when you say the African-American musical tradition, what do you mean specifically?? like elements of this tradition are you referring to????
Surely there is "nothing new under the sun" and we could never pinpoint who truly innovated stuff; maybe someone else emphasized rhythm like James Brown but did not have the resources to make the records. I guess elevens and thirteenths already existed but Charlie Parker used them differently........and the be-boppers formed a nexus. Kodwo Eshun talks about how music is its own genesis and that musical movements can not be relegated to history but, I think it is somewhere in between. I'm still thinking about this one.......I don't know that anyone did what Jimi Hendrix did before him but maybe differents artists had ideas but were not able to carry them out..... still thinking about why we call people innovators and of course things are always contextual. Five
