About the author: Dr. Larry Ross received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Missouri, Columbia. He is currently Assistant Professor of African American Cultural Studies at the University of Lincoln.2002 0-7734-6857-9
This study examines the migration of African American jazz musicians to other parts of the world from 1919 to the present. It provides evidence that African American jazz musicians fared better in the diaspora than they did in America where jazz and its inventors were born. Characterized as bereft of ‘culture’ in America, they were hailed as the epitome of high culture in Europe, Asia, and the Soviet Union: they fraternized with royalty in Europe while Jim Crow laws prevailed in America. The study begins with the emergence of jazz music in America, examines musicians who traveled abroad, and their lives and influences in postwar Europe, including Germany from 1925-1945, and also presents some surprising statistics on the death rates of jazz and classical musicians in the US and abroad. The study, written by an anthropologist who is also a jazz musician, provides a treatment of the cultural, historical, artistic, innovative, and aesthetic aspects of the migration of African American jazz musicians to the diaspora.2013 0-7734-2646-9
Ross is the first scholar to argue that there is a shared origin of Nile Valley Civilization between Nubian and Egyptian cultures. Nubia today is known as the nation-states of Sudan and South Sudan, and has been misrepresented for thousands of years by Egyptian sources, which minimized the role the people played in world history. This book draws on recent archaeological findings that claim Pharonic symbolism, sacred bark, and serekh, are of Nubian origin, not Egyptian. The author provides an updated re-examination of the Meroitic Period (300 B.C. – 400 A.D.) in lieu of this new information.