Protest à la Jazz

Max Roach, one of the preeminent jazz drummers of the twentieth century, composed and produced the seminal protest jazz album in his 1960 recording We Insist! Freedom Now Suite.  

The eight-minute closing track of Side 1 and the climax of the album is “Tryptich.”  The three musical acts Roach unfolds in this track are Prayer, Protest, and Peace.  The song is intimate, using only Roach’s drums and Abbey Lincoln’s vocals.  At the beginning of Prayer we hear subtle drumming with Lincoln’s harmonious “ooo-ing,” in a gospel/hymnal spirit, introducing religion and spirituality to the protest anthology, an essential theme of the African American freedom struggle.  At this stage, Roach’s drums are sparse, simply accenting Lincoln’s melody.  As we near the end of Prayer, Lincoln’s vocals carry out a little longer and she begins raising her pitch, as if reaching for a lofty ideal or sense of the divine.  The track transitions into the Protest act with a rising drum roll from Roach, then, bursting into the sonic space, Lincoln begins to cry out with a powerful, enraged yell.  The listener is subjected to a full minute of Lincoln’s interspersed shrieks, as Roach’s drum rumbles and roars in the background.  A massive amount of energy and emotion are expressed in that minute, and exertion shows, as the vocals and drumming subdue.  As follows such exertion, a sense of relief is obtained, as Lincoln trades screams and howls for sighs and hums, and Roach’s crashing symbols become subtle tappings.  Lincoln mixes short vocal runs with breaths of exhaustion.  A final exhale closes the track and ends the Side, and a slight sense of satisfaction fills the space.  

“Tryptich” articulates a pattern in the African American activist movement.  Filled by some upward calling of justice, energized activists push for social change: Prayer.  They are met by status-quo complacency, then outright reactionary conflict, through which they must struggle, suffering along the way: Protest.  From the violence and conflict, a slight sense of calm emerges, without the illusion of perfection or completion, an affirmation of the purpose of the struggle: Peace.