At the Montreux jazz festival, in 1990, Nina Simone sat at a white baby grand. Her hair was cornrowed into a bun, her cheeks brushed red; double drop earrings grazed her neckline. Leaning into the mic, she introduced the mostly white, transfixed crowd to a jaunty, go-go song: “Liberian Calypso.”
“This is a song we learned from when we were in Liberia, for the three years we lived there; I guess most of you know about that,” she said. “In the middle of it I want you to sing with me: ‘Run, Nina.’” As the audience warmed up to the chorus, Simone slammed on the spruce, singing the story of that night at The Maze…
I listened to “Liberian Calypso” again and again. A 1982 release from Simone’s penultimate album, Fodder on My Wings, it isn’t her most striking composition, yet there is something remarkable about it: the story of an erotic dance, told through small and sweet lyrics (“My joy it was so complete, you know. My friend was happy, he said, ‘Go! Go!’”). With its colorful chords and childlike verse (“I danced for hours, hours on end. I said, ‘Dear Lord, you are my friend’”), almost all sensuality has been scraped away, exposing the muscle below (“You brought me home to Liberia, and all other places are inferior”). That night at The Maze, Nina Simone stripped right down to her bones.
And the song she wrote about it is—rare for Simone—a love song without longing, a ballad to a land that set her free.
”- “Nina Simone in Liberia.”