The Manhattan Ragtime Orchestra playing Ford Dabney's Porto Rico. Composed in 1910, shortly after Dabney's stint in Haiti, the song is another example of Caribbean musical influences in American music. As an important figure in the development of jazz and black music in New York during the 1910s, one cannot forget the presence of Puerto Rican musicians in the band of James Reese Europe. This may explain how Dabney was able to compose a piece that almost sounds like a danza, which also possesses some similarities with the Haitian music Dabney must have heard previously.
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