Melvin Gibbs has become a renowned composer/producer/bassist. He has a beyond-diverse background in jazz, rock, punk, and freeform experimentalism, and was mentored by jazz giants that were Ornette Coleman and Gil Evans. His work includes cooperation with the likes of Arto Lindsay, dead prez, and Sonny Sharrock, stints in Defunkt and the Rollins Band, and collaborations in ensembles including Power Tools alongside Bill Frisell and Ronald Shannon Jackson and the cooperative Harriet Tubman.
Along with his recent solo album, Amasia: Anamibia Sessions 2 (2025), Gibbs has written a book titled How Black Music Took Over The World, which will be published by Basic Books.
Gibbs’s book explores the Black musical diaspora from Africa to the Americas and analyzes specifics of rhythm and composition that have informed innumerable genres and styles that we now consider foundational to popular music. He approaches his cited material from a broader musicological and social perspective, earned from his many decades working in varied levels of the music industry – grounding his work in lived experience as a participant in the diaspora that he seeks to unpack.
From the publisher’s press release:
Drawing from his life in music— the 1980’s punk funk scene of New York City to sessions with jazz legends, Brazilian pop stars, and Senegalese drummers — Gibbs unites lived experience with deep insight to offer a practitioner’s perspective on Black music and its innovations. Whether he’s exploring Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl performance, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, or the cosmic vibration that links rhythm, sound, and life, How Black Music Took Over the World reveals how Black music continues to shape and inspire the modern world.
