An Interview with Legendary Jazz Musician Max Roach

which of talking with one of the Masters of modern music mr. Max Roach a major force in the percussion of modern music as a composer as a bandleader as an educator and as a thinker about what this very important culture means good afternoon mr. roach [Music] that was certainly a powerful introduction or hello if you will I think the interesting thing about it is that statement is really related to your very earliest musical experience is that underneath the elaboration the complexity that you laid down are some things that you learned in your very earliest musical experiences in the church and in the marching bands that drum dual core experience that you had an association with the church would you care to recapitulate that that history forest that pure in your life well bill I grew up in the church having been born in North Carolina coming from a Bible family all the activity cultural activities centered in the church in me I was introduced to music by way of the church choir and a musical instruments by way of the church after-school activities and the Jones is my first instrument that I had the I had occasion to play with the the church marching band and the first things of course I learned were marches it seemed as though at every parade this wasn't Brooklyn New York that that the citizens could that were organized in the New York City Brooklyn in Harlem our little marching band was asked to participate and I guess you might say my earliest introduction to the drums was in the marching band out of Concord Baptist Church Brooklyn well that included everything from from Garvey marches to American Legion marches the whole gamut of right things if you wanna say we Boston Garvey parades Marcus Garvey parades American Legion Day parades and Sunday school parades Brooklyn Day parades New York Day parades whatever the competitions and things between we we engaged in the marching band competitions as well this however happened while in grade school and also in high school in the marching bands and we had an opportunity to exchange ideas with other marching bands in the city wide marching bands of the black marching bands and we learned that our style was a bit more laid-back and not as militaristic as perhaps some of the other bands around the city could you demonstrate for us what that laid-back style was and maybe some of the rhythms that you were playing some of the some of the routines that you played at that time yeah I believe I can if I can remember some of those [Music] your experiences in the church have been important to you both in terms of introducing you to the drums and learning you know the basic rudiments of the instruments but also the vocal music that was happening in the church has had a profound effect on your work subsequent in your career the recordings that you made in the late 50s and 60s that drew so heavily on gospel and the spiritual tradition in the black church the stuff you did with the jcy singers things that you did with ABI things that you did with Andy Bay you know all drew from that source would you care to share with us just what that influence was and some of the other musical training that that you had in addition to the drum and bugle corps experience that you know emanated from the church as I said earlier the church was The Fountainhead I guess if you say music musical culture and singing was it was a dominant part of that everyone saying all the way that we had the children's choir young people's choir young adults choir and cry after choir everyone had to participate in that and that activity other than just playing with the marching band and whatever things that we we did after school when we finished school would go to the church it was like a a daycare center in a sense when you you grew up in the church most of your days were spent in the church and so naturally the people who took care of the children while the your mother well your parents who your mother and father went out looking for work during that time kept you busy Yuda singing learning how to play instruments etc so most of us were well versed in the spirituals most of us played a little piano we played for each other we took turns and we sang for each other and of course we prepared programs for different occasions Easter programs Christmas programs every Sunday we'd rehearse for this for whatever program or whatever was going on with with a choirs as well and often or not I had occasion to play a piano as well as sing and to give you some idea of some of the things that we were engaged in at that time I'll go to the piano and perhaps sings employer and play as well you know my my odd who was a church pianist was the first one to teach me and my brother how to read how to read music and of course we learned out of hymnal books and one of my favorite books was the Janesville man Johnson's Negro spirituals where you found not only the popular spirituals like standing in the need of prayer and sometimes I feel like like a motherless child but you also found rare spirituals and I'd like to [Music] saying one of these for you this is called singing with a sword in my hand and and it was also a spiritual that was in a sense I guess it was a a militant or a spiritual of preparedness and all these songs of course had double meanings and it goes something like this [Music] I'm singing with my sword in my hand I say I'm singing with my sword in my hand [Music] I'm singing with my sword in my hand I'm singing [Music] with my sword and [Music] prettiest singing ever [Music] way over on the hill the angel thing did I sing too [Music] I'm saying it [Music] with my soul in my head [Music] you know you mentioned in talking about