Interesting how there can be disagreement about something when there is truth to both sides of the argument. What is being missed is the connection to the earlier (barely) discussion about the mystery of the influence that genetics may play on what type of music resonates with each of us.
One of the first and recurring debates here concerns the origins of jazz. One camp claims that, contrary to just about every scholarly and pacticing musician’s opinion on the subject, jazz sprang up in America independent of and immune to any possible influence by the ethnicity (genetics) of its “creators”, or influence by the societal circumstances around them. The other camp believes that jazz is an art form that is a big melting pot of influences; African, European and Middle Eastern. A closer, and less emotional, look at what defines jazz gives credence to the second viewpoint, imo.
Django Reindhart famously said, upon hearing Louis Armstrong play for the first time (as acman3 points out) “My brother!”. To my way of thinking that comment says it all. If one looks at the makeup of Jazz and the many influences that came to bear in its creation, it is no mystery to me why jazz would resonate with a Gypsy guitarist who had never heard “it” before, but whose more familiar music was in some ways, however removed, one of the ingredients in the pot.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IW0nOgrwwy4And, of course Armstrong would have been impressed upon hearing Django for the first time. For starters, no one had played guitar like that before.