"Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that's it. No America, no jazz. I've seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn't have a damn thing to do with Africa"

Art Blakey asserts a strong sense of American ownership over jazz, emphasizing its emergence and development as uniquely embedded within American culture and society. He views jazz not simply as a musical style that originated in the United States, but as an art form inseparable from the American experience. By stating, "No America, no jazz", Blakey highlights the belief that jazz is an organic product of specific historical, social, and cultural circumstances present in the United States, including the complex interactions between different communities, particularly African Americans, and the broader currents of American life.

Blakey challenges attempts to link jazz directly to other countries, most notably Africa. Though jazz is often discussed in relation to its African musical heritage, through rhythm, improvisation, call-and-response, and expressive techniques, Blakey regards these connections as indirect and not defining. He distinguishes the African roots of certain musical components from the entirely new synthesis that became jazz in the US. For him, jazz is not a simple extension or preservation of African music but rather a distinctly American innovation cultivated from a convergence of cultural influences: African, European, and other traditions transformed on American soil.

This perspective reflects both pride and recognition of the unique creative landscape of America, especially the role of African Americans in forging art out of adversity and forging something genuinely novel. At the same time, Blakey’s remarks can be seen as asserting agency and ownership against narratives that might try to externalize jazz's genesis or minimize its specifically American origins. While acknowledging that musical elements have traveled and transformed across continents, Blakey argues for the autonomy and revolutionary quality of jazz as a product of American history, struggle, and ingenuity. Ultimately, his words foreground the idea that jazz, as the world knows it, is inextricably linked to America’s cultural and historical context.