From Roots to Fusion — Episode 5

After the outbreak of World War II, recording in studios became difficult for African-American bands and musicians, some of whom had to fight in Europe and the Pacific. For this reason, very few recordings of jazz from the period 1940-1945 exist today. However, at the end of the conflict, the young people who survived returned home and in Harlem another new chapter of jazz began to be written: Bebop.

Universal music would never be the same again, and artists like Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie would be some of those responsible. Ironically, only whites were allowed into the clubs where this was happening and few African-Americans knew that their black brothers were making history in the genre. A story that we tell today in this fifth episode.