Now our music is universal. It shares the rhythmic content of African music, music of the Western Hemisphere and various lands of the East, and has merged this rhythm with European harmonies, the soul of the slaves, the blues, and the spirituals to create jazz.

Born this day in 1917, Dizzy Gillespie, an American trumpeter, composer, and bandleader, helped to found the modern jazz style known as bebop, and his improvisations also influenced later jazz trumpeters such as Miles Davis.