Related to this, I remember one of the greatest living Italian jazzist, Paolo Conte [0], recently mentioning in an interview that Jazz is the most important artistic innovation of the 20th century. (his music is deep into the "900", as we call it in Italy, and he was born in the late thirties nearby Turin (Asti) so he lived most of his life in that century).

I was surprised to even consider Jazz as THE most important artistic innovation (I can think of a few more, e.g. Modernism, or "The Greatest Artistic Breakthroughs of the Twentieth Century" [1]), but in a way, I can give the theory some credit.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Conte

[1]: https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c5787/c5787.pdf