The cover art of Max Roach’s We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, from 1960, references the sit-in movement, which had taken off just that year in Greensboro, N.C. The piece “Tears for Johannesburg” was written in response to the even-more-recent Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa. In short, with this landmark piece of music, which draws from centuries of Black American musical history, Roach was delivering a contemporary take on what was going on in the world.

When Nasheet Waits was invited to mark the 100th year of Roach’s birth with a reimagining of the Freedom Now Suite at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) in Newark, he understood that part of the assignment would be to keep this 64-year-old piece connected to the present day.

He invited Saul Williams to recite poetry, knowing he would take on the issues that are dominant today, as his bluesological poems always do. And he constructed a stellar band that would carry the music into a present dimension, while still keeping it rooted. That group includes Cassandra Wilson on vocals, filling the spot Abbey Lincoln originally held; Ravi Coltrane on saxophone; Nduduzo Makhathini on piano; and a percussion section including (D.C.’s own) Kweku Sumbry. In addition to Williams, Waits invited the legendary Sonia Sanchez and the Last Poets to deliver verses too.

The performance debuted in Newark in January, in front of a big and appreciative crowd, with Mayor Ras Baraka reading some of his father Amiri Baraka’s poetry to open the night. Moments of splendor and warm exchange abounded, from the Last Poets’ performance early in the night to Waits’s explosive drum solo midway through the suite.

On Saturday, the show will arrive in D.C. with the same ensemble (sans Baraka), when Waits presents it at the Kennedy Center.

Waits’s relationship to Max Roach began when he was a baby, as his father, Freddie Waits, played in Roach’s percussion ensemble M’Boom. When Freddie Waits died, Nasheet was still a teenager, and Roach took him under his wing, often bringing him along to performances. “I asked all kinds of questions,” Waits remembers today. “Really, I owe him so much.”

When Waits, now 53, received the commission from NJPAC, he traveled to D.C. to look at the Max Roach collection at the Library of Congress. There he leafed through Roach’s original music manuscripts for the Freedom Now Suite and the drafts of Oscar Brown Jr.’s poems for the suite. Waits used these files as he prepared a new take on that music. He was also inspired to find in the collection photographs of Roach with Malcolm X and other fellow activists of the era, some of which show up in a video piece produced by Allison Shotz that runs throughout the concert (which itself was directed by Reece Ewing).

Looking through the Max Roach archive, it’s hard not to be struck by the amount of business correspondence and logistical arrangements included in his files. Roach was a doggedly self-directed artist, not only composing and leading ensembles and teaching, but producing his own multimedia concerts, running a record label and working with activist organizations to put his music in service to causes. Waits is among the most respected drummers in the world but has rarely taken the reins as a bandleader; in a way, it is fitting that he pays tribute to his old mentor by stepping into the producer’s role.

CapitalBop caught up with Waits this week to talk about his relationship to Roach, the Freedom Now Suite and the cast of all-stars he’s assembled for Saturday’s performance.

CapitalBop: Talk to me a little bit about, first of all, Max Roach’s relationship to your dad, Freddie Waits.

Nasheet Waits: He was like a godfather to me and like an older brother to my father, I guess, along with being a mentor on the instrument. They had that connection through M’Boom, which started in 1970 — that was the year I was born, and that was when that group started meeting at Warren Smith’s studio, and started rehearsing and coming up with the ideas and the music that would eventually become M’Boom.

For my father and all of the percussionists that were in that unit, that was always the priority. They always took that work [with M’Boom] over all the other work that they had, because it was that important to them as drummers, as men. They had a really strong bond. And with those strong bonds comes a lot of arguments. It was intense. But it was because they were all so vested in the band and what that band meant.

Max was always an advocate — as my father was, as all those musicians were that were a part of M’Boom — for drummers in general. In terms of the intelligence of the drummers. That was one of the purposes or meanings of that band. Because, well, Max used to say that the drummer’s treated like the n****r in the band. You know, not a lot of credit. Always getting the jokes told about them. You can’t read or you can’t do whatever — you know, those types of stereotypes. So they wanted to dispel those myths by playing all the melody and the harmony through the instruments. So there’s also kind of a connection to that type of genius that has its origins in Africa and the diasporic African expression.

The way it felt when they were together was like, even though there was laughing and joking and a lot of fun, it was really serious, and always had the air of work. That feeling was present: that the work that they were doing was of a high level of importance. I felt like Max represented that. You know, he set a certain standard with the way he carried himself — in terms of his ethics, with regard to the craft and also the business — that he imbued into the rest of those folks in that band. Not that they didn’t have it as well, but he set the standard for that. Always wanting to be aware of what your worth was, and being treated comparably — in terms of him starting record labels, agencies and managing himself, things of that nature. Not being taken advantage of.

And I was very close to him and his family. I went to high school with his twin daughters, and I consider them my sisters. My wife is best friends with the sisters, Ayo and Dara. Max’s son Raoul and I got a chance to spend some time together during this past year, doing some interviews and things like that.

It wasn’t until I got older and decided to become a musician professionally, that I realized how important he was in terms of the chronology, of the history.

CB: That must have been uncanny to slowly have it revealed to you that this man was not just that powerful to you personally. 

NW: Yeah, and I’m glad I didn’t really know that when I was young, because it would have made me be more shy. I was pretty young and foolish and I asked all kinds of questions, I was such a bothersome pest. Really, I owe so much to him. Especially after my father passed away, he really kept an eye on me. During that time period, I would go with him to gigs; he would hire me to be the tech or something like that, but it wasn’t a lot of work. He just wanted to keep an eye on me. And from being around him, I was like, Oh, that was encouraging me to get back into the music.

