{"id":3284,"date":"2014-01-30T19:23:16","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T19:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=3284"},"modified":"2014-01-30T19:23:16","modified_gmt":"2014-01-30T19:23:16","slug":"a-window-into-max-roachs-world-at-the-library-of-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2014\/01\/30\/a-window-into-max-roachs-world-at-the-library-of-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"A Window into Max Roach's World, at the Library of Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
Photo by William P. Gottlieb\/ Courtesy Library of Congress<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nWhen I interviewed Randy Weston<\/strong> for this recent Wall Street Journal profile<\/a>,\u00a0the 87-year-old pianist reflected on his youth in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York.
\n“Back then, Brooklyn was a jazz city,” he said. “Musicians were local heroes. Once bebop hit, you could hear shoeshine guys whistling Charlie Parker melodies while they worked.”
\nWeston talked to me about spending time at the home of Max Roach<\/strong>, who was one year his senior, and whose family moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant when Roach was four years old. Any conversation with Weston involves digging deeply into the primacy of rhythm and the social and political context for African American music without ever landing on the word \u201cjazz.\u201d
\nIt\u2019s hard to overstate Roach\u2019s importance to our understanding of rhythmic orientation and possibility in modern music, to African American identity in general, and concerning the pejorative connotations and linguistic failures of the word \u201cjazz.\u201d
\nI can\u2019t wait to get a chance to dig into the collection of Roach\u2019s personal archives, acquired by the Library of Congress<\/strong> in Washington, D.C. and announced on Monday.
\nAccording to the Library of Congress website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

This extraordinary rich collection totals more than 100,000 items, comprising about 80,000 manuscripts and papers; 7,500 photographic materials; 1,000 music manuscripts; and hundreds of sound and video recordings. Highlights from the collection include:
\nAn unpublished draft of his autobiography, written with the late Amiri Baraka
\nA holograph score from “We Insist! Max Roach\u2019s Freedom Now Suite”
\nAn unpublished recording\u2014dated Nov. 14, 1964\u2014of legendary pianist Hassan Ibn Ali
\nA “Solo on the Drums” rehearsal for the television program “With Ossie & Ruby,” featuring Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Billy Taylor and Max Roach
\nAn unpublished 1969 recording of Max Roach with former wife Abbey Lincoln in Iran
\nAn unpublished Cecil Taylor and Max Roach duet in Italy in 2000
\nThe “An Evening with Max Roach” broadcast, Sept. 8, 1964
\nInterviews and performances with Max Roach, Gary Bartz, Woody Shaw, Stanley Cowell and Reggie Workman for Tokyo radio in 1977
\nRarely seen photos of Roach with Art Blakey, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clarke, Thelonious Monk, Clifford Brown, Sonny Rollins, Abbey Lincoln and many more
\nThe Max Roach Collection will be available in the Library\u2019s Performing Arts Reading Room on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. The collection will complement the Library\u2019s existing collections of Charles Mingus, Billy Taylor, Gerry Mulligan, Alvin Ailey, Dexter Gordon, Louis Bellson and Shelly Manne.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Roach, who died in 2007 at 83, had a career that began with bebop\u2019s rise and that peaked as African American arts and culture were prominently interlaced with the civil rights movement. I first encountered him in his later years, when he would often close performances with a virtuoso solo turn, playing simply a hi-hat cymbal. At the time, I was also digging through Roach\u2019s recordings, which include a 1944 take of \u201cWoody \u2019n\u2019 You,\u201d alongside trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, which is among the earlier bebop sessions, and includes the output of the brilliant quintet he led with trumpeter Clifford Brown, who died in 1956 at 25.
\nAccording to Matt Schude<\/strong>l\u2019s piece <\/a>in The Washington Post, the Library of Congress archives include Roach\u2019s reflections after the car accident that claimed Brown\u2019s life, as documented in the unpublished autobiography he was working on with Amiri Baraka.
\nHere\u2019s an interesting excerpt from Ben Ratliff<\/strong>\u2019s\u00a0piece<\/a> in The New York Times:<\/p>\n

I went through some of the archive last week in advance of its public unveiling \u2014 only a little, but enough to know that it contains the material for understanding how Roach saw himself and how those close to him saw him. We don\u2019t have all the answers yet, but perhaps we can start asking the question, what needs to be better understood about Max Roach?
\nHow he constructed his style, which brought together the wholeness of the drum kit rather than any specific part of it, let you hear tuning and touch, and expanded the notion of the drum solo as a truly narrative art might be the hardest one to address. (Perhaps the Roach-Baraka manuscript will help.)
\nWhat might be more easily understood is the nature of his friendships and correspondences with figures including Maya Angelou and Nina Simone, and his passions and causes, from the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa to the obscure Philadelphia pianist Hassan Ibn Ali, with whom he made a fascinating record for Atlantic in 1964. (There\u2019s an hourlong tape in the collection of Ali playing solo piano in Roach\u2019s apartment, some of which I heard, and several letters from him.) There is also a one-sentence telegram that Roach sent to Gov. Nelson Rockefeller after the Attica uprising in 1971: \u201cDoes your belief that prisoners are not human justify the loss of 42 lives?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I hope to write more about Roach based on my own immersion in these archives. One point of fascination for me is Roach\u2019s disdain for the word \u201cjazz\u201d\u2014 an attitude reflected in the comments of many musicians during the past century\u2014and one that comes up again and again in my interviews these days.
\nAs Schudel wrote in the Washington Post:<\/p>\n

In a handwritten essay that is part of the collection, Roach wrote: \u201c\u2009\u2018Jazz\u2019 has always meant the worst of working conditions for an artist.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I interviewed Randy Weston for this recent Wall Street Journal profile,\u00a0the 87-year-old pianist reflected on his youth in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York. “Back then, Brooklyn was a jazz city,” he said. “Musicians were local heroes. Once bebop hit, you could hear shoeshine guys whistling Charlie Parker melodies while they worked.” Weston … <\/p>\n

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