When, where, and how did Buddy Bolden lose his mind?

Ondaatje's fictionalization of the life of jazz musician Buddy Bolden does not deviate far from accepted historical—or apocryphal—belief when describing the precise point at which Buddy Bolden's madness, which had been approaching for some time, finally overtook him entirely. However, he is also clear about the fact that much of what is known about Bolden's breaking point is only legend and not truth. We know that Bolden was committed to an asylum in June of 1907, but there are multiple stories as to how: 

Some say you went mad trying to play the devil's music and hymns at the same time, and Armstrong telling historians that you went mad by playing too hard and too often too drunk, too wild, too crazy . . . There was the climax of the parade and then you removed yourself from the 20th century game of fame, the rest of your life a desert of facts.

Ondaatje's novel, then, is an attempt to "cut [the facts] open and spread them out like garbage," and his embellishments upon what is known to be true focus upon the chaos of New Orleans, the crowds, and the thrill of the music. 

In the novel, the scene in which Bolden goes mad takes place during a jazz parade in New Orleans in 1907. Buddy was thirty-one years old and an extremely famous musician in his time, although there are no surviving records of his performances. Bolden is playing the cornet at the head of his band, moving through the streets of New Orleans amidst a swelling crowd of people, when his mind reaches its breaking point. In Ondaatje's novel, the movements and behavior of the people on the sidewalk become a fixation for Bolden which, ultimately, pull him towards insanity: he becomes transfixed with one girl in particular, who his eyes follow through the crowd, and he starts to obsess over the idea that she is somehow connected to him—she seems to know what he will play next before he knows it himself. In some ways, while Bolden is losing his grip on reality in this scene, he is also approaching a sort of apotheosis—having been away from music for two years, he finds himself achieving previously-unknown feelings of belonging, of being in the right place in life, even as the sensations overwhelm him.