One of the world’s greatest bassists lays down the heart of Black music, revealing how its rhythmic structures and the long history of the African diaspora made it the world’s most popular form

Why do Bob Marley, John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, and Nina Simone move us the way they do? What drives the worried notes of the Delta blues? What makes Beyoncé’s triumph Cowboy Carter inescapably great?

As Melvin Gibbs shows in How Black Music Took Over the World, it is the musical inheritance of Africa. Beginning with two rhythmic building blocks he calls the cell and the frame, Gibbs shows how those tools can transport listeners to “a realm where sounds become vehicles for human movement.” Reforged in the African diaspora in the Americas, they are played today on church organs, electric guitars, computers, telephones, or a simple gourd. Kool & the Gang called Black musicians the “scientists of sound”—and Gibbs shows how they discovered the world’s music.

Gibbs’s vantage is unique. A world-class musician fluent in many genres, Gibbs is as comfortable in an old-school Times Square record shop as he is breaking down mathematics and music theory with university professors. Imbued with his own journey and a sharp eye for the sins and triumphs of history, How Black Music Took Over the World is an unforgettable revelation of one of humanity’s greatest achievements.