the spirituals they asked the double end entendre aspect of them the yearning in a religious sense in a yearning in an earthly sense for freedom do you want to we had a nice little line about what you felt that song was really saying about that's that's one of the songs that tells you to to be prepared for any occasion oh and in in whatever situation that you are in you know he says the poet's say singing with the sword in my hand and then the next verse is praying with the sword in my hand the next verse would be moaning with a sword in my hand and so in any situation that you are involved in the song says that you should be prepared to protect yourself and whatever else so many many of the earliest spirituals were were loaded with messages that taught you much like the church does today how to survive out here and of course these were not only songs of inspiration but they were songs of preparation and songs of protection and in many ways that kept it has helped us to survive to where we are today no matter how critical situations were for us as a people in the United States you know is that why you you decided in the late 50s to go to this body of material you know in relationship to what was going on in society at that point in afro-american civil rights and human rights struggles well that was one of the reasons and uh I thought doing during the 50s and 60s during that period after after the tragic accident that tore apart they've been with Clifford Brown and Richard Powell I became involved as most people did in the civil rights movement and of course the Martin Luther King was on the scene Malcolm X was on the scene I guess you just couldn't help but be involved in it was so much activity and the whole country was involved in these issues of freedom and and hope and I ain't gonna study War no more those kinds of things and that was certainly one of the reasons and a very important one but also I had always had the feeling that the that the intellectuals black intellectuals and the black church because jazz musicians were were made their living in nightclubs theaters were often times and most oftentimes neglected in their studies and so you know like the church we'd we we could play our March music of course we dealt with spirituals but instrumental music jazz was forbidden and so when I got the opportunity to and was asked for things to to record by record companies it was it was my desire to bring these two forces together why not use the Gospel Choir and jazz musicians put him in a studio and develop some music that they both could live with and the particular dues the fact it was the fifties and sixties the kind of material I used was something like we just heard singing with a sword in my hand Joshua Joshua you know fit the Battle of Jericho members don't get weary members don't get weary were you there when they crucified my Lord which to me was was a spiritual that was a testament to a lynching and all these kinds of all those kinds of things were the spirituals that we chose and we use the Gospel Choir and jazz musicians who improvised all through the the arrangements and incidentally when I did this when I made this record it's called lift every voice and sing that was the last record I did with Atlantic Records I was signed with Atlantic at that time and that was funny the situation I remember being called in by the people in charge of artists in recordings and and I had known these folks for years the people who had started Atlantic Records they started in the forties with us on 52nd Street and we were friends as well as people who work together to make this music and it was just to do just when the turnaround was coming up and turning around I mean political turnaround and they were retooling asking the artists now to to back off from what we call protest music a music that spoke about not just black artists but all artists see the Buffy sainte-marie people who were doing things at that time the across the board all our pop artists you know we were some of our best pop artists for recording keeps things like keep going pushing and all these kinds of things and they called me in and they said to me well max you know you've been in the business quite some time you should you should really make some it's time for you to really make some money so I said well yeah I couldn't agree with you more I said how do we go about that well then they were telling us that we had to retool what we were doing and he gave me a stack of records of pop music that related to dance to to a pop culture there's nothing wrong with that because I do believe that we should have that our culture serves more than one purposes for enlightenment is for entertainment is to relax with us to think buy and all these things is to worship buy and so forth they gave me some pop records strictly for dance and during that same period all the artists were asked to retool and not be as serious and as original about what was going on around us politically and musically the music just changed we Weiden right into total dance bag enough and and that's what was marketed and these are the things that were were sold to the public I remember the last time I came here to Howard University I was in one of the art professors offices talking and we we had the Howard University radio on and he and they were playing of course what was current at the time same thing as W LiBr the sister station in new york music was being pumped out so that we could we could jump up and dance and he posed the question as as to how can you think and dance at three o'clock in the afternoon and work and study at the same time obviously it's being done and then with all the things that we as a group have been doing in this country