Sonji kimmons biography books

SONJI KIMMONS (photo by Susan McRae)

I see my friend Sonji Kimmons as kind of a metaphor for this country's relationship to its collective soul. Sonji grew up in South Los Angeles -- her mother was a nurse at the County-USC Medical Center. She sang gospel in church and when she was 13 cut some of her own 45s with Dot Records, one of the archetypical Blues music labels. It wasn't until she got to Europe that she forged a really good concert career as a jazz pianist and singer. She's been back in Los Angeles since just before the turn of the Millennium. She returned because her mother was sick. But of late she's developing an obsession -- it's time to return to Europe where she was treated as the real artist that she is.

America has a history of allowing Europe to recognize its greatest talents first. The greatest American writer of all times, Mark Twain, was dismissed as little more than a humorous newspaper columnist and raconteur of the California Gold Rush. It was the English who first realized his importance.

Unquestionably Jazz is America's greatest musical form. It is our classical music. Like the Russians, we have excelled in producing great writers and great musicians. But our musicians, whether classical or jazz, often have to go to Europe to make their liv

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