Creativity Quote by Miroslav Vitous

Vitous is describing a bandstand utopia where hierarchy dissolves, and the music gets to be the boss. "There is no roles" reads like deliberately broken grammar, but it matches the idea: the usual job descriptions (bass anchors, drums timekeep, soloist narrates) aren’t just ignored, they’re unmade. Jazz groups are often sold as democratic, yet most still run on invisible paperwork: someone counts off, someone drives, someone gets out of the way. Vitous insists that even that paperwork is gone.

The key move is the drummer "answering everybody and everything". Drums are typically treated as infrastructure, the emotional weather and the grid. Here they’re a speaking character, not a support system. That’s a quiet flex and a philosophy: if the rhythm section can argue, tease, interrupt, and resolve, then the music becomes less like accompaniment and more like group cognition. The subtext is trust at speed. You can’t have "constant conversation" without musicians who listen as aggressively as they play.

"Extremely valuable material, motifs, and melodies" signals another point: freedom isn’t chaos, it’s stewardship. This is the post-bop/fusion-era ideal Vitous came up in (think Weather Report’s early years): collective improvisation, but with memorable cells that can be traded, reharmonized, and weaponized in real time. He’s defending virtuosity as communication rather than display. No roles doesn’t mean no responsibility; it means everyone is responsible for everything, all at once.