that have been fostered on us I see a surviving you know even though we had this we were inundated with music that that she would assume that might take us away from some of the real issues that were plaguing our people I think we're coming back almost full circle now because many of the artists are beginning again to look at the world not through rose-colored glasses so to speak but from the reality that it is because there are no jobs there are no things in the end and they're beginning to speak to these things a little bit more than they were in the last in the previous ten years excuse me one of they're really probably the classic record in terms of making a social statement that you produced I mean the classic record of that type is record that you produced was that we insist freedom now sweet session and it was so important because it brought together so many things it brought it brought you together with Coleman Hawkins with whom you'd worked in 1943 and 44 and represented once again a statement about the unity of generations in jazz it brought forth in in a very profound way the kind of vocal things that you were exploring with Abby Lincoln a freer use of the voice and a kind of collective improvisation with the voice it brought into focus your experiments with with unusual with meters other than 4/4 and so that it made a bigger a broader statement and also anticipated that the current fewer that's now going on about South Africa you did the piece tears for Johannesburg which reflected upon the shark-filled maxilla so that was such a seminal record perhaps now we could listen to the driver man piece from that and then you know going to some so further discussion of that record as a kind of a summation of a period and a and a really statement that brought together many strands in your career [Music] no that's a good record [Music] just let the pieces what's the meter here can you after we get this will you play some 6/8 naked from this so and then with you saying yeah in other words we do some 6/8 [Music] can we do it we'll say this piece means in the African unless you stick say no but another there's the interesting thing about that piece is that it shows us the bringing together with the bringing into the African element into the music and shows us that a time signature that was not often utilized which is the 6/8 would you care to go to the drum set and just isolate that signature for us [Music] [Music] [Music] for accredited to be the first one to actually swing a walls can you give us a little taste of 3/4 and how you make it swing so to speak [Music] I think the other signature that you worked in pretty extensively would be five four can we hear some of that [Music] but the other features of the we insist session was the involvement of Coleman Hawkins and to illustrate how the the music is actually what we're talking about as a continuum of musical culture let's listen to drive a man and and the Coleman Hawkins participation in this session [Music] keep [Music] [Music] family man Hey [Music] [Music] the comment I'm coming in here [Music] want to reflect on where your association was with mr. Hawkins and his participation well never this this recording and the different levels that was when this was going through my mind when performing it it was a recording that grew out of a commissioned piece that Oscar Browns Union myself had been commissioned by the the n-double-a-cp youth organization and they were first introduced in at the philadelphia in double AC p-- convention to commemorate a hundred years in 1967 anticipation proclamation and the peace freedom now sweet so what we attempted to do was to create a work that used dance narration film stills the song to say that in 100 years from from 1860 to 1960 that we had attained freedom well Oscar and I we labored on this piece for months I'd be on the road we work on it by telephone and we never could finish the piece because we knew in our Ma's in hasta we had not arrived at a place where we could say this is total freedom hence the last piece we did was called freedom day and it asked a question whisper listen whisper listen they say we are free whisper listen whisper listen is it really true a cetera senator cetera and the piece ends like that but involved in the piece we brought in several elements musically regard there was Michael Olatunji who was from Africa Raymont ear from Puerto Rico all from East Harlem by way of Puerto Rico and South America heritage wise there was a Cuban percussion in it in it potato and then there was also of course jazz musicians and Coleman Hawkins the gentleman whom you gave me my first record date I had finally an opportunity to ask him would he be kind enough or disposed to to record on a recording session of mine and he was gracious enough to do so and so it meant a great deal to me and it also meant we also had an opportunity to explore new forms for for example we use 5/4 which is in the piece we just heard to create the kind of tension that that was was supposed to exemplify that the the the the office that five four and odd meter would create in in in a work situation so you to create some kind of unbearable musical tension supposedly and then we did some freeform things and that this is in the triptych piece to do it between voice and drums where the paste was created on on images not so much the melody and changes for example in triptych the three parts of triptych a triptych is prayer protest in peace and it's not a prayer supplication there's a prayer of preparation this comes out of the church you might say and the protest is is follows that what you prepare yourself to do to go out and do it full force so protest is like say if you get yourself ready to do