Max Roach Quotes

#1. I didn't even apply. There was no warning.

Max Roach

#2. The American drummer is a one-man percussion orchestra.

Max Roach

#3. 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

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

Max Roach

#5. Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

Max Roach

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

Max Roach

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

Max Roach

#8. 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

#9. The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of the Instrument.

Max Roach

#10. 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

#11. 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