All that jazz

SHE was a British-born heiress from a powerful, wealthy Jewish dynasty. He was a musical genius descended from West African slaves. After meeting in 1954, they were hardly ever apart until his death nearly 30 years later.

The Jazz Baroness does what a good documentary should do – reveal a story that’s not only unfamiliar but makes you go in a Victor Meldrew-like manner: “I don’t believe it”.

The woman was the exotically named – after a butterfly – Pannonica Rothschild.

He was jazz great Thelonious Monk. The film-maker behind The Jazz Baroness is her great niece, Hannah Rothschild, who does a good job revealing her great-aunt’s amazing story.

She was a woman who not only supported and associated with the jazz greats, but kept 306 cats and served Scotch from a teapot. And, oh yes, as a child Einstein taught her magic tricks.

Growing up as a Rothschild, fruit was not put on the table. Instead gardeners carried fruit trees around the table so diners could pick what they wanted.

Guests, who included kings, queens and politicians, were offered longhorn, shorthorn or Jersey milk with their tea at breakfast.

This was a woman born into a life of wealth and privilege, but who decided this wasn’t for her and reinvented herself on the other side of the Atlantic.

Hannah didn’t meet her mysterious relative until she cold-called her in New York City in 1984. Nica said to meet her in a club downtown at one in the morning, giving an indication of her unusual lifestyle.

“How will I find it?” asked Hannah.

“Just look out for the Bentley,” replied Nica.

She did, indeed, locate the club with such a car outside. She informed her aunt there were tramps drinking beer in her Bentley. “Oh good,” replied Nica, “that means no one will steal it”.

None of her five children or other members of her family wished to talk about her on camera, so Hannah’s film is inevitably biased towards her jazz life. This is no bad thing as the musicians have interesting tales to tell of Nica.

She also discovers a lost interview, detailing the moment Nica’s life changed when, in the late Forties, she heard the jazz standard Round Midnight. That one track had a mesmerising effect on her.

She met Thelonious Monk two years later in Paris and they were hardly apart until his death 28 years later. She immersed herself in the jazz world, becoming friends with all the greats, including Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins.

She was not only their patron but took the rap when drugs were found in the car she was driving with Monk and another black musician as passengers.

She married, had children and saw family members die in the Holocaust. It’s suggested that she was a freedom fighter of sorts at a time jazz musicians suffered racial prejudice and were all considered to be drunks, drug addicts and sex addicts.

As Clint Eastwood puts it, Nica embraced the whole culture of jazz musicians and rebelliousness. And it makes for a great tale.

UNREPORTED World continues to bring stories from around the globe that make your own problems seem inconsequential.

China/North Korea – The Great Escape tells how every year tens of thousands of people try to escape across the border from North Korea into neighbouring China, where they are treated as illegal immigrants and sent home to face torture or death.

For most illegals, the ultimate destination is South Korea. As the border is heavily militarised, they must take the long way round.

Reporter Oliver Steeds meets those who’ve escaped despite the North Korean guards shoot-to-kill policy. The exodus began in the late Nineties because of famine in North Korea. Those who make it across the border have to live in hiding in China. Unable to work legally, they end up staying in slums. The Chinese offer a £20 bounty for any North Korean turned in.

The stories we hear aren’t pleasant.

Like the woman held with her husband and baby in a Chinese detention centre before being sent back to North Korea.

Her husband died after he was tortured; her baby died of malnutrition.

Some women are trafficked into the sex industry, and a mere five per cent of the 300,000 who are thought to have escaped have made it safely to South Korea.