Ethos in Nina Simone "I Wish I Knew (How It Would Feel To Be Free)"

In Nina Simone's ballad, she wanted her audience to feel a deeper connection to the feeling of the struggles of many blacks of her time. In order to do this, she had to exude both a great deal of external and internal ethos to establish a great connection with her audience. Her internal ethos as an artist is one of deep concern and humanistic motivator. You can tell this by the lyrics in her song, such as " I wish I could share, All the love in my heart." She also states "I wish I could break, All the chains holdin' me." which alludes to her more sincere, thoughtful personality that although not aggressive in nature, is concern about something. This lures the audience to listen more to the song as it goes because they want to know what could be making her upset. The build up of her ethos finally climax's at the point where she says "Then I'd sing cause I'd know yeah, And I'd sing cause I'd know yeah". The audience at this point must realize that both her internal and external ethos is agreement with fighting for some change that has not yet received yet because she would have declared it already. If the audience goes ahead to read more about her story after the song they might get a better understanding of what she is fighting for based on her race and the time period alone: equal and just laws for African Americans. Nina Simone did a great job and thinking out how she wanted to be represented in front of her audience. Someone with motives but not critical in her delivery, which elevated her performance that much greater.

-Okeze