muslim blues

The connections between Islam and African-American music go further back than many people realize.

In 2004, Jonathan Curiel wrote a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle called Muslim Roots of American Blues which traces some of this history.

And then of course, many jazz musicians adopted Muslim names although not all of them were necessarily practicing the faith.

And in Dizzy Gillespie's autobiography "To Be, Or Not ... To Bop" there is an interesting passage discussing why so many African-American jazz musicians were converting to Islam.