Although jazz emerged as an art form around the turn of the Twentieth century in the southern United States, its roots extend backward over several centuries. The music largely developed from a synthesis of many African and European forms that was achieved through the institution of slavery. Blacks were captured or purchased from specific "factory" areas in West Africa—the Portuguese took from Senegal and transported to Brazil, the English plundered the Ashantis of the Gold Coast and sold them in North America, the French acquired slaves in Dahomey and sold them in Haiti and Louisiana, Dutch and Spanish merchants entered the slave trade and sold to the West Indies.

When the slaves arrived in the New World they instantly became African-Americans and their original African forms evaporated as they merged with the European music of the slave masters. Now, after 500 years of musical synthesis the search for these forms has been taken up by ethnomusicologists, historiographic scholars, and various jazz musicians and composers. The producers of Jazz at Lincoln Center have joined in the search.

Earlier this season, I wrote of an early music form—Frevo—from Northeastern Brazil that received its first U.S. exposure at a JALC concert. Last evening, February 20, another series of African forms were resurrected in the premiere of an extended composition dubbed, "Cinque: Suite of the Caribbean." Grammy-nominated composer/pianist