lewis). She sang, “Will my country fall, will it stand, or will it fall?/Is it too late for all of us?/And did Martin Luther King die in vain?” (Simone Why?) after the death of MLK. Nina Simone… a singer with many different voices, a singer who denies any categorization, a woman who doesn't want to prove anything by a genre. ““I have always aimed to stay outside of any category. “It’s my freedom,” she said. insisted to a journalist. But it was a “freedom” that, according to biographer David Nathan, “drove industry pundits and the music press crazy as they tried to categorize it” (Brooks). Critics have attempted to classify it in genres ranging from the most obvious, jazz, to “wing to bebop” through free jazz in which...