Backlash Blues
Presentation by Matlaleng Babatunde
Backlash Blues
Song History
• Written in 1967 by Langston
Hughes
• Sang by Nina Simone on
1967 album Nina Simone
Sings the Blues
• Origins in Jazz & Blues
• One of Langston Hughes last
protest poems before his
death in May of 1967
Musical Description
• Nina Simone’s distinctive sound which she was criticized for:
• Genre: Soul with Jazz and Blues influences
• Progressive Tempo
• Atonal
• Gravely Timbre
• Culmination of piano, organ, base
• Dynamics: In 1968 Nina Simone added a verse about
Langston Hughes’ death
• Verse performed softly to express vulnerability but the
following chorus was loud to show resilience
Historical Context
• The 60s housed multiple movements: Civil Rights Movement,
Black Power Movement, Women’s Movement, Anti-Vietnam
War Movement etc.
• Nina Simone and Langston Hughes were good friends and
part of a social circle of Black intellectuals and artists fighting
for equity
• Nina Simone began intentionally making protest music in
1964 with “Mississippi Goddamn”
• Her protest music was criticized because of her radical call for
self-defense and Black feminist perspective
Power of “Backlash Blues”
• The fact that Nina Simone did not write the song
makes it more powerful
• It is the product of the very collective power that
the song advocates for
• The musical components resist to the mainstream
idea of acceptable music
Power of Backlash Blues
When I try to find a job
To earn a little cash
All you got to offer
Is your mean old white backlash
But the world is big
Big and bright and round
And it's full of folks like me
Who are Black, Yellow, Beige and Brown
(Hughes, Simone)
Power of Backlash Blues
• Nina Simone, a Black Woman, identifies herself with the
global community of color
• Interpreted poverty, and the Vietnam War as actions of
“white backlash”
• Exposed the insidious intersectional ways white
supremacy affected the lives of people of color socially,
economically, and politically
• Through realizing all the intersectional ways white
supremacy affects people of color, a community of
color is created