Nina Simone celebrated with Netflix documentary

Twelve years after her death, the singer’s daughter has helped to create a 100-minute special for the digital broadcaster.

Lisa Simone Kelly is the executive producer of ‘What happened, Miss Simone?’, which promises never-before-heard recordings and rare archive footage, along with diaries, letters and interviews. The director, Liz Garbus, has worked on several successful documentaries, including ‘The Farm: Angola, USA’, and ‘Killing in the Name’, for which she was Oscar nominated.

Nina Simone led a troubled life, struggling with money, drugs and episodes of violent anger. She was eventually diagnosed as bipolar. Nina became a symbol of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and her music and lyrics were inspired by racism she had encountered personally, along with events making headlines around the world (in particular, an Alabama church bombing in 1963).

An album, ‘Nina Revisited’, will also be released to accompany the film, as her songs are ‘revisited’ by singers such as Lauryn Hill, Gregory Porter and Lalah Hathaway.

Speaking to Jazz FM, Lisa Simone Kelly said “I wanted to make sure that my mother was remembered properly, in the way that she deserved to be, and for all the contributions and the sacrifices that she’s made to American culture and to society in general.”

A section of Lisa Simone Kelly’s interview with Nigel Williams can be heard below, and the Netflix documentary is released on Friday 26th June.