Thelonious Monk and Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter


Thelonious Monk and the Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter — who he named the tune "Pannonica" after. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Abrams Image/Harry N. Abrams

Recently, I was thumbing through Three Wishes, the book published last October featuring photographs by Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswater, aka the Baroness of Jazz. The photos are of various jazz musicians at work (or at play) in the Baroness' home during the 1960s.

The title is taken from the question she asked these musicians: if you were granted three wishes, what would they be? A handful expressed a desire for jazz to be considered by the music world to be a serious, legitimate art form on par with other "serious" musical genres.

I thought about those wishes as I read an announcement from the National Endowment for the Arts about a planned cultural exchange between the City of Los Angeles and the Mexican City of Guadalajara. The event is Guadalajara's annual International Book Fair, and the concept is to offer a portrait of Los Angeles through the works of writers, film makers, architects and jazz musicians.

I wondered what the musicians quoted in the Baroness' book would think about one of their near-peers, Wayne Shorter, being offered up as an example of a city's collective musical expression. Two other groups have also been invited to perform: Poncho Sanchez's band and The Phil Ranelin Jazz Ensemble.

Poncho Sanchez


Poncho Sanchez at this year's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Photo Credit: Rick Diamond/Getty Images

Shorter, Sanchez and Ranelin all make Los Angeles their home, though only Sanchez was raised in L.A. and exposed to the jazz that came from the famed Central Avenue jazz clubs. Yet I would have to agree with the organizers' position that collectively, each of the three represent various strains of an art form that is appreciated as an elevated, sometimes even spiritual form of expression by fans around the world. That would have been unheard of back in the days when the Baroness was snapping Polaroids of Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins and Thelonious Monk.

Jazz as a reflection of the character of a major U.S. city would probably seem unlikely for certain New York musicians in the 1950s and '60s, whose hometown government made them register as Cabaret Performers to help keep track of and sometimes punish jazz musicians. For those who wished for a little respect and dignity for their music, this cultural exchange is another example of how that wish came true.