Go to the Devil, the Lord said

The song for this post is Feeling Good by Nina Simone. Hah. Nah, I’m messing with you, it is Sinnerman by Nina Simone.

This was a hard post to write because I would start to listen to the song for inspiration and get distracted for a solid 6 minutes and realize oh damn, I wanted to write an entry about how much I love this song and get back to writing it.

My sister took lessons in singing in the style of Nina Simone a few years ago, I want to say…2016? Feeling Good was one of her practice songs. I visited the US twice a year or so in the past few years, and I would hear her sing it in between joking about other things and the Rotimatic making bitter, bitter rotis because of my sister’s ingredient mix. I don’t remember her explicitly singing Sinnerman, but one thing leads to another with me, so my sister practicing Feeling Good meant I would listen to Sinnerman for the next three weeks.

Nina Simone’s version is just breathtakingly powerful. It hooks you right in the beginning - the piano, then the drums, then her voice. Nina Simone’s voice is so strong and so well controlled. The way she moves her voice, it’s more expressive than if someone literally drew the sinner running from rock to river to sea and turning to God to beg for forgiveness. The song is a traditional spiritual, so it has the chorus, claps for percussion, but what Nina Simone’s version gets so amazingly right is the use of silence. Some instruments drop out and it is just claps for a few seconds around the 5-minute mark, the piano comes in and is not some sforzando but smooth and engaging. The claps stop, the piano continues and you hear Nina using rhythmic breathing as a way to bring us back in.

Nothing makes me feel like I’m on a musical journey like the stop-start, emphasis on one instrument, showing the power of that one piece of human musical ingenuity. Simone does this at the ~8-minute mark when she improvs with her voice - it reminds me of the Carnatic/Hindustani emphasis on improvisation and the proper techniques for it. It sounds very very emotive. You can feel the stress, the desperation flow through her, the indescribable horror it must be to be Sinnerman when the time comes.

The lyrics are fairly straightforward - a sinner is caught on Judgment Day - the bleeding sea, the boiling river, there is no rock that can hide you from the wrath of the Lord. But the Lord says “go to the Devil” - because you, sinner man, belong to him. Of course, in Christian theology we are all sinners, so this is a universal lyric in some ways! I don’t have any religious belief but I connect with these lyrics deeply - you can’t hide from judgment. It will come for you. You just have to face the Devil and say “No, I can redeem myself.” To be clear, sinner man never does that in the song but, I mean, one can hope for growth.

I fucking love this song so much. I have listened to it 200 times at least. I listened to it 9 times just in the past two days while writing this post. Do yourself a favor. Turn off all the lights, put on some good headphones, comfy clothes and listen to this song and if 10 minutes later you don’t feel the desire to come thank me for inviting you to do that, go run to the rock my friend because you’ve got some devils to face.