something and then you come out and do it full-out until you just totally exhaust yourself and then you find peace in doing everything you could to satisfy the preparation that you were involved in prior to your protests and the peace is not a peace that means that you have really won or lost something or whatever it's the peace that comes from you just extending yourself and it's around because then you pray to prepare yourself again to go into another protesting in the hall to exert yourself and then you you do that fully and then the peace is coming in the peace means that you have completely satisfied some part of yourself that that peace also was an early example of what came to be known later as free jazz that is reformed jazz that did not involve a preset harmonic rhythmic melodic framework dominant seventh so to speak yes you told me that the general Coltrane had an interesting reaction to this piece yeah John's reaction to it was that it's what he told me was it was an it introduced it it substantiated the direction that he was into and going into that you can deal with sound and completely eliminate the the the conventional and structured aspects of music that would have been the perfect marriage of harmony melody and rhythm that means you could just deal with sounds itself and be involved in sounds emotionally maybe what we can do right now is just go to a portion of the tryptych and and hear what you're discussing [Music] I'd like to see that first section that first section hey this is where you answered [Music] [Music] [Music] he's an only CRA of lynchings crowds marching and things like that to exemplify certain things I guess he was in a studio the size of this and wrong he pasted all these pictures on the walls and on the floor and used overhead cameras and handheld cameras that's almost like a movement takes you the way he would move in like in a section like this to a farce and all of a sudden you see a group of people doing [Music] [Music] [Music] hold it hold it okay can we go can we go to [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I'm sure in the course of your career and in making music of this type very powerful music very direct music music that addresses itself to things that are maybe not necessary pleasant you know you've been confronted with the question of of the fact that this music is not comfortable music but this is music that you it's not like the kind of ease you go into a nightclub and you know kick back with a scotch - how do you address yourself to your purposes as an artist well this is theatrical as I you know the dismay of a film was made to this music by an Italian filmmaker the freedom L suite and he did it with stills and slides and in this particular piece the first section which was them which was the preparation of the triptych you'd see what he did was you'd see a say he panned the camera on a group of people who look like they were having a picnic and it was the serene singing you know in the deep south families who were standing around eating hot dogs or whatever and then when it got to that screaming section the camera panned on a lynching so here was a group of white families children and so forth and this film he got from he had Johnny amici was a filmic so they got it from the CIA of of a group of citizens witnessing a black man being lensed who was hole on a tree in and so and directing it to whatever he was doing she would be just a young black woman walking through the forest and all of a sudden she sees a man hung up on the tree with his neck broken his his privates cut off of his body and that reaction is what she would have hit immediately and so it's theatrical but for us it was also to take outside sounds like screams and hollows and creates some kind of musical texture with them and to create a design with it and that was what we were after in the whole piece another important aspect of this recording is the statement that you made with respect to South Africa tears for Johannesburg do you want to talk a little bit about that piece well the record itself got into South Africa because it was considered a jazz record okay and the the album notes written by Nat Hentoff I would say he's a social jazz critic speaks about this this particular P stands for Janus birth was to commemorate the memory of all those young people who were killed in Johannesburg doing doing a military insurrection on the students of Johannesburg at that time a similar thing happened recently in Soweto and so that piece was dedicated to them and that of course when dealing with the album notes he would ask the artist well why did you write this piece and I said well it's a dedication to all those students who were killed in Johannesburg during that period and he wrote this in the liner notes but as I'm a jazz musician the record got it to South Africa as a jazz album until they read the liner notes and saw that it was really a protest album there but not only had to do with America and it's and its social sociological problems but also with South Africa and her problems and and so it was taken and it was bought from being further imported into South Africa and it reached a national press and the record became a it can't almost reached the kind of popularity that went into pop records because the times warranted it it was during the 60s and everybody's behind was on trying to do something with the world as it was today with the with the Vietnam War with the civil rights movement the cetera cetera so it became a little light hit because of the the fact that the press had noted that it had been barred in South Africa in fact it still is these kinds of recordings and I guess the recording it's time and percussion bittersweet could