Here is a comment at the Atlantic Monthly web site.

If we want to assert the thesis that "jazz is built entirely from muscial raw material imported from tropical west Africa with no other influences of any importance whatsoever" then we must account for why jazz didn't arise in the west Indies, or Brazil, or tropical west Africa itself; or we must define "jazz" in such a way that we can claim that it did arise in one or more of those places.

T.