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Nina Simone, High Priestess of Soul and Civil Rights Fighter, Dies Aged 70

Nina Simone, one of the most original and influential African-American singers of the past 50 years, has died at her home in the south of France. She was 70.

The general audience knows her best for her version of a Broadway pop tune, My Baby Just Cares for Me, which became a worldwide hit in 1987 after it was used in a television advertisement for Chanel No 5 perfume.

She took little pleasure from the immediate cause of her new-found celebrity with a younger audience. Thirty years earlier she had signed away the rights to that recording, and others, for $3,000 (£1,900). The memory of that piece of Tin Pan Alley exploitation fuelled her resentment against the music business for the rest of her life.

She was a favourite of the British beat groups of the early 1960s, including the Animals, who borrowed her arrangement of Don’t Let Me be Misunderstood for one of their early hits. But her true significance lay in her influence on subsequent generations of women singers. Erykah Badu, Cassandra Wilson and Alicia Keys are among the many who benefited from the example of Simone’s pioneering fusion of blues, soul, jazz, folk and pop, and from her uncompromising stance against racism, sexism and other discrimination.

Her involvement with the civil rights movement provided the material for such songs as Mississippi Goddam, Backlash Blues, Four Women, and To be Young, Gifted and Black, which became an anthem of the movement. Her friends included the Black Muslim leader, Louis Farrakhan, the singer, Miriam Makeba, the Black Panther activist, Stokely Carmichael, and the writer, James Baldwin.

Born Eunice Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina, in 1933, one of eight children, she sang in church from infancy and began playing the piano at the age of two. “Everything that happened to me as a child involved music,” she wrote in her autobiography. Studies at the Juilliard Conservatory in New York were intended to preface a career as a concert pianist, but the need to earn a living diverted her into work as a night-club accompanist. Before long, she was an attraction in her own right. A concert at New York’s town hall in 1959 turned her into a star.

Listening to her was never easy. Club and concert audiences were often exposed to the sharp edge of her tongue. At her best, however, she was a peerlessly commanding performer. Her show-stoppers ranged from I Loves You, Porgy (her first million-seller), through I Put a Spell on You, Black is the Colour of My True Love’s Hair, Here Comes the Sun and Baltimore. As her friend, Duke Ellington, would have said, she was “beyond category”.

Tags: Aged, Civil, Dies, Fighter, High, Nina, Priestess, Rights, Simone, Soul

The Greeting Card: An Essential part of a Gift

The Greeting Card: An Essential part of a Gift

This article discusses how the greeting card can play as an upshot when combined with a gift.  Research on this topic was gathered from varied web resource sites regarding gifts, gift ideas

A picture may paint a thousand words, but when combined with the right
message makes the medium more potent. Research evidence shows that the
ancient Egyptians on papyrus scrolls first sent glad tidings. The
Chinese also were historically credited with such devices for
exchanging greetings during New Year celebrations. By the 1400’s the
German also started this habit but with the use of woodcuts while the
rest of Europe used handmade paper.

As Christianization spread
all throughout Europe, this practice soon became common for Christmas
as well. By 1843, Sir Henry Cole hired an artist to design a holiday
card to gift to his friends and relatives. At this point Greeting Cards
were still hand painted and quite expensive to produce.

Popularity
of these cards snowballed in the US states and established itself as a
global gifting habit with the advancements in printing and the
introduction of postage stamps all before 1850. Mass production began
with the Valentine’s Greeting Card as popularized by the great women’s
rights organizer Esther Howland in deference to the passing of her
mother. She eventually sold off the rights to this technique of
production and then concentrated on the age-old practice of elaborate,
handmade cards.

By 1906, the Americans had already created a
healthy business climate for the cards, as we know them today specially
with the perfection of the color printing process, which drove down the
costs of production dramatically.

Technology continues to change
at a fast pace and continues to drive the purchase cost, types, and
variety of these cards. Besides the standard, there are photo cards,
music cards, postcards and electronic greeting cards.

All that
being said, most gifts we purchase in the age of the Internet, are
definitely not made by our own hands, the market economy dictates it.
What we try to do now is match these gifts with the character traits,
personalities or devotional level that we may have attached to the
target recipients.

As much as we would to grant the best gifts,
our personal economies limit us. Even if we really know what gift would
match each person our list the final say still goes down to the budget
we have to spare. Haven’t you received your fair share of contemptible
gifts that you quickly disregard as well meaning? These items obviously
purchased in bulk from super discount stores, which shipped them from
some hidden factories hidden under an unnamed mountain in China?

So
make your gifts distinct. Consider adding a greeting card in the
equation? Its historical use as glad tidings explains intentions quite
well. It draws empathy from the recipient since besides the printed
message it also requires a signature and at most times a personal
message from the sender.

Do not think about it as doing double
the work in gift giving; think of it as twice increasing the value of
the gift. For example, the Internet enables us to choose a gift an
having it sent halfway across the world. Flowers
are a favorite, its cost is minimal, small enough to be shipped
efficiently<img src="http://www.articlesfactory.com/pic/x.gif" alt="Computer Technology Articles" border="0", sturdy and stir the heartstrings of any receiver. Its
symbolism goes back to Greek and Roman times and still rings true as
one of the best presents that can be sent.

But most sites offer
additional features to further personalize the purchase such as the
ability make a message and having it printed on a greeting card to be
sent with the magic dozen or too.

Greeting cards are gifts
unto themselves but when joined with a present it will be a powerful
instrument of spreading great joy for all seasons and all occasions.

Article Tags:
Greeting Card

Tags: Card, Essential, Gift, Greeting, Part