Olly Wilson, Composer Who Brought West African Material Into Western Avant-Garde Music, Dead At 80

"Mr. Wilson, a longtime professor at the University of California, Berkeley, grew up listening to jazz and spirituals. He studied African music in Ghana under one of his two Guggenheim Fellowships, opened an electronic music studio at the Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College in Ohio, where he had formerly taught, and wrote academic papers, including a major essay on the art of black music."

Article source here:Arts Journal