Max Roach & Booker Little - 1960 - We Insist! - 01 Driva' Man

Personnel
Max Roach (Drums)
Booker Little (Trumpet), Julian Priester (Trombone)
Walter Benton, Coleman Hawkins (Tenor Saxophones)
James Schenck (Bass), Michael Olatunji (Congas)
Ray Mantilla, Tomas Duvall (Percussion)
Abbey Lincoln (Vocal)

Composers
1. Driva' Man: 5.10 Max Roach, Oscar Brown Jr.
2. Freedom Day: 6.02 Max Roach, Oscar Brown Jr
3. Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace: 7.58 Max Roach
4. All Africa: 7.57 Max Roach, Oscar Brown Jr.
5. Tears For Johannesburg: 9.36 Max Roach

Recorded by Bob d'Orleans at Nola Penthouse Sound Studios, New York City on August 31st and September 6th 1960

[LennyBarralere]

Review 2/2

FREEDOM DAY, another collaboration of Brown and Roach, communicates the vibrant expectancy and wonderment and nagging disbelief in the period immediately following the Emancipation Proclamation. The song, particularly in Abbey Lincoln's surging performance, projects a bursting impatience. The celebratory instrumental solos are by Booker Little (trumpet); Walter Benton (tenor saxophone) in one of his best performances so far on record; Julian Priester (trombone); and Max Roach. Roach arranged the backgrounds throughout the record as well as having composed the melodies.

TRIPTYCH: PRAYER, PROTEST, PEACE was originally conceived by Roach as a ballet, and has been performed by him with the Ruth Walton Dancers. The choreography by Roach and Walton is largely improvisatory within a general framework. The demands this piece makes on a singer are fierce and exhausting. PRAYER is the cry of an oppressed people, any and all oppressed peoples of whatever color or combinations of colors. PROTEST is a final, uncontrollable unleashing of rage and anger that have been compressed in fear for so long that the only catharsis can be the extremely painful tearing out of all the accumulated fury and hurt and blinding bitterness. It is all forms of protest, certainly including violence. PEACE, as Max explained to Abbey before the take, "is the feeling of relaxed exhaustion after you've done everything you can to assert yourself. You can rest now because you've worked to be free. It's a realistic feeling of peacefulness. You know what you've been through." Worth noting is how aptly Max complements Abbey in the three sections.

ALL AFRICA connotes both the growing interest of American Negroes in the present and future of Africa and also their new pride in Africa's past and their own pre-American heritage. In this colaboration between American jazz drummer, Roach, Afro-Cuban players Mantillo and Du %%and Nigerian Michael Olatunji, it was Ola-tunji who set the polyrhythmic directions. It is his voice answering Abbey Lincoln in the introduction. She chants the names of African tribes. In answer, Olatunji relates a saying of each tribe concerning freedom — generally in his own Yoruba dialect. His is also the leading drum voice (he's actually playing three, the. basic drum being an Apesi from Nigeria, a whole drum carved from the trunk of a tree.) The resultant interplay gathers in tension and complexity until TEARS FOR JOHANNESBURG is introduced by an insistent motif played by bassist James Schenck.
TEARS FOR JOHANNESBURG sums up, in large sense, what the players and singers on this album are trying to communicate. There is still incredible and bloody cruelty against Africans, as in the Sharpeville massacres of South Africa. There is still much to be won in America. But, as the soloists indicate after Abbey's wounding threnody, there will be no stopping the grasp for freedom everywhere. In order, the solos are by Booker Little, Walter Benton, Julian Priester, and the drummers.


What this album is saying is that FREEDOM DAY is coming in many places, and those working for it mean to make it stick. In 1937, a Negro who still remembered slavery spoke of what it was like in 1865. "Hallelujah broke out ...Everybody went wild. We all felt like heroes, and nobody had make us that way but ourselves." It's happening again.