From Timbuktu to the Mississippi Delta Conclusion

As a child of mixed Senegalese and French heritage who grew up in Mali, Senegal and France and whose journey led him to teach Jazz in the United States of America, I was always fascinated and intrigued by the level of cultural amnesia and the dearth of academic information that existed with respect to the socio-cultural contributions that West Africans taken from their continent through slavery had brought to the United States of America for 350 years. As an outsider looking in, I was often puzzled by and sought to understand why European Americans generated dance moves and rhythmic expressions on the dance floors of the US that were closer in aesthetics to those of West Africans than the original dance moves of their informed European ethnic heritage from Vienna or the Paris Opera.

Will Smith
Tom Hanks
Camille Pissarro
Romare Bearden
Ulysses Grant