Drummer Nasheet Waits picks 12 pieces by Max Roach, his mentor, and discusses their significance. Pretty interesting. He discusses one of my favorites, “Garvey’s Ghost,” from “Percussion Bitter Suite”(1961):
This is one of my favorite cuts of music of all time. It’s another example of how the title really speaks to what’s happening in the music. This references Marcus Garvey, the great Pan-Africanist in the States during the late ’10s and 20s, who died in England in 1940, mistreated, and his organization decentralized by the same tactics used against the Black Panthers some years later. The piece references that history, talking about self-determination, but then it also has a haunting, ghostly quality; the melody is so powerful, as is the fact that Abbey doesn’t sing any words.
…He always plays something and then leaves some space, and then plays something else and leaves some space. He calls, he answers, he answers, and then he leaves some space. He always used to say that there’s always room. Get to your shit quick, make a statement, and in making that statement, the things that you don’t play are just as important as the things you do. That always seemed to be a theme for him, and he utilized it in every component of his career. Always some space for others.
