Her stunning recording debut in 1959, when she was in her mid-twenties, aspiring to be a classical pianist, and from the get-go — as per Daphne A. Brooks’ sleeve-notes — ‘an astonishingly daring, dazzlingly confident, endlessly adventurous artist with a deep well of formidable instrumentality up her sleeve as well as a wide and robust, rich and varied knowledge of jazz, blues, American songbook, folk and spiritual standards and aesthetics.’
Several signature tunes here already, too.

A previously unreleased recording made at the Newport Jazz Festival in July,1966.

The Amazing Nina Simone, Nina Simone At Town Hall, Nina At Newport, Forbidden Fruit, Nina At The Village Gate, Nina Simone Sings Ellington, Nina Simone At Carnegie Hall, Folksy Nina.
All eight original LPs, plus twenty-nine bonus tracks.

Her last Columbia, from 1979. This includes disco mixes of Love Dancin’, and the Diana Ross classic Touch Me In The Morning.

The Bristolian bad boy, ex of Skudge and R-Zone, touting a blazing cocktail of acid mayhem and Wormhole-era Ed Rush. Other bad influences, by turn: Bunker and mid-90s Metalheadz; the tension and darkness of Torque; the Vangelis whoosh.

Singing, amongst ditlhaka reedpipes, and the lesiba mouth bow.

‘A transcendental new music,’ wrote Lester Bangs, ‘which flushes categories away and, while using musical devices from all styles and cultures, is defined mainly by its deep emotion and unaffected originality.’

A funky afro-rock classic, his 1969 debut for Ahmad Jamal’s label by this future director of Amandla (the cultural ensemble of the ANC).

Ragas with intensely controlled and expressive singing from South India, in the uncommon, neglected Carnatic tradition.