January 11, 2021

3 Videos of Music, Poetry, and Protest to Celebrate Max Roach’s 97th Birthday

Frans Schellekens/Redferns/Getty

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Max Roach would have turned 97 yesterday. After last week’s deadly Capitol rampage, when the escalating effects of Trumpism laid bare the atrocities of American history, Roach’s insistence on political engagement and justice resonates. The drummer’s 1960 We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, with Abbey Lincoln, acutely protested injustice and set the stage for his affirmation that “I will never again play anything that doesn’t have social significance.”

In a poem for the drummer’s 75th birthday, Amiri Baraka painted the picture: “Max is the highest, the outtest, the largest, the greatest, the fastest, the hippest…When we say Max, that’s our word for artist, djali, nzuri ngoma, Señor Congero, leader, mwalimu, scientist of sound, sonic designer, trappist definer, composer, revolutionary democrat…Papa Joe’s successor, Philly Joe’s confessor, AT’s mentor, Roy Haynes’ inventor. Ask Jimmy Cobb, Elvin, or Klook, or even Sunny Murray when he ain’t in a hurry…Barry Harris can tell you…Ask Bud if you see him. You know he know even after the cops beat him Un Poco Loco.”

“I mean you can ask Pharoah or David or Dizzy when he come out of hiding. It’s a trick, Diz just outta sight. I heard ‘Con Alma’ and Diz and Max in Paris just the other night. But ask anybody conscious who Max Roach be. Miles certainly knew and Coltrane too. All the cats who know the science of drum, know where our last dispensation come from.”

Watch Baraka read the full poem at Roach’s funeral at the end of an interview on Democracy Now.

“A drum master for freedom,” tweeted the saxophonist Charles Lloyd yesterday in celebration, “who stood up and marched alongside Hawk, Monk, Bird, Diz, Bud, Sonny, Clifford, and Booker Little, fighting for all of humanity. He metered out his protest with each beat of his drumstick.”

Roach’s Emarcy best with Sonny Rollins is here. Baraka’s video is here. The drummer in conversation is here.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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