<P> As Kubik explained: </P> <P> While for an outside observer, the harmonic innovations in bebop would appear to be inspired by experiences in Western "serious" music, from Claude Debussy to Arnold Schoenberg, such a scheme cannot be sustained by the evidence from a cognitive approach . Claude Debussy did have some influence on jazz, for example, on Bix Beiderbecke's piano playing . And it is also true that Duke Ellington adopted and reinterpreted some harmonic devices in European contemporary music . West Coast jazz would run into such debts as would several forms of cool jazz, but bebop has hardly any such debts in the sense of direct borrowings . On the contrary, ideologically, bebop was a strong statement of rejection of any kind of eclecticism, propelled by a desire to activate something deeply buried in self . Bebop then revived tonal - harmonic ideas transmitted through the blues and reconstructed and expanded others in a basically non-Western harmonic approach . The ultimate significance of all this is that the experiments in jazz during the 1940s brought back to African - American music several structural principles and techniques rooted in African traditions </P> <P> These divergences from the jazz mainstream of the time initially met with a divided, sometimes hostile, response among fans and fellow musicians, especially established swing players, who bristled at the new harmonic sounds . To hostile critics, bebop seemed to be filled with "racing, nervous phrases". But despite the initial friction, by the 1950s, bebop had become an accepted part of the jazz vocabulary . </P> <P> The general consensus among musicians and musicologists is that the first original jazz piece to be overtly based in clave was "Tanga" (1943), composed by Cuban - born Mario Bauza and recorded by Machito and his Afro - Cubans in New York City . "Tanga" began as a spontaneous descarga (Cuban jam session), with jazz solos superimposed on top . </P>

Where did jazz come from and why was it important