I'm not always on the same page with Stanley Crouch, but he is a scholar of
jazz and this is quite an appropriate appreciation of Max Roach. Peter
--- Begin Message ---
Max Roach - He marched to the beat of his own drum
by Stanley Crouch
New York Daily News - August 20th 2007
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/08/20/2007-08-2
0_he_marched_to_the_beat_of_his_own_drum.html
[Moderator's Note: Stanley Crouch was one of the
speakers at the memorial service for Max Roach, Friday,
August 24th at Riverside Church, in New York City.]
The world is now in its first week in 83 years without
drummer Max Roach. When Roach, one of the very greatest
creators ever, died last week of pneumonia at a hospice
in New York, he had progressed from a young talent to a
first-class professional on to an innovator and,
finally, grand master capable of irrevocable artistry.
His instrument was the drums, but one reviewer for The
New York Times wrote that calling Roach a drummer was
like "calling Shakespeare a strolling player."
It is understandable that a man born in North Carolina
and reared in the black working class of Brooklyn could
do the impossible because American innovation is so
often about a person from anywhere on the social scale
- from top to bottom - conceiving a new design and
developing the technology to make it not only
believable, but palpable.
That is essential in the arts and Roach's great legacy
is that he conceived unprecedented designs and executed
them so flawlessly that he took away the breath of his
audience.
This was no easy accomplishment. Roach had developed
his masterful technique to an irrefutable level, but he
had aesthetic and personal purpose. The grand master
once told me that he refined the quality of drum solos
so that he could do two things: teach the audience to
follow his mind as he played, and to snare the interest
of the women in the house. To those ends, Roach was not
about loud and fast drum solos. In the interest of
tension and release, suspense and satisfaction, he used
little figures - riffs - that multiplied or subtracted
from, separated and came back together.
Roach was a handsome man who had wonderful posture, a
jaunty step to his walk, an imperial relaxation and
certitude, all of which came out in sound as he sat
behind his drums with the unassailable but empathic
confidence of a good king. He had come up through the
streets and had sunk down into the gloom of drug
addiction when he first came to prominence during the
1940s, as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie led the
young troops through the breach of a new style called
bebop.
Roach can be heard on recordings done in performance or
in the studios of New York and can be seen often
smiling and wearing a mustache and glasses as he drives
or coaxes along the bands from behind the drums. He
made seminal recordings with almost all of the
innovators of the past 60 years.
Roach was also one of the first jazz musicians to take
on the issue of racism without any biting of his lip.
But even as he investigated his African roots during
the scowling black nationalism that entered jazz in the
1960s, there was always a fundamental belief in the
Americanness of his music and the nature of
improvisation that had developed in this country.
"I am an American and the drum set is one of the few
instruments native to this country," Max Roach would
say. "This is a democratic nation and jazz is a
democratic music in which we all express ourselves as
individuals and cooperate for the overall good. That's
good enough for the bandstand and it is good enough for
the world. In music, you can make a dream come to life
as a reality of design and feeling. Democracy is a
dream of being able to do it better someday. I have
never stopped dreaming."
Neither have those who listen to his music. Max Roach
has actual majesty, something so rare in our cheap
moment but a force that can inspire nostalgia. It can
also inspire ability, and ability is what Roach had
much more of than most in the arts, regardless of
idiom. He was one of our finest.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
_____________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.
Submit via email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Submit via the Web: portside.org/submit
Frequently asked questions: portside.org/faq
Subscribe: portside.org/subscribe
Unsubscribe: portside.org/unsubscribe
Account assistance: portside.org/contact
Search the archives: portside.org/archive
--- End Message ---
_______________________________________________
Mellon Myers Undegraduate Fellowship Program at Macalester (http://macmmuf.org)
[email protected]
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html
http://macmmuf.org/mailman/listinfo/list_macmmuf.org
