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Nina Simone
Pianist and singer; voice of the civil-rights movement
The high priestess who turned the concert stage into a front line.
The rise
Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon on 21 February 1933 in Tryon, North Carolina, she trained as a classical pianist but was denied admission to the Curtis Institute. She reinvented herself as Nina Simone and fused classical, jazz, blues and gospel into a sound no genre could claim.