Red Hand Files: Nina Simone

The Red Hand Files
ISSUE #104 / JULY 2020
In 1972 Nina Simone released a live album entitled Emergency Ward! that was, by her own admission, her oppositional response to the Vietnam War. This record begins with an eighteen-minute rendition of ‘My Sweet Lord’, that could well be her greatest musical achievement. Nina Simone’s interpretation of George Harrison’s gentle cosmic entreaty ends up, in her hands, as a howl of spiritual abandonment and accusation.

In 1972, Nina Simone performed a 18-minute version of "My Sweet Lord" at Fort Dix before a group of black soldiers (recorded on Emergency Ward). She mingled the song with the David Nelson poem "Today is a killer", in which at the end God is accused of being a killer, giving the otherwise exuberant atmosphere of the performance an apocalyptic ending. No references to Krishna were used. (Wikipedia)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2m6IsVvj5c