“I was born at home at six o'clock in the morning. They baptized me Eunice Kathleen Waymon.”

It was February 21, 1933.

“Throughout my childhood music accompanied me. It was part of my everyday life, the same mechanics as breathing.”

Nina Simone retrieves from her memory moments of her life in the autobiography “I Put A Spell On You” released in 1991. The book was translated into Greek 27 years later, in 2018, titled “Black Soul”. The legendary pianist and performer writes her life and talks to people who want to know her more and learn the great difficulties and problems that have shaped her personality.

She was a miraculous child, she played the piano since she was four and accompanied her mother as a piano player in churches.

She was born in Tryon, a small community of N. Carolina to a poor family and locals had to help her to advance her studies.

“When I was eleven, I was asked to give a recital to the town hall. I sat on the piano with grace as I had been trained, while a white man presented me, but when I looked at my parents who had come dressed in their good clothes, I saw them being driven out of the front seats for the sake of a white family, I had never seen before. And my dad and mom were willing to move. Nobody said anything, but I was not prepared to sit down and see them being treated in that way, so I got up with my stuttering dress and said that if they wanted to see me play, they would have to make sure my family sits in the first row...”

She wanted to become a classical pianist, but the Curtis Institute denied admission, because they did not want to accept an unknown black girl. No one told her that her color would play a decisive role in her life.

When she started singing and playing piano in bars, she used an artistic nickname to prevent her mother from discovering her. She became Nina Simone.

"An audience chooses to come and see my interpretation. I do not choose my audience. And if they do not like my attitude, they are not obliged to come to see me"

Recognition has been great, loneliness enormous. Most of her life was dedicated to music. Her weapon in the struggle for political rights has always been music.

“To be young, gifted and black

 Oh what a lovely precious dream”

To Be Young, Gifted and Black

She wanted to be safe, protected. To live in a fairy-tale world. She felt betrayed by America, the record labels, the organizers, her own people. The disappointments were many. Chased by the ghosts of her father, her sister Lucille, the civil rights movement, her marriage, her hopes, from lost love affairs, she tried to balance herself.

She personally dealt with her finances. But her home was arrested and sold and every time she arrived at the United States, something awful was happening. Barbados, Liberia, Switzerland, France.

Throughout her life, she wanted a place where she really belongs to.

Always special and incompatible she fought for everything she believed, sang her own truth without hesitating with passion and covered a big and different repertoire without being interested in musical species and categories.

“This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.” James Baldwin was telling her...