I got a chance to spend a lot of personal time with him, just me and him, driving to do certain things. I might be helping to set up the drums with M’Boom, something like that. And then I got an opportunity to play with M’Boom. The first time I went overseas was with M’Boom.

I remember when he was organizing a memorial performance for Miles Davis. And so he was talking to Judith Jamison, who was that Ailey at that time, and he was talking to Maya Angelou. I saw how he was interacting with them and how he was talking about how he was visualizing what he wanted to see. I remember driving in the car with him, and he was playing Bitches Brew, and he was like, “Yeah!” He was listening to the music in the car, and it was kind of informing how he wanted a certain section in this memorial to go.

Any time I asked him a specific question, I never got a specific answer. I got a very general answer. Something that led me back to looking at what I needed to do — as opposed to what he was doing. Because you didn’t get lauded for replicating or copying. It was like, you had to be inspired and understand what they were doing, but don’t repeat that. Infuse that into your own understanding. What comes out of your instrument has to be you. That replicant type of attitude wasn’t supported. You had to be looking forward. You had to know about Baby Dodds and about Papa Joe and Kenny Clarke. It was definitely important to know that. But you couldn’t stay there. You had to understand what they were doing and then keep it moving.

He told me an important story. He said that he was on the streets of Brooklyn, and Cecil Payne was one of his childhood friends, and he was playing a gig somewhere in the neighborhood, when they were teenagers, and he said Cecil ran in and was like: “Oh man, yeah, you’re getting to the point — because when I heard you playing, I didn’t see you, but I knew it was you.” To develop your own identity, a personal connection to the music and the culture, was paramount, instead of just being a repeater.

He was always talking about different ways of communicating the art — not just through the music, but visually and so forth, with the voice, with dance. One time when he did this Freedom Now Suite up at Aaron Davis Hall, I think he used dancers and a choir. So he expanded it. And David Rodriguez [now NJPAC’s executive producer] produced that concert. He was up at Aaron Davis Hall at that point. That had Olatunj, and Cassandra was on it. That was the link, because Cassandra was on it, did that one with him back in like ’90.

CB: So, I was going to ask you about that, actually, about how you pulled everybody together for this particular production: Cassandra Wilson, Sonia Sanchez, Saul Williams, Ravi Coltrane and more.

NW: Max was the older brother to Sonia Sanchez. He really looked out for her; when she came up to Amherst to teach, he and Archie Shepp really took her and were like, we got you. So from that, they were really tight.They were in that struggle together. So in preparing for this work, I talked to her a lot actually. All these conversations I would have with her, she would be reciting poetry over the phone to me. So I was like, this is such a rare opportunity, being an audience of one. She had carte blanche to do whatever she wanted to do, really, within the framework of the show. We kind of dealt with it like the village, and so she was like the elder.

When she took the mic in Jersey, she did what she wanted to do. But it was so perfect. She did a poem of hers called “Middle Passage,” and then she did “Haiku for Max.” But in between that, she also just talked about her personal experiences, and also just kind of gave some anecdotes personally to the audience. It was very inclusive, in terms of everybody’s responsibility to be creating a civil society, or contributing to that. So that was really important, to have such a longtime freedom fighter.

And then Saul comes from that as well, in terms of his position and stance. He’s very vocal. Then we added the Last Poets, and then in Newark we got Ras Baraka because of his connection with Amiri Baraka, his father. So that was a natural connection for the presentation of this special program. And those people, you know, they all knew Max like that. When we get that personal connection, that makes it stronger.

The connection to Ravi Coltrane comes through his father, because in terms of the musical framework of the original Freedom Now Suite, it doesn’t use the piano. Max had talked about that as a way to kind of not confine or define the harmony. And he said that Trane had observed that in the recording, and told him that he was moving in that direction. He was like, “I like the openness that you accomplish with the structure of these tunes. And I’m moving in that direction.” [The next year, Coltrane gave a famous set of performances at the Village Vanguard accompanied by only bass and drums.] So Ravi is the biological extension of his father, and also an incredible tenor saxophone player. So that was important, to have him be a part of it, and glad that he was able to do it.

Nduduzo Makhathini, the pianist, represents the “Tears For Johannesburg” and the “All Africa” portion of the contribution, just in a very obvious way, since he’s from South Africa. I had become introduced to him a few years ago through Logan Richardson, and I played a couple of hits with him. Even though there’s no piano on the original recording, I wanted to include him and the piano because of what he brings to the sound of the band, and the fact that he’s a true representation of South Africa, of that experience. And he was also connected to Max in a secondary way, because Max gave his teacher Zim Ngqawana a tenor saxophone.

CB: Didn’t you play with with Zim?

NW: I did, I played with Zim a bit with William Parker and Matthew Shipp. Nduduzo was talking about the level of understanding in a mystical sense, in a way, that he received from Zim. And that’s something that you receive from Nduduzo. So when you communicate with those kinds of people about music, that goes beyond what’s on the page. They understand that, and they can bring that type of understanding to it.

That’s a lot of the lessons that I gleaned from Max: that it’s not the obvious or what’s on the page. It’s a deeper understanding that’s needed to be able to really contribute something of value to the music. It’s way beyond the technical. That’s not what’s really important. It’s the idea that’s the important part, and the source of that idea. You don’t always know where that source is, but you can feel it. You want to have your vessel as prepared and ready as possible, to be able to convey that message.

So they were all about that, all those people that were involved in this particular project. And then Max and my father and those people, who informed the project or who inform my work all the time. I always have those masters in my ear.

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