Without the blues and jazz, each in its own separate way original fruits of the cotton plant, it is hard to imagine much else in American popular culture, and certainly not in its music, that was so fully distinguishable from the traditions of Europe or that so powerfully stamped its style upon the world. W. E. B. Du Bois spoke of these unique musical traditions as one might of the sap that oozes from an aromatic tree; they flowed, he said, from the American slave experience as an “anointing chrism,” and constituted “the only gift of pure art in America.” The music critic Ted Gioia put this
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