The assumption that Jazz black Jazz musicians didn't have a full awareness of european classical music is offensive to them. They damn well all did.

As every armchair historian knows, slave owners had house slaves and slaves who worked in the fields.

There is much hat is sensitive and complex about that subject that I am going to conveniently sidestep.

However, what I will say is that it was a matter of some social status to have slaves who could play music to high standards.

As a result, there were many talented slaves who received music tuition in the western classical style (classical here includes everything from medieval through to whatever was contemporary.)

This included european theories of harmony, and most importantly diatonic chord theory within the framework of the european theory of functional harmony.

Some of these musicians were utter virtuosos.

This is arguably the real birthplace of Jazz.

The slaveowners house was a place where two traditions met and merged.

White folks heard the blues and Black folks learned about the 12 note scale and how to establish and move between key centres.

Those white folks who had the guts to be interested in the music that resulted (I'm guessing young and rebellious) brought the result into their drawing rooms, while those talented young slaves would invest some of their traditional african soul into the theory they were learning an Kaboom - a new art form is born.

It would no doubt have flourished more among African americans as they were not restricted by the same taboos, but to say that it did not flourish at all amongst white would be a misnomer.

It is in this way that I defne it as having an African parent and a European parent.

The two genetic codes (this is a musical metaphor) combined in the womb of Americas heartland to produce a child that did not fit.

This illegitimate embarrassing music was similarly shunned and viewed as ungodly, the work of the devil etc in a way that blues and gospel weren't.

It was beholden to no man and represented an ideal seperate from any that had come before.

Take away the chord theory and there is no jazz - the music remains in one key and the harmony remains lacking in theoretical complexity.

Take away the blues and you are left with frilly shirts and stuffy jackets in the hot sun and inapproprate hot drinks on the lawn.