ethiopian music
Ethiopian music works really well as jazz because rhythmically it is anchored in the wider African sense of polyrhythms, of 3 against 2 time, often expressed in 3/4 and 6/8 meters. Also, one of the most characteristic elements of Ethiopian traditional music are the particular pentatonic scales they employ, which for the Western ear range from familiar sounding to quite exotic. When these modes are used as the basis for harmony, you wind up with lots of the chords that are common in modern jazz. Because of the particular history of modern music in Ethiopia, there is a strong tradition of pop bands with big horn sections, and even a very unique and definite Ethiopian saxophone style. A man named Getachew Mekurya transposed a kind of war chant onto the tenor sax in the 50s and came up with a style that actually prefigures Albert Ayler's by a few years but shares a lot with his.