Early jazz

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1. yakitoJul 2024
   For anyone interested in the origins of jazz I recommend the book Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development by Schuller. It covers mostly 1920-1930 and a bit of its origins is west Africa.
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2. seanhunterDec 2021
   It's really big. If you listen to Bembe or High Life music, you realise the whole 6 vs 4 rhythmic thing that is a fundamental crossrythm in Jazz and a big part of the Swing thing as well as being at the root of "Afro-Cuban" music is fundamentally West African. As well as Louis, Dizzy Gillespie, Coltrane, Mingus, Pharaoh Sanders, Sun Ra, Miles and many others explored this African connection a lot.

   If you're interested in studying this further iirc Gunther Schuller discussed it in "Early Jazz" (one of the first books about Jazz History that actually isn't terrible from a musicological point of view) and Nicholas Cook also discusses it in "Music, Imagination and Culture" (which is an amazing book). Both of those will give you a "Western" perspective of the influence. I don't know a great reference I can recommend from an African point of view unfortunately.

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