"Four Women" - Nina Simone

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Lyrics for "Four Women"

My skin is black
My arms are long
My hair is woolly
My back is strong
Strong enough to take the pain
Inflicted again and again
What do they call me?
My name is Aunt Sarah
My name is Aunt Sarah
Aunt Sarah

My skin is yellow
My hair is long
Between two worlds
I do belong
But my father was rich and white
He forced my mother late one night
And what do they call me?
My name is Saffronia
My name is Saffronia

My skin is tan
My hair is fine
My hips invite you
My mouth like wine
Whose little girl am I?
Anyone who has money to buy
What do they call me?
My name is Sweet Thing
My name is Sweet Thing

My skin is brown
My manner is tough
I'll kill the first mother I see!
My life has been rough
I'm awfully bitter these days
Because my parents were slaves
What do they call me?
My name is Peaches!

Some Background

A user on the Genius website made the following annotation about Nina's song:

"Written by Nina Simone, 'Four Women' was released in 1966 on her album Wild is the Wind. In the song, she creates a genealogy of black women through slavery to the present. Four characters, Aunt Sarah, Saffronia, Sweet Thing, and Peaches represent different types of black women and the lasting legacy of slavery.Though each woman speaks for herself, she describes her physical traits and the way she is seen and treated in society, and what 'they' call her."

In addition to seeing the four women as a genealogy, I want to also posit the idea that the four women are sisters because I think often we look at genealogy from a generational standpoint. Yes, the women can represent how black women in America and the lasting legacy of slavery, but I find that these four women all exist at the same linear time. Note how the fourth woman says, "Because my parents were slaves." Her anger and brown skin cannot, linearly, come last. For centuries, black American women have spanned the color spectrum and this song is showing that regardless of where we are on that spectrum, there are pitfalls. Black is black. It's not about skin or hair and creating hierarchies in our own communities does little but contribute to furthering the fragmentation of culture.   

The Song: My Take on Her Music & Lyrics

“Music, it’s as close to God as I know.” - Nina Simone

In this song, Ms. Simone marvelously creates a deeply haunting emotional pull on the heart and soul of any careful or conscientious listener. With the measured control of her singing voice and the beautifully crafted musical accompaniment of her piano talents, she creates a powerful short story of four black American women. This story is packed with historical and cultural significance that catapult it beyond the confinement of 1960s America.

“Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.” - Nina Simone

With no lyrical refrain or chorus, the musical chords between each verse are all that transition and prepare the listener for what Simone will say next. This type of wordless transition is not common in popular music - but, it is a component of classical music and we see how Simone is finding a unique way to build her own artistic style. Simone's purposefully silent voice can be seen as a commentary on the forced silence of black women's words for generations because of white supremacist notions that only value history in terms of written legacies. By leaving the listeners with naught but the suspenseful anticipation of what to expect next, Simone speaks - so powerfully - with her silence. Black history and culture is represented as the music - it is constant and continuously flowing. Written literacy of black people is represented with the lyrics - when present they are beautiful and poetic, but still of a code that may seem fragmented by Western standards of knowing. The code breakers are black women who know what she means and who know what is to come even in those silent breaks of the song. Simone performs all of these women with heart because to some degree or another, she is all of these women. 

Aunt Sarah represents the objectification of black bodies as not feeling pain. Saffronia represents the desire of a black woman to pass between both worlds, not truly feeling she belongs in either. The rape of her mother is a commentary on the preoccupation of some black people with light skin, Simone is saying that "lightness" originated as large scale rapes of enslaved women, like Aunt Sarah, who "take the pain, again and again." In first light, I read that pain against her back to be whippings and beatings, but in conjunction with Saffronia's tale - the "pain" takes a double meaning. Continuing in the vein of sexual exploitation, Sweet Thing is perhaps the most obvious example of colonized mentality, as David Dabydeen would say, "The Pornography of Empire." Simone is referencing the sexualization of black female bodies even at very young ages. Black girls are denied childhood. (More on that concept here). Peaches, a culmination of these histories is fed-up and angry. She wishes to enact the violence that has been systematically heaped upon the black experience on "the first mother I see," as in short for "motherfucker," as in anyone who tries to get in her way.