"During the late-19th century and early-20th century, musicians from South America, Central America, and Caribbean countries filled vacant ranks in U.S. Navy Bands, swearing an oath of enlistment that afforded a path to American citizenship. Early 20th-century Navy Band rosters prove strikingly diverse. In addition to affording citizenship, music served as a medium to help bring diversity to the U.S. Navy.
Of the many attempts to define the American national identity, the most enlightening are those that read American identity as a synthesis of many different influences. Unsurprisingly, American musical identity is also best defined as a synthesis. Forged through a distinctly American synthesis of African-American musical traditions, Latin American rhythmic structures, martial instrumentation, and Western European influences, jazz is widely considered by many scholars to be America's quintessential art form.
Because its foundation rests at the intersection of two bastions of Americana—jazz and the Navy—a Navy jazz band is an ideal vehicle for conveying a message of diversity, freedom, and liberty. When researching for the U.S. Navy Band Commodores jazz ensemble's 50th anniversary, I found that the relationship between jazz and America's Navy dates earlier than previously thought…"
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