You're aware that if it started in the cotton fields and was passed down from generation to generation that's the basis of establishing culture correct?

To what end? What culture was established?

I'm aware it didn't start in Africa, which is your position. Care to revisit?

Did I not say these art forms have origins in Afrikan-American culture? Did I ever claim they were Afrikan in origin?

Indeed you did. Were you also not insinuating they were, at least at one time, uniquely African-American?

Because they were black and most certainly trace themselves back to Africa doesn't stand. Nobody in Africa was singing the blues. This is your bias that you don't see. You see black. I see American. You can't seem to find the demarcation point.

My heritage is French. I don't know a damn thing about wine. See what I mean? You're working to hard at it man.

Can you elaborate, just a little, on the white man's contribution to the blues? What about Charlie Pride? Uh oh...

Sorry, that was weak but a funny way to make the point you're missing.

No. You see Black when it's convenient. You see American when it's convenient. The artforms were birthed slavery and Jim Crow by Black people. It originates with them. There is an influence of Afrika passed down from generation to generation, but that's neither here nor there. Afrikans...in America...aka Afrikan-Americans are the creators of these genres.

As for Charlie Pride, country music was influenced by the blues. Again...the art form birthed on plantations by slaves.

Country music, at its essence, is an Irish construct. I'm so sorry you have been misinformed.

Can you elaborate on when these things happen?

When have you observed me to see black or American when it's convenient?

I fail to see the influence of Africa. I do see the influence of black people - Americans then and now.

Blues music is American. Where is the african influence? In what aspect of the music? The chord structure. The lyrics? Or perhaps suffering isn't uniquely 'African' after all?

Jazz music is a construct of many forms of music, some black, some not, but you disagree. To you it's all rooted in black people which defies the truth.

Regardless, the chord structure isn't black. They didn't invent it. That'd be European, but I fear this very important point about the 'roots' of these genres will be completely lost on you, right?

Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience and styles to the art form as well. Intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as "one of America's original art forms".

Ferris, Jean (1993) America's Musical Landscape. Brown and Benchmark. ISBN 0697125165. pp. 228, 233

Starr, Larry, and Christopher Waterman. "Popular Jazz and Swing: America's Original Art Form." IIP Digital. Oxford University Press, 26 July 2008.

Is that enough acknowledgement of this "vast", European influence?

Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music.