The Strangeness of Jazz

Filmmaker, writer, broadcaster, and musician Edward George records a live episode of his podcast The Strangeness of Jazz, an ongoing series that explores the historical, philosophical, and sonic dimensions of music through close listening and archival excavation. Blending commentary with extended musical excerpts played in full, the podcast unfolds as both lecture and listening session.  

For TOPOS 2026, George turns his attention to the generative possibilities of the slip—the mistake, stutter, or rhythmic deviation that opens new musical futures. At the center of the program is Jamaican drummer Sly Dunbar, whose dub recordings and subsequent remixes becomes a point of convergence for seemingly contradictory histories of rhythm and temporality.

George begins with a subtle slip in the groove of a 1985 Dunbar recording, tracing its unexpected resonance with the polyrhythms later associated with hip-hop producer J Dilla while also connecting it retrospectively to Milford Graves’s radical explorations of percussion, improvisation, and the body. In counterpoint, George considers the lineage of master timekeepers through whom Dunbar situated himself: Lloyd Knibb in reggae, Al Jackson in soul, and Earl Young in disco—drummers whose grooves fundamentally reshaped bodily movement and musical time.

Dunbar’s music becomes the connective tissue between these traditions: a space where rhythm fractures, stretches, repeats, and reorganizes our perception of time itself. What emerges is a meditation on drums not simply as instruments, but as technologies of memory, history, and embodied consciousness.

Join us in Evelyn's café starting at 7:30PM for snacks and a cash bar.