Page "Jazz" Paragraph 22

In the opinion of jazz historian Ernest Borneman, what preceded New Orleans jazz before 1890, was " Afro-Latin music " similar to what was played in the Caribbean at the time.

A fundamental rhythmic figure heard in Gottschalk's compositions such as " Souvenirs From Havana " ( 1859 ), many different slave musics of the Caribbean, as well as the bamboula, and other Afro-Caribbean folk dances performed in New Orleans Congo Square, is the three-stroke pattern known in Cuban music as tresillo.

Tresillo is the most basic and by far, the most prevalent duple-pulse rhythmic cell in sub-Saharan African music traditions, and the music of the African Diaspora.