The title of Liz Garbus’ fine documentary on Nina Simone is taken from an article on the singer written by Maya Angelou but is a question that many might ask about the life and career one of modern American music’s brightest and most enigmatic stars. Born the sixth child of a North Carolina preacher in 1931, Nina Simone studied from an early age to become “the first black female classically trained concert pianist” and subsequently rose to fame as one of the most original and incisive interpreters of the jazz, blues and soul canon. But in reality all easy categorizations fall short where Simone is concerned: Her incomparable contralto voice, the mastery of piano technique and sheer musical creativity allowed her to carve a unique musical niche that encompassed negro spirituals to Kurt Weill ballads. She also remains one of music’s enigmas; her rise and especially fall from official grace, largely shrouded in mystery.
That is what Garbus sets out to change in a film that chronicles Simone’s music and struggles with abuse and bipolar disorder, which became worse when her career suffered in part due to her uncompromising involvement with the civil right’s movement and subsequently with ever more militant forms of black power activism. Abused by her husband/manager, blacklisted by the industry, Simone crumpled under the combined pressures of inner artistic demons and a road career that alienated her from her family. She eventually fled in self-imposed exile to Liberia and Europe.  Garbus’ debut effort The Farm: Angola USA won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize is a festival regular (she’s also been here with Ghosts of Abu Ghraib and Bobby Fischer Against the World among others, and has received several honors with producing partner Rory Kennedy). This time she does due diligence in a straightforward documentary – but what would otherwise be a pretty ordinary bio-doc benefits from an extraordinary subject and priceless archive in the form of pristine audio recordings culled from numerous interviews, some filmed interviews with Simone herself and excerpts from what must rank as some of the most poignantly written diaries ever, which Garbus accessed through the collaboration of the Simone estate. What we are left with is an amazing and overdue portrait – the partial record of the life and travails of one of the 20th century’s true musical geniuses. When Attallah Shabazz, the eldest daughter of Malcolm X, whose family Simone spent a lot of time with growing up, tells Garbus she was an artist ahead of her time, we fully understand that  for once the statement is much more than a simple platitude