About jazz...
I read a decade ago a story of a black musician who decided to go back to Africa to study music there...
He encountered a master and discussing with him, the master said listening samplings of western music and jazz, this "does not roll"...
"this does not roll either"....Etc...
I am sorry to be unable to retrieve the source of this story on the net....
But think now about a deep observation of Miles Davis which stayed in my mind saying most white musicians "lag behind the beat"and put it next to this African master who claimed most American music jazz or classic "does not roll"....
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mLmMQ5vd_Jw?feature=share
What does it means ?
It means because of the tradition of written music in the West, musicians trained with written music often "lag behind the beat" and their music often "do not roll"...
A precision: the greatest book on acoustics i ever read was written by A nigerian acoustician, a pure genius, whose doctorate was refused in London but accepted at Sorbonne Paris... I purchase his book and it change my understanding of sound in relation with music completely. His books title is "sounds source" 500 pages. Akpan J. Essien is a genius and a master of the Yoruba speaking drum which was the basis of his doctorate thesis...
In my opinion recent research in acoustics confirmed he was right in his criticism of 2,000 years of Acoustic beginning with Pythagoras...
Music is not just wave in the air, it is the information of the vibrating sound source qualias, ("Timbre" mystery ) irreducible to linear Fourier mappings, because created by the ears/brain/gesturing body and flowing in his own non linear time domain....
Then Jazz or any music "roll" and flow without "lagging behind the beat" if it is synchronized directly with the playing body and expressing something communicated by the vibrating sound source...
https://www.amazon.ca/Sound-Sources-Origin-Auditory-Sensations/dp/1913289540
Here yoruba talking drums to illustrate what kind of music roll and did not lag behind a given beat but emerge with it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZOg4xIiulw&t=1078s
Now i thought few years ago about Furtwangler the genius of Classical orchestra as described by Russian Maestro Gergiev and Ansermet the french genius as transcendent in his understanding of musical time...
Here too with Furtwangler in Bruckner, Beethoven Schumann miraculously, the music dont goes behind a prescribed external time and beat but emerge with a time of his own, a time purely musical which no metronomic writings can catch... Furtwangler music "roll" and dont " lag behind the beat"...Gergiev analysed Furtwangler genius and i think he was right on the spot...
Especially if we compared with Toscanini, which is surely a great maestro but in my opinion a lesser one, because he impose to the music an external timing of his own without like Furtwangler letting the music spoke as the Yoruba drums spoke too only rolling ...
Yoruba masters :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4GXD-7G6T8
These Yoruba drums roll, and create meanings as rythms gesture with no lagging behind the beat... Furtwangler directing the Schuman 4Th symphony, one of the greatest interpretation i ever listened to do the same... It roll....
Furtwangler Schumann 4 th (the greatest Classical music interpretation i ever heard):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk8AtH0t2BU
