Jazz, Culture & Social Justice; Soundtrack of America’s Art Form

While hundreds of books have been written about the history of Jazz and begin in New Orleans, LA in 1865, Dr. Pascal Bokar Thiam’s book is the only one that makes so clearly the connection between the cultural standards of aesthetics of West Africa’s great medieval empires Ghana, Mali and Songhai and what they contributed to the identity markers of America’s art form Jazz through the development of the culture and the music of the Delta Blues away from the canons of Europe. Dr. Thiam’s point is illustrated when he quotes the great Malian guitarist from Timbuktu, Mali, Ali Farka Toure who said “In anthropology, Black Americans… that does not exist, but they are Blacks in America which means that… they came with their culture” and Dr. Thiam to add “However horrific the Middle Passage was…no one, absolutely not a single West African bound for the Americas during the Atlantic Slave Trade forgot his/her culture in sixty days, particularly given the fact that America’s oldest string instrument i.e. the banjo is from West Africa”.