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Feeling Nina Simone

She had been the toast of New York City’s pop scene for all of two years, but Nina Simone was already cementing her legend as a no-nonsense diva.

There she was onstage at the Apollo Theater in February 1961, barely two weeks before her 28th birthday. She was a slip of a woman, haughty and remote, her dusky voice commanding and blues-suffused. Halfway through her spoken introduction to Nat Adderley’s “Work Song,” Nina thought she heard giggles and chatter, which wasn’t unusual for the notoriously rowdy crowd at the famed Harlem venue.

But the former Eunice Waymon of Tryon, N.C., was having none of it. She snapped: “For the very first time in your lives, act like ladies and gentlemen at the Apollo.”

The crowd shut up immediately, and Nina turned back to the piano and performed. The artist, whose only smash at the time was a tear-stained rendition of “I Love You, Porgy,” was hard to pin down even then. Nina’s approach was steeped in classical music. In fact, she was trained as a classical pianist and had hopes of breaking into that lily-white field. But her music rippled with the blues, jazz and gospel. European styles and African roots music were also braided into her work.

But her repertoire turned bitingly political, starting with 1963’s self-penned “Mississippi Goddam.” She traded elegant gowns for vibrant Afrocentric garb, and as she spiraled into the depths of mental illness, Nina’s behavior on and off the stage became more erratic. When she wasn’t rambling through her set, she would cuss out ticket holders—or not show up at all. She would pull knives on musicians and shoot at noisy neighbors.

But fans all over the world kept coming back. Although she never matched the commercial success of contemporaries like Ray Charles, Sam Cooke or Aretha Franklin, Nina still became an international icon. Her commitment to using her music as a weapon, as a way to raise consciousness about the sociopolitical storms gathering around us, was unwavering throughout her 40-year career.

So it’s fitting for Women’s History Month that we remember Nina Simone, an oft-misunderstood artist who refused to compromise in an industry and a country that didn’t know (and still don’t know) what to make of self-assured, dark-skinned women with soul, brains and talent to spare. Her artistic triumphs and public struggles helped karate-kick down doors for the likes of Erykah Badu, India.Arie and, of course, Lauryn Hill, who name-checked Nina in the Fugees’ hit “Ready or Not.”

The legend’s strange and sometimes-volatile life is explored in the new book, Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone by Nadine Cohodas, whose last book, Queen, was a biography of another troubled soul sister, Dinah Washington. Like that book, Princess Noire is painstakingly researched. It also clears up factual deficiencies found in Nina’s 1991 autobiography, I Put a Spell On You.

Why Black People Need More Vitamin D!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why Black People Need More Vitamin D

Why Black People Need More Vitamin D
Melanin protects us from harmful UV rays. But it also blocks our defenses against diabetes and cancer.

Vitamin D may be the most important supplement you’re not taking—or not taking enough of. Most of us—and even our doctors—have little idea that taking regular amounts of it may help stave off some of the most common life-threatening illnesses.

Best known for building bones and preventing rickets—a bone disease more common in the days of Charles Dickens than today—vitamin D has recently been shown to lower the risk of diabetes, hypertension, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis, memory loss and several types of cancer.

Despite this good news, most Americans don’t get near enough vitamin D. And among African Americans, some experts have called vitamin D deficiency a “hidden epidemic” and have speculated that low levels are to blame for higher rates of diseases such as hypertension, heart disease and diabetes. The Chicago Sun-Times went even further, linking African-American death rates from aggressive forms of breast and prostate cancer to low levels of vitamin D.

In the body, vitamin D is produced by sun exposure. But Americans aren’t exposed to as much sunlight as we used to be—either because we’re inside watching TV or hunched over computers or avoiding the sun to prevent skin cancer.

So how much vitamin D do we need? That’s still being debated. In March, researchers at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine found that 3 in 4 Americans had insufficient levels of vitamin D, up from about 1 in 2, when measured 20 years ago.

Last fall, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended infants, children and adolescents double the amount of D they ingest each day. The government recommends a daily intake of 200 international units (IU) from birth to age 50, 400 IU for people between 51 and 70, and 600 IU for those over 70.

Other experts have suggested even bigger boosts. The University of Colorado researchers advised increasing vitamin D intake to 1,000 IU daily. The well-respected Institute of Medicine went even further, recommending 2,000 IU a day. So drinking fortified milk, at 100 IU a glass, is just not enough.

New national guidelines are expected next year, and there’s little doubt that recommended vitamin D intake will be increased.

To help sort through the vitamin D maze, we spoke to Dr. Consuelo Hopkins Wilkins, an assistant professor of medicine and psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who has spent nearly a decade studying this overlooked vitamin.

The Root: How does exposure to sunlight produce vitamin D?
Dr. Consuelo Hopkins Wilkins: Everybody has the ability to make vitamin D. In the second layer of the skin, there’s a kind of a pre-vitamin D. When the skin is exposed to ultraviolet light, it activates this pre-vitamin D, which makes its way through the blood stream to the liver and kidney. There, it gets further activated from pre-vitamin D to vitamin D.

TR: What has caused our worsening problem of vitamin D deficiency?
CHW In general, people are exposed to the sun less, partly because of the risk of skin cancer. And we’re wearing more sunscreen, which blocks production of vitamin D. People are also living longer, and as we get older, we’re less likely to be in the sun. Aging also affects the skin’s ability to convert pre-vitamin D into vitamin D, and in older people, the liver and kidney can’t activate it as well.

Another contributing factor is that more and more people are overweight or obese. Research shows that when you expose overweight and normal weight people to the same amount of sun, the heavier group doesn’t produce as much vitamin D. No one is sure why, but it may be that vitamin D is “hiding” in fat cells.

TR: Why are African Americans particularly vulnerable to vitamin D deficiency?
CHW Melanin protects the skin against ultraviolet light. But by blocking the sun’s rays, melanin affects the skin’s ability to activate pre-vitamin D. So the darker the skin, the less vitamin D you produce. In the scientific literature, the difference is striking.

TR: How do you know if you have enough vitamin D in the body?
CHW Your doctor can give you a blood test. You probably have to ask for it, and here in St. Louis it costs about $90. There’s also a home test you can use, which costs about $65 [or] $75. Serum vitamin D is measured in nanograms. Ideally, your level should be over 30 ng/ml but less than 100. Too much vitamin D in the blood, which is rare, can lead to toxicity.