Max Roach Quotes

• I will never again play anything that does not have social significance. We American jazz musicians of African descent have proved beyond all doubt that we are master musicians of our instruments. Now what we have to do is employ our skill to tell the dramatic story of our people and what we've been through.

  Max Roach

  Music, Play, Skills

  87 Copy quote

• Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments & collectively create a thing of beauty.

  Max Roach

  Music, Jazz, Form

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• Music mirrors where we should go, have gone and can go. Music is an abstraction.

  Max Roach

  Mirrors, Gone, Should

  34 Copy quote

• I think that the rhythm sections, drummers in particular, are the unsuing heroes of the music. It's the rhythm section that has changed the styles from one period to the other.

  Max Roach

  Hero, Thinking, Style

  34 Copy quote

• My point is that we much decolonize our minds and re-name and re-define ourselves . . . In all respects, culturally, politically, socially, we must re-define ourselves and our lives, in our own terms.

  Max Roach

  Names, Mind, Term

  27 Copy quote

• Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers.

  Max Roach

  Music, Roles, Jazz

  25 Copy quote

• The American drummer is a one-man percussion orchestra.

  Max Roach

  Men, Orchestra, Drummer

  59 Copy quote

• I always resented the role of a drummer as nothing more than a subservient figure.

  Max Roach

  Roles, Resentment, Drummer

  "Max Roach, Master of Modern Jazz, Dies at 83" by Peter Keepnews, www.nytimes.com. August 17, 2007.

  27 Copy quote

• You can't write the same book twice. Though I've been in historical musical situations, I can't go back and do that again. And though I run into artistic crises, they keep my life interesting.

  Max Roach

  Running, Book, Writing

  25 Copy quote

• They had all this talent, and they had no instruments. So they started rap music. They rhymed on their own. They made their own sounds and their own movements.

  Max Roach

  Rap, Sound, Movement

  15 Copy quote

• The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of their instrument.

  Max Roach

  Music, People, Jazz

  11 Copy quote

• I used to take musical instruments home from elementary school. There were some music teachers there - we all learned instruments. A lot of us got started in public schools. Charlie Parker and Bud Powell, for example. But now there are no more music teachers in public elementary schools. It's like (Senator) Moynihan said, 'benign neglect.' Just let it rot and fester.

  Max Roach

  Teacher, Home, School

  10 Copy quote

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