MAX ROACH

An avant-garde masterpiece, a vocal-instrumental suite, a work of collective improvisation, directly addressing the racial and political issues of it's day, 'We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite' is one of the most important artistic statements of the Civil Rights Movement and one of the most groundbreaking jazz albums of all time.

Max Roach was already almost a decade into his career as one of the most influential jazz drummers and composers when he teamed up with lyricist Oscar Brown Jr. to collaborate on a piece they planned to perform at the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1963. Recorded just months after the February 1960 Greensboro sit-ins, the album stands as an early musical testament to the burgeoning rage, anger and passion that would take the Civil Rights Movement from its early victory in Montgomery in 1955 into a future that would dramatically alter race relations in the United States.