AMIRI BARAKA (b. 1934)
A poet, activist, playwright and jazz critic, Baraka championed several of the most influential twentieth century ideologies. He was dismissed from Howard University and the US Air Force; he then moved to Greenwich Village. Between 1957 and 1965, Baraka worked with the bohemian and the Beat community in New York city, and was a friend of Allan Ginsberg. Radicalized by social and political injustice, Baraka became a Black Nationalist and published his poetry collection Black Magic (1969) in which he inverted negative stereotypes of African Americans. In 1974, he converted to Marxism. Baraka remains active as a poet and intellectual after retiring from twenty years of teaching. In 2002, Baraka was made poet laureate of New Jersey. Baraka Old people used to say, you don’t miss your water until your well run dry. You know what I mean. So that in the midst of that when you could say see Monk and Miles Davies you know and Duke Ellington and Billie Holliday and Sarah Vaughan the same night if you were in that kind of place, New York City let’s say. That was such an incredible array of riches that I don’t think we fully, fully understood you know what that gift was you know.
STANLEY CROUCH (b. 1945)
Born in LA, Crouch started writing at the age of eight and became involved with the civil rights movement while in junior high school. After witnessing the Watts Riot in 1965, he became a Black Nationalist and from 1965 to 1967 he was an actor and playwright for the Studio Watts Company. Influenced by Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray, Crouch later moved away from what he perceived as the reactionary Black Nationalists. He taught at Claremont College 1968-1975. In 1975 he moved to New York where he played drums with a jazz band, and in the 1980s Crouch became a spokesperson for Wynton Marsalis. He is outspoken and controversial, criticizing more progressive forms of jazz and the rise of gangsta rap. Crouch became notorious for an article claiming white critics praised white jazz musicians beyond their ability, after which he lost his job with The Jazz Times. Crouch was staff writer for Village Voice (1979-1988) and has published three collections of essays and the novel Don’t the Moon Look Lonesome: A Novel in Blues and Swing. Crouch on Nica "Monk and the Baroness came from very, very different places socially and economically. "
GARY GIDDINS
Inspired to become a critic after stumbling across film reivews in his father’s backcopies of Esquire magazine, Giddins discovered jazz at age 15, revelling in critics such as Dan Morgenstern. Encouraged by his college professor Giddins abandoned his early hopes of writing fiction to pursue criticism. Morgenstern eventually gave him his first big break for the magazine Down Beat and Giddins has been writing prolifically ever since. Author of several books, including the compendiums Weatherbird and Visions of Jazz, Giddins has been writing for the Village Voice since 1973 and is considered today one
of America’s preeminent jazz critics. Giddins on Nica "Monk wrote the ‘Bolivar Blues’ because she stayed at the Boulevard Hotel, he also wrote Panonica. Others wrote Nika’s Dream and Gigi Grice wrote a piece about her. she was a great fan and she was a dynamic women with a title, Rothschild, and she gave a certain amount of cache to wherever she went, simply by virtue of who she was."
IRA GITLER
Gitler has been involved with jazz since he was 8 years old. He writes
"I was introduced to jazz by my older brother (and the times in which we were living, as
well) when I was 8. By the time I was 10, in December 1938, I was a confirmed Count Basie (and Lester Young), Jimmie Lunceford and Benny Goodman fan, just to name a few. When my brother went into the Navy during World War II I kept the record collection going. I wrote columns for my high school and college newspapers and, in 1950, the year I returned from college, I went to work for Prestige Records"
In addition to annotating albums and producing recordings, concerts and tributes, he has produced recordings for Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis to name but a few. He was the New York editor of Down Beat magazine twice, in 1963–4 and 1967–70. As a freelance writer he has written for Metronome, Down Beat, JazzTimes (USA), Swing Journal (Japan), Musica Jazz (Italy) and Jazz Magazine (France), as well as the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Village Voice, Vibe, and New York Magazine. Gitler has written several books about Jazz, including co-authoring The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz with Leonard Feather. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New Jersey Jazz Society in 2001, and one from the Jazz Journalists Association in 2002.
Gitler on Nica 'She was a patroness of the arts who not only helped the musicians whose music she loved financially but she went to hear them play, she was a lover of their music. It wasn’t well I appreciate you as an artist, I will help you with some dollars. She was totally involved with the music and she loved the music and she loved being on the scene."
ROBIN KELLEY
Currently Professor of History and American Studies and Ethnicity at Univeristy of Southern California, Kelley has published several books on African American culture and politics. He has published several books, including Into the Fire: African Americans Since 1970; and Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class, as well as countless opinion pieces and book reviews. He has been chair of the NYU History Department. Kelley taught at Columbia as a visiting professor in African American Studies and later became a full professor in the Anthropology Department as well as Columbia’s Louis Armstrong Professor of Jazz Studies. He is currently in preparation for a biography of Thelonious Monk, working in close collaboration with the Monk family who have granted him access to previously undisclosed material.
Kelley on Nica 'The Baroness somehow she had great ears, she was able to hear the more advanced artists. That’s why she loved Charlie Parker, Monk, Silver, Sonny Clark, Art Blakey, all the great jazz musicians of that era in the 1950s.'
DAN MORGENSTERN
Fleeing Nazi-occupied Austria during the War, Morgenstern arrived in New York just in time for the jazz explosion in 1947. He has been involved with jazz professionally since 1958, editing Jazz, Metronome and Down Beat as well as being a critic and columnist for countless other papers such as The New York Post. Morgenstern has also taught jazz and served on the faculty for the Institute of Jazz, the Rutgers University Masters Program and he has received six Grammy awards for Best Album Notes. He has been Director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University since 1976 and therefore is responsible for the largest collections of jazz memorabilia in the world. He received ASCAP’s Deems Taylor Award for Jazz People in 1977 and in 2005 for Living With Jazz, a book of his collected writings. Morgenstern remains one of the centuries finest and longest-standing jazz appreciators. Morgenstern on Nica '(some said) the reason why she was on the scene was involving that must be because she liked to sleep with black men..that’s a very basic, stupid way of looking at it,those of us who knew better you know would argue that that was not the case you know.'
VAL WILMER (b. 1941)
Wilmer is a writer and photographer whose work has focused on jazz music. The 1970 book Jazz People profiled her interviews with luminaries such as Babs Gonzales and Art Farmer. Other publications include The Face of Black Music, As Serious As Your Life, and Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This. She has photographed artists from Jimmy Hendrix to Dusty Springfield, showing musicians at rest as well as performing. In 1983 Wilmer founded the first British female photographer's agency with Maggie Murray and Sally Greenhill. She has exhibited internationally at The National Portrait Gallery and The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and Musee d’Arte Moderne, Paris. Her reviews and interviews are regular features in the jazz press and music journalism.
Wilmer on Nica "the idea that a wealthy European woman, a white woman was a patron of African/American musicians, there was something slightly odd about it."
Rosie Boycott
Co-founder of Spare Rib, former Editor of the Express, The Independent and GQ, Rosie Boycott is one of the UK¹s leading journalists, authors and broadcasters, and has frequently been in the vanguard of significant social and political movements. She appears regularly on radio and TV, and has chaired the committees for both the Orange Prize and the Samuel Johnson Prize.
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