be included with this sort of led to a lot of controversy in your career and a lot of debates and discussions about racism and jazz and music for music's sake and music as propaganda and those kinds of things what kind of impact do you think this just had it on your career and that discussion had on that that whole debate had well you know jazz was never in the kind of a popular art form where I'm a popular I mean it's you sold thousands of records of play to hundreds of thousands of people on your concert so it didn't affect me and and and that way actually but in fact it had it was just the opposite I became a person who had I who had ideals about things about the world that the political and sociological situations that go on in the world especially in the United States of America for me it was favorable I was happy that that I could for whatever music is worth in a situation like that I could speak against speak out against some of the in justices through my music during that particular period I was criticized because people say well art should not be used for propaganda purposes or art is for the sake of art only and it stands alone and by itself and there were all kinds of arguments and of course these things I don't I don't believe that's true anyway for me disco is is it's a diversionary tactic - I mean just total disco say if we just danced and danced and had fun and potted all the time we'd never have an opportunity to look at what's really going on around us we could be led into war they could drop an atom bomb we could be jobless but as long as we as long as our culture can take us into that never Neverland that and dream we're all solely not that we shouldn't do that occasionally but we should have something else to balance that off some reality should sneak in Westerwelle not just a steady diet of disco and and jaws and extraterrestrial films and all these kind of things we we get into a world where we can't even we don't even know what reality is anymore you know culture can be used just to to choreograph our minds and take us from from one place to another place and we we can live in a fantasy world and most of us do how many how many people can really identify honestly with a film like Dallas but most people live vicariously that life force upon the show because the majority of the people watching but so we're kind of living their lives vicariously and then going out into the streets where we have to struggle with all kinds of things as people I'm talking about all the people of the country and so you know these are the things that's your questions so I didn't mind the criticism I got because I know that Dallas is also propaganda if it can take me away from the reality and I can go to bed dreaming about the scenes that go on then the Luxor in all the riches that these people are enjoying and I take that with me get up in the next boy and I go to my little position in society and sit down and I'm still there I'm still living that life that I'd left last night on that too and so I'm not thinking about the fact that there is racist racism still exist and there's police brutality that there's joblessness you know just things that are plaguing us today and have been playing in so this was an attempt to just using music to give us another aspect of what the power of art is I think that the things that Picasso did against that were anti-war things were powerful things and they evoked thought you could think when I went to his exhibition I saw some of the things he did it was it was meaningful to me I think God all everything is political lest we get too far away from the drugs let's talk about some of the players that in your development were influential men like Chick Webb and O'Neil Spencer Kozik oh and Joe Jones these were men that preceded you that are your father's so to speak in the continuum would you care to go to the to the to the drum set once again and maybe show us some of the things that that you picked up from those masters and also I would like you to reflect on on the great Kenny Clark who along with yourself was a great innovator in this music in the modern period and just recently passed well Kenny Clark who definitely was father of the whole bebop period he explored different uses of time and the sense that he'd the way he dealt with the bass drum and respect to what was being done with the drum set itself broken rhythms still in 4/4 time and things like that he and another thing about Kenny cloud that was also very important was that he was a drummer you know John was prior to say people like Kenny cloth but just were considered drummers and not necessarily musicians Kenny Clark was a fine musician he was a fine composer he was the multi-instrumentalist when he was in his early development he played vibraphone as well as drums and in one of his first recordings that he made in Sweden when he was over there in the late 30s and so he was an inspiration not only as a great jungle also has a very very fine musician so his influence on me was was was very important in my own development that well then you're not just a timekeeper but you also have to be involved in every aspect of the music as a composer as songwriter etc and all these things he did he did him well Chick Webb of course was great solo drummer who swarmed the first lady of jazz as she is called Ella Fitzgerald and he was important because he was one of the I guess on the first drum band leaders who made a lasting impact on solo drumming and I was very interested in that aspect about drumming - he put the jobs right out there in the front as a bandleader the same as Errol Hans did the piano Duke Ellington did as a pianist and and Benny cotton people like that did it's great van