'The kangaroo and the didjeridu': Duke Ellington's engagement with world music in 'The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse'

Duke Ellington's world music suite the Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1970) has been relatively overlooked in the community of jazz scholarship. This may be due to the historiographical contexts that privilege Ellington as a composer of art music or Ellington as a champion of black cultural awareness vis-a-vis his more famous musico-political works such as the Black and Tan Fantasy (1933) and the Black Brown and Beige suite (1943). Closer investigation reveals that an increasingly active political climate and growing awareness of globalization in the later 1960s combined with Ellington's travels and personal experiences to inspire him to adopt a more transnational attitude about music and culture. The genesis and musical content of the Afro-Eurasian Eclipse demonstrate that Ellington's expression of musical identity and his role in the jazz community had changed from the early years. Accordingly, scholars should reformulate the historiographical constructs to accommodate Ellington's later engagement with world music.