Ah challenge: British Jazz

[Redem]

a little funny challenge, make Jazz (although the name can change) something that was born in Great-Britain and become as big as OTL (if not more :D ).

[Tielhard]

I don't understand this challenge. Jazz is a quinisentially British form of music developed by Irish immigrants to Liverpool and Manchester and then carried by successive waves of immigrants to the USA where it was picked up by poor Blacks and to a lesser extent by the Jewish community. It is only since the Harlem renaisance in the early part of C20 that Jazz began to be claimed as an American art form. Then later still in the 1960s with the arrival of universal civil rights in the USA it began to be claimed as a black cultural item. Yet another example of US cultural imperialism. Such an extreme one that people are suggesting the true roots of Jazz can only be found in Alternative History!

[Johnnyreb]

Teilhard is quite right, that's exactly how it happened. There's always been a confusion about the origins of jazz, but there's no question it was invented in England.

The reason for the confusion is the equally undoubted fact that cricket (so long regarded as an English invention) was invented by poor blacks in the Southern USA. For some reason the two have been confused in the public mind.

If you doubt me, consider cricket terminology. We have the "boll" (subsequently becoming the hard ball with the use of cannonballs, of which there were many lying about) knocking down the "wicked". This indicates the religious nature of the first players and is reflected in the spiritual home of cricket, Lawds.

[Flocculencio]

Tielhard and Johnnyreb- I take my hat off to you, gentlemen :cool: