Here's some musicology that's going shake, rattle and roll a few heads: Duke/Diz/Miles sideman Will Ruff has done a little archives sifting and come up with a novel thesis: Black music is from Scotland ...

"I found evidence of slaves in North Carolina who could speak only Gaelic. I also heard the story of how a group of Hebrideans, on landing at Cape Fear, heard a Gaelic voice in the dialect of their village. When they rounded the corner they saw a black man speaking the language and assumed they too would turn that colour because of the sun."

That's when he decided to visit the Hebrides.

"Not only were they singing the same psalms, they were singing in the same deeply profound way, with the same passion which cries out. The tears began to flow."

Willie recounts how the lineage of most afro-americans is also afro-celtic ... and ponders why Malcolm X had red hair. While it is still true the KKK had been founded by Scots and still uses the homeland symbols of the oath and the burning cross, there were many among them who where abolitionists who created schools for black children. Francis Hutcheson’s A System of Moral Philosophy is also cited as an inspiration to the abolitionists.

"Storytelling and music are some of the best ways to document the true integration and movement of people, because the music can't lie."