By Ron Wynn
NASHVILLE, TN — Few musicians have ever combined artistry and advocacy more effectively than the great jazz drummer Max Roach. His instrumental brilliance as well as his outspoken political views are fully showcased in the new documentary “Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes,” which makes its debut Friday night on PBS as the latest entry in their ongoing American Masters series. Roach expressed his social justice views throughout his lifetime. In a short piece of archival footage that opens the film an interviewer asks Roach if he uses his music as a weapon. “Sometimes the music is used to make people feel happy and joy,” Roach replies. “But on some occasions we do use the music as a weapon against man’s inhumanity towards man.” Alongside the passionate advocacy and protest expressed in works like “We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite” or his solo performance accompanying Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech,” he also never lost sight of the celebratory spirit of the music.
Roach often practiced for hours on end as a child, using his bed as a drum stool, until the neighbors knocked on the door to complain. Co-directors Sam Pollard and Ben Shapiro took a comprehensive approach to the subject. The film is the culmination of a long-dormant passion project for Pollard and Shapiro. Both separately embarked on their own profiles of Roach in the mid-1980s before shelving the projects for a number of years. They’ve pooled their resources to revive the film in recent years, leading to the inclusion of previously unseen interviews with Roach and Abbey Lincoln as well as captivating rehearsal footage of Roach’s percussion ensemble M’Boom in its prime.
Roach’s story nicely gets outlined through various chapters. These include his early life, contributions to the bebop movement; the quintet with Clifford Brown; his battles with addiction and his marriage to Abbey Lincoln. Later comes the influential political statement of “We Insist!,” the innovations of M’Boom, his experiments with hip-hop, and then the final years leading to his death in 2007.
Both directors are veteran documentarians in various capacities, Pollard’s produced and edited documentary and narrative films for Spike Lee and others. That experience shines through in the impressive pace and tempo of the film, which covers the key points of Roach’s legacy in 80 minutes.
The filmmakers also compiled a powerful roster of speakers to relate Roach’s importance. Not only elders like Jimmy Heath, Harry Belafonte and Randy Weston, but younger figures like Greg Tate make posthumous appearances alongside still living greats Sonny Rollins, Quincy Jones, Questlove, Abdullah Ibrahim, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Sonia Sanchez, Charles Tolliver, Warren Smith and Julian Priester.
“Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes,” Friday night on PBS’ American Masters.
