Hundreds bid farewell to Nina Simone at funeral in southern France
Right: Nina Simone's daughter Lisa (2nd R) urged mourners not to let her mother's memory fade.
Some 300 mourners flocked to this southern French town on Friday to pay their last respects to legendary US jazz and blues singer Nina Simone, who died earlier this week at the age of 70.
South African singer Miriam Makeba, a close friend of Simone, was among those in attendance at the funeral in the Our Lady of the Assumption church at Carry-le-Rouet, just west of the port city of Marseille.
"She was not only an artist but also a freedom fighter," Makeba said before taking a seat inside the church close to Simone's 36-year-old daughter Lisa for the ceremony.
Simone, who was born Eunice Waymon to a poor black family in the US state of North Carolina in 1933, died on Monday of natural causes in Carry-le-Rouet, where she lived for the last eight years of her life.
The singer, known as one of the last great jazz divas, was also a committed civil rights activist in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s, fighting oppression as a black woman from the segregated southern states.
The funeral ceremony began with a recording of Jacques Brel's "Ne me quitte pas" (Don't Leave Me), which Simone had incorporated into her repertoire.
"We were the greatest and I love you," read a message from British pop star Elton John, nestled in an arrangement of yellow roses on the church's altar.
"Of course Nina wasn't perfect, but she fought for the rights of blacks in the United States, and for that reason alone, I'm sure she's up above now. Thank you, Nina," Father Guy de Fatto, a former jazz bassist, told mourners.
"She loved France and the French. I ask you not to let her memory fade. Talk about her, listen to her music," said her visibly moved daughter Lisa, before singing a gospel hymn.
Simone's daughter -- known professionally as Simone -- is currently starring in John's Broadway production of "Aida."
Memorial services are to be held in New York and in Simone's home town of Tryon, North Carolina, for all those who could not attend Friday's ceremony, according to Javier Collados, the assistant to Simone's manager.
Simone was to be cremated later in the day in Marseille, with only her immediate family present. At her request, family members will spread her ashes in several African countries, Collados said.
The singer, who later became known as the "High Priestess of Soul," started playing piano at age four and went on to study at New York's prestigious Juilliard School of Music to become a classical pianist.
She changed her name to Nina Simone -- the surname in honor of French actress Simone Signoret -- and cut her first records in the late 1950s, making a career not only as a nightclub singer but as a pianist, arranger and composer.
Simone scored her first major hit with her rendition of "I Loves You Porgy," from the George Gershwin opera "Porgy and Bess".