It's silly to say anyone is the best though. If you say that, you're turning music into a sport and a trade skill. It's not either of those. It is art. Musical art. Ability has no place here. Only creativity and sound.
No, ability
has a place here. To be able to express yourself properly, you have to be able to do so. If you wanna make amazing music in various styles, you have to work hard on your abilities (besides having some talent, which is another topic), as Vinnie did and does. Your creativity doesn't take you anywhere if you don't know how to translate it onto the instrument.
So to say someone doesn't understand Vinnie's drumming when it's not their cup of tea, is stupid. Music is not about understanding what someone is playing.
If that were case drummer's like Virgil Donati, Dom Famularo, Marco Minneman, Jojo Mayer, and Thomas Lang would be at the top of the music world.
I always get irritated when people start to put a bunch of drummers all into one box. Those are 5 individual drummers!
They play the fastest, most complex things I have ever heard on the drumkit. But, Musicians avoid those drummers like the plague. When was the last time you heard about one of these guys playing a week at a famous club, or being on a great recording? You haven't, because music is not their priority. Drumming is. Playing 7 in one hand, 5 in the other and 32nd notes on the kick drums has no place in music. It doesn't matter.
I strongly disagree. First of all, what is the top of the music world? Being known by as many people as possible? Playing at venues as big as possible? Making as much money as possible?
Second, you possibly contradict yourself: What if you just don't "understand" the drummers you mentioned?
Third, you do absolutely no justice to some of those 5 if you say music wasn't their priority. To be where they are, they have already played music for as long as your entire life probably.
Forth, why doesn't your beforementioned exercise have any place in music? Who says? Maybe in
your music? And if not the exact exercise, then of course many other things that are based of 5 or 7 note groupings or both at the same time. Ask Indian musicians! Don't think music=western pop music!
Last, what's the difference between drumming and music? Who defines if "drumming" equals "music" or not?
I'm a student at Manhattan School Music. Where drummer's talk about music and people such as Adam Nussbaum, Jeff Watts, Steve Jordan, Brian Blade ,Bill Stewart, Gadd and Vinnie Colaiuta.
Then what? You seem to have forgotten to write the main part of your sentence.
Still Vinnie is not the best. There is no best. If you think there is, you're not a musician and you don't get the art of music.
There it is again: You say music is not about understanding what one's playing, but someone to whom Vinnie is the best doesn't get the art of music?
Important thing: Music is a language! Or better; music is
a great bunch of languages! So it's certainly possible to "not understand" someone's music, because that certain language doesn't appeal to you, it doesn't touch you, maybe it doesn't even reach you.
By the way: there
are some parameters which can enable us to discuss which drummers are "the best", in these parameters, or in what they do.