"Jazz is notorious for being a difficult musical genre to appreciate. Many people believe they're supposed to like it and that knowing about jazz impresses others. Despite this, most people still find it difficult to follow. Jazz experts say the key to appreciating jazz is to focus on how different musicians play off one another's music.
Start with identifying the melody. Once you do that, you can begin to notice how specific musicians add their own layer over the melody. After you pick out the individual contributions, you're then more able to appreciate how they all come together as a (seemingly) disorganized whole".
