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[[image - black and white photograph of Bessie Smith]]
[[caption]] BESSIE SMITH [[/caption]]

[[image - black and white photograph of ETHEL WATERS]]
[[caption]] ETHEL WATERS [[/caption]]

[[image - black and white photograph of Louis Armstrong kissing a trumpet]]
[[caption]] LOUIS ARMSTRONG [[/caption]]

[[image - black and white photograph of Sam Wooding and The Chocolate Kiddies with their instruments]]
[[caption]] SAM WOODING AND 'THE CHOCOLATE KIDDIES'-They took Europe by storm and established many firsts for Black Jazz [[/caption]]

The American Black & Jazz
by Wilma Dobie

The main current of authentic American music is jazz.

During the Bicentennial we are constantly reminded that America is "the melting pot of races" and it is not to far out to suggest that jazz is the melting pot of music.

Our founding fathers drew heavily on their British heritage to set up a new form of government. The Black founding fathers of jazz drew heavily on their African heritage to create a new form of music. None can deny the overwhelming Black origin of jazz yet the "melting pot" process brought Americans of every nationality into the mainstream of jazz.

During the early days of World War II, a Belgian, Robert Goffin, credited with publishing a first book on jazz, wrote: "The history of jazz has a social significance of which I am quite aware and which I am fond of stressing. At the very moment when America goes to war to defend the democratic spirit against the totalitarian challenge, it is fitting to remember that, in the last twenty years, jazz has done more to bring blacks and whites together than three amendments to the Constitution have done in seventy-five."

Ironically, Europe was the first to regard jazz as a serious art form and published the first books and magazines on jazz. Following World War II volumes have been written on jazz by American authors and jazz musicians themselves who have contributed some of the most illuminating documentation.

Like all true art forms, jazz has spread throughout the world and each artist, regardless of national origin, has added his own special chapter to the history of jazz. The roots, nonetheless, remain indisputably American and the hub of creativity generates here where it all began.

Regrettably, recognition of this singular American art has been treated as a step-child since its very beginning and remains so today. Nowhere is this more in evidence than the past and present handling of appropriations by the National Endowment for the Arts. An estimated 85 per cent of the taxpayer's funding of the arts goes to symphony, opera and other classical music endeavors.

Is this policy governed by the fact that most Americans prefer classical music? No way. Alan Lomax, a foremost author and historian of America's musical heritage, renowned for the first book written on ragtime, "They All Played Ragtime," tells us: "After a half century of music appreciation courses in every school, coast to coast broadcasts, red and blue seal records, only 7 per cent of Americans attend concerts of classical music. The rest prefer one or more of our many brands of indigenous and homegrown music."

Only heaven knows where or when the first "home-grown" roots of jazz were sewn. It's romantically accepted that New Orleans is the cradle of jazz and anyone in disagreement is subject to having his buttons stripped