What Happened, Miss Simone?
nybooks.com
nybooks.com
I am partial to Sinnerman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH3Fx41Jpl4, but that is probably the most well known one I guess.
Really made me think, this amazing talented woman wanted to be a classical pianist then didn't get accepted to school cause of her race, then became an amazing success in another regard.
THEN basically gave it all up to fight for civil rights. Sad story that sometimes if you try really hard, are really talented and give up everything you can sill end up shit out of luck in a awful place. I mean, she's had a lasting and profound effect, just not the ones she wanted and she certainly didn't end up where she wanted
"As Light notes, there had been a few black students at Curtis, including a woman in the piano department. Sokoloff, who would have been her teacher at Curtis, said she was “not a genius, but she had great talent,” and insisted she was rejected because there were better applicants. Simone, however, never doubted that she was rejected because of her race."
In the early 1900s, Harvard had more than a few Jewish students and erected anti-Semitic admissions criteria at the same time. So a lot of students were rejected because they were Jewish.
Simone applied to Curtis in 1950, years before the Little Rock school integrated and a whole decade before the Civil Rights era.
You are aware that sociological and gender studies factor into notions of “genius” and talent? Good.