from the Kimbundu language of West Africa. Haitian Creole Scholars have noted that the Haitian Creole that developed in Saint Domingue contained a mixture of Africanisms and local expressions, "a thousand little nothings that one wouldn't dare to say in French." Although much of its vocabulary is from 18th Century French, the grammar of Haitian Creole comes from the West African Volta-Congo language branch, particularly the Fongbe language and Igbo language. Jamaican Patois English is the official language of Jamaica. But the grammatical structure, vocabulary, sound and syntax of Jamaican Patois has roots in African languages (Gladwell 1994). The use of only one verb tense in Jamaican Creole shows its relationship to root languages of the Niger-Congo region, where they also use verbs with no past or future tense. Music Secular music African influenced music traditions in the United States set the foundation for much of what became known as American music. The blues is a music genre created by Africans in America. The music featured polyrhythms, call and response figures, loose blues forms, a blues scale, and vocalizations that are different from western music. This innovation led to all African-American secular music that followed, which includes blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, rock & roll, soul music, fusion, disco, funk, hip hop and others. The underlying elements of these genres can all be traced back to the musical elements derived from West Africa during the formation of the blues genre. The musical instrument the banjo was created by African American slaves, copied by memory from African instruments with similar names, like the 'bania' and 'banjo'. The slaves taught European-Americans how to play the instrument, and it became a mainstay of several genres of American music, including bluegrass and folk music. Other musical instruments of African origin, from the Bantu culture of Angola, include drums, diddley bows, mouthbows, the washtub bass, jugs, gongs, bells, rattles, ideophones, and the lokoimni, a five-stringed harp. African and European musical traditions came together in New Orleans, Missouri and Mississippi to create the foundation for jazz. In New Orleans, a city filled with people of French, Latin American, West Indian and African heritage, lighter-skinned Black Creoles sometimes trained as classical musicians, where they learned western music theory. Paid musicians in New Orleans in the late 19th century were generally of this Black Creole class. The African tradition of music as a public and collaborative event rather