"a complete break from the roots of the western classical tradition into a wholly new art form informed by the limitations of what they were leaving behind"
Wait, what? A whole lot of the western harmonic tradition went right into jazz. The "standards" are Tin Pan Alley songs from the first half of the 20th century. A lot of the bebop harmony came straight out of Debussy and Ravel. Third Stream music was an explicit synthesis of classical music and jazz. Some of Coltrane's innovations came out of Nicolas Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Musical Patterns. The walking bass was in Baroque music (Bach). While you cannot neglect the African side of it (rhythm, the blues, improvisation) nor neglect that it was Black people who put together the pieces and created the music, saying that it was a "complete break from the roots of the western classical tradition" is farcical.
And it's a tradition, not a cargo cult. There are still people alive today who played with Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and so forth. I have played with some of them. They tell stories, give advice, and pass on things that you might not get otherwise. Before the advent of jazz programs in colleges, the music was passed on via an apprenticeship system, which is diminished but still extant.
Wait, what? A whole lot of the western harmonic tradition went right into jazz. The "standards" are Tin Pan Alley songs from the first half of the 20th century. A lot of the bebop harmony came straight out of Debussy and Ravel. Third Stream music was an explicit synthesis of classical music and jazz. Some of Coltrane's innovations came out of Nicolas Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Musical Patterns. The walking bass was in Baroque music (Bach). While you cannot neglect the African side of it (rhythm, the blues, improvisation) nor neglect that it was Black people who put together the pieces and created the music, saying that it was a "complete break from the roots of the western classical tradition" is farcical.
And it's a tradition, not a cargo cult. There are still people alive today who played with Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and so forth. I have played with some of them. They tell stories, give advice, and pass on things that you might not get otherwise. Before the advent of jazz programs in colleges, the music was passed on via an apprenticeship system, which is diminished but still extant.