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A Black American classmate of mine told me one of her " Africana Studies" professor said Caribbeans creates Jazz. The professor was an African. That's dangerous to the knowledge and confidence of Black American students to usurp them out of their own cultural traditions.
Influences & incorporations of other cultures is not the same as innovation. "Caribbean" is also vague, and the fact is Buddy Bolden & Scott Joplin utilized habanera as a result of travelling back and forth on cruise ships from NOLA to Cuba. They liked the sound & incorporated it
Jazz is distinct as a musical genre from the rest of the Diaspora specifically because of its birthplace and the people who birthed it. Jazz couldn't be found anywhere outside the Southern United States because there were no Baptist churches nor prevalence of certain instruments
Jazz in NOLA at least was a product of Africans being free enough to practice their cultural traditions on a wider scale. Many of those enslaved Africans were moved from the Upper South as well as the original Fon people who were enslaved there as a French territory
The Slaves from the Upper South were mainly of Mandinka, Wolof, Jola , Fulani , Hausa etc. tribes or descent , thus the prevalence of the Banjo, field holler , Baptist churches they converted to etc. as well. Kongo peoples also were brought to the South East, thus Conjure in NOLA
The banjo is not a NOLA exclusive instrument , it was recorded to be prevalent in any place where " Senegambian"( Hausa, Fulani, Mandinka , Jola , Wolof, Bamileke or Islamic influenced Africans) were at. That includes the Carolinas and a lot of the States near it.
Jazz is fundamentally an African-American experience, with minor incorporations of other Diasporic musical forms to spice it up, that's it. It was developed by us for us , it is a Pan-Afro-American thing as it early innovators came from other parts of the South than NOLA. Read!
