Fun fact: Ragtime came from white culture. It might have been invented by Scott Joplin, but it was because Scott Joplin had gone to the world's fair and heard John Philip Sousa's brass band playing and was amazed by the "Oom-Pah" bass of the low brass and wanted to try to recreate that on piano. Ragtime was Scott Joplin's attempt to bring the huge brass band sound to piano.
There's a great book that makes black people foam at the mouth called "Lost Chords: White Musicians and their contribution to Jazz". I remember when it came out like 20 years ago and the black music community flipped the fuck out. Every famous black Jazz musician would talk shit about it any chance they got. Some reporter had asked Wynton Marsalis what he thought and he said the book didn't deserve the "dignity of a response". But the fact is, you go back to the beginnings of Jazz, and it turns out that white people were just as responsible for the formation and direction of Jazz's beginnings as black people were. I wonder if it's even in print anymore..
Found it!
Lol even the copy is great -
"Too many jazz fans and critics--and even some jazz musicians--still contend that white players have contributed little of substance to the music; that even, with every white musician removed from the canon, the history and nature of jazz would remain unchanged. Now, with
Lost Chords, musician-historian Richard M. Sudhalter challenges this narrow view, with a book that pays definitive tribute to a generation of white jazz players, many unjustly forgotten--while never scanting the role of the great black pioneers. "
Although it also says: " Greeted enthusiastically by the jazz community upon its original publication," which is complete bullshit lol. When this came out famous black jazz musicians hollered non-stop about how this book was racist by just existing and was trying to undo the legacy of jazz belonging to solely blacks.
Also a fun fact - the first ever Jazz recording ever made in history was a totally white band. This is something Herbie Hancock still seethes over and if he talks jazz history at some point he starts bitching about this and cries racism even though plenty of black blues musicians were being recorded back then.