Inna, everyone who listens to Brazilian, Cuban, or Afro Cuban jazz explores Sub Saharan rhythms.
Music is not a zebra, or an elephant; it has no habitat, it exists in the minds of people.
I was speaking specifically of the rhythms that came from Africa, primarily the drum rhythms. African American musicians had to go to Africa to discover them. I did not say back to Africa because they had never been to Africa in the first place; they were descendants of slaves who had been brought to America involuntarily in slave ships.
While they brought the drum rhythms with them, they were forbidden drums because the slavers said they used them to communicate, and I can't give any examples of Sub Saharan drums in early African American music, but they exist in Cuban, Brazilian, Haitian, and other South American music; there must be a reason.
"Daily interactions with white people. Not all slave owners were bad or mostly bad, but interaction even with bad can give a lot."
Slaves lived on plantations in Mississippi and other Southern States, what daily interactions with white people, the one's with the whips.
I'm sure you can give plenty examples of "good slave owners'".