leaders and great soloists O'Neal Spencer was I guess you'd beat you call him the the premier general for small bands he worked with the John Kirby band that had Charlie Chavous folks like that he was a master after brushes Papa Joe Jones was one of the great inventors and innovators of all times and what he could do with any part of the drumset Cosi Cole's was a was a consummate technician as far as dealing with all aspects of rudimentary drumming and more and making it swing cosy Cole's was with Cinda Catlett but who was another consummate German who worked with Louie Armstrong who did who was just did everything well Mallory as an accompaniment accompany us but also as a soloist and these folks they profoundly influenced my ideas about how to deal with the job said if I may I'd like to just give an example of one of these folks to give you some idea as to some of the things that they're doing that's Papa Joe Jones and he could play any part of the drum set and make it sound musical [Music] [Music] would you just discuss was in a little bit of technical detail what you involved was right there on a hi-hat well it's contused at the junk that the drunk kid it has unlimited possibility as far as soundness concerned my Chum was like Papa Joe Jones that was so that was something taken from his repertoire Papa Joe Jones was that great drummer who was with the brother Count Basie band when they see had people like all those creative giants like Lester Young Harry sweet citizen Hershel Evans that group just very very fun music's out of Kansas City but drummers from that particular school Nollywood they were highly into individualistic for example I recall once we did a a bebop versus New Orleans style contest this is one of the very very early TV shows and we played a version of Tiger Rag and they played a version of how high as the moon and on the end of Tiger Rag there's a drum break and instead of baby dots playing on the instrument in the conventional fashion playing a little too jump set when they said hold that tiger hold that tiger the band stops and the drummer takes this break he picked up the snare drum and blew on it blew his breathalyzed so it produced the sound of a raw of a sounded like a row of a tiger and you know it was and so then when we played the same piece I played what I've did I'm supposed to be a modern person what I did sounded conventional because that was really outside of the drum set us like playing off the instrument yeah he used his breath to produce the sound that had a raw to it when you blow your breasts your breath and make a sound very close to the to the snare head and and they always come up with things like that but that this high hat thing is an example you'd be playing maybe thinking it's your suing and thinking that you're doing all calle de s-- up your feet are doing and you're dancing all over the drums and all of a sudden one of these men will just blow on the snare job or tremble with the brushes someplace and and just they went for sounds within the instrument other than just playing and beating on the instrument itself and so it causes you to think and it causes you to be inventive I don't today everybody most most musicians will get caught up in saying I'm gonna play fast or do this or do that like someone else but they were always full of surprises and that hi-hat demonstration was just a small example of the many aspects of the drumset itself that that people like baby dolls and big Sydney cabin and Papa Joe Jones and Chick Webb and cozy cousin and them introduced many of us much of it is forgotten today probably the first point in your career when all these influences could kind of find a coherent expression as a soloist was doing the extensive period in which you play with Charlie Parker ranging from I guess around 44 even up to around 50 to intermittently you were basically Charlie Parker's favorite drummer one of the classic pieces is the piece Coco which I guess was record on your very first session with with Parker would you like to discuss your association with Parker and just specifically talk about his impact and allowing you to develop and open up as a soloist and maybe give us a taste of cocoa to take this out well it would be difficult to give you a taste of cocoa because cocoa was Charlie Parker he was really instrumental in many ways in helping me to develop the drum solo as I saw it I had a lot of freedom working with Charlie Parker he would many times just write one one sheet of music when we went into the studio to record we just write a part for miles for miles you got a trumpet part he would transpose transpose his part from the trumpet part because alto saxophone is in a different key and miles is and say it's a b-flat concert that's when he chanced he'd write miles apart and then chin and then transpose it to his e-flat instrument but the rhythm section the basis in the penis he he just taught tell them the harmonic changes that went with the melodic line that he created and he'd look over at me and just tell me to that I had freedom to do what I wanted to do and I would nest I would find my own way and so this gave me the kind of freedom that this gave me the kind of freedom that that helped me to develop the drum solo and Coco was my first long-term solo piece well I know that you Cocos the melody as Charlie's mellow but you have a way of playing melody on drum through dynamics and through design can you approximate like which you would have played to set up Coco or you know just give us that feeling I know you can make me hear it I know you can [Music] [Music]

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Length: 60min 16sec (3616 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 09 2017