It is difficult—perhaps even impossible—for people today to grasp the full immensity of what was taking place. The early formations of jazz—the rhythm patterns, melodic phrasings, and occasionally aggressive syncopation—were revolutionary. It has been commented upon that the creation of jazz was an attempt to codify an entirely new language. But it was more than that: Jazz was an attempt to rearrange the molecular structure of the universe, to obliterate recent history and replace it with expressions of joy, inventiveness, and grace.
