Latin & World Jazz

As a hybrid of African and European traditions, jazz has always been a music of cultural cross-pollination. The earliest definition of jazz, written by Jelly Roll Morton, made explicit the music's "Latin tinge." In the 1930s, guitarist Django Reinhardt incorporated European folk music into his playing; ten years later the fusion of jazz with Cuban rhythms gave rise to an international dance craze. During the same period, the mellifluous sounds of Bossa Nova filtered up from Brazil, led by seminal songwriter-pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim. In the late 1960s, inspired by psychedelia's fascination with the sitar, jazz musicians began incorporating drones and modal, Indian-influenced improvisations. Meanwhile, Avant-Garde Jazz guru Sun Ra's music borrowed heavily from west African drum patterns. And in Nigeria, political radical and master improviser Fela Kuti infused his country's rhythms with American jazz and Funk. Full of unpredictable, inquisitive and voracious innovators, jazz has spawned an astonishing diversity of hybrids.