Max Roach - Percussion Bitter Sweet

Max Roach
Percussion Bitter Sweet
1961

The music: This is an ok album. The music is interesting, not brilliant, but still engaging. Eric Dolphy is less vibrant than usual, but is still worth it. Max Roach understands percussion but plays with a very unpleasant arrogance. Abby Lincoln only shows up twice - once ("Garvey's Ghost") she is brilliant, the other ("Mendacity") she is trite and remarkably unsophisticated.

The other: Since this album was recorded as a political statement, the fair thing to do is consider it as a political statement. In almost every way, Percussion Bitter Suite gets so caught up trying to be political that the music suffers.

The lyrics to "Mendacity" are ridiculous. The way Lincoln enunciates on this piece is enough to drive me insane. Is she trying to give an elocution lesson? The words themselves are better suited to an expository composition piece in your first year of college. Using "mendacity" in a piece of music that is trying to make a serious statement about the state of the world is a great example of immature pretentiousness. The music itself is great, but those vocals/lyrics are so stupid, they cancel each other out.

What irritates me the most, is this is a jazz album trying to make a political statement - one of the strengths of the art form (jazz) is its subtlety, and those lyrics are not subtle. They rest of the album is subtle, and those lyrics stick out - Max Roach took the trouble to compose an album that expressed some of the emotions of the civil rights movement using instrumental music and then he goes and includes those lyrics? Why?

What's frustrating about that is "Garvey's Ghost" gives Lincoln a chance to record using scat that does a more satisfying job of fitting in with the overall idea of the album.

The simple truth is that compared to "Freedom Now", "Percussion Bitter Sweet" is a failure. It does not generate that anger, fear and violence that "Freedom Now" does. "Percussion Bitter Sweet" in simple musical terms is not going to be able to do that, at least not with the Afro-Cuban flavor that Roach gives it.

My impression is that Roach felt compelled to record a follow up to "Freedom Now", didn't really have the right kind of ideas, so he recorded the ideas he had, and gave them titles that suggested a civil rights millieu.

Of course, I have a philosophical aversion to abstract forms of art trying to deal with concrete issues. Jazz is one of the most abstract art forms in this consideration. The better the musician is, the more capable that person will be in evoking a specific emotional response. But I do not believe that it is possible to write instrumental, improvised music that addresses such a specific issue. To do so imparts powers to jazz that it does not have. Which, on a tangent, is why I often feel those musicians who think they are the most advanced musically fail those miserably - they do not understand the limitations of the musical form they work in.

That is what I take away from this album, and why I ultimately don't find it all that satisfying outside of a few individual performances. It is important that jazz's limits be understood. As admirable as it is to try new things, there is stuff that jazz is incapable of doing. Jazz of the type that Roach has recorded here can't do what he wants it to do.

For your consideration: The best example of politically-engaged jazz is "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holliday. It isn't trite, it is subtle, and it is musically engaging and satisfying.