When asked in a 1991 interview with Bruce Duffie if his music was in some way specifically African-American, Olly Wilson Jr responded that “because [his] experience has been an African-American experience” his music necessarily reflects that, “[b]ut that is a very, very complicated kind of thing” and “there may not be discernible aspects of that music that you say, ‘Aha, that’s clearly from African American tradition.’”. So those seeing his name on a program of African-American composers and hoping for a jazz- or gospel-infused escapade are bound for disappointment.