SIFF ’23: Max Roach, the Drum Also Waltzes

Max Roach was one of jazz’s two great “trouble-making” musical activists, along with Charles Mingus. Together, they formed Debut Records, the short-lived independent jazz label. Tragically, Mingus was undermined by his own body at the age of 56, but Roach lived into his eighties, having successfully channeled his protest anger into music. Documentarians Sam Pollard and Ben Shapiro chronicle Roach’s long, challenging career about as well as anyone could with a mere ninety minutes in Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes, which screens at the 2023 Seattle International Film Festival.

Roach left this world in 2007, but Pollard started filming him for a prospective documentary in 1987. At the same time, Shapiro was recording audio interviews with Roach for a book about jazz drums. Apparently, other projects and events intervened for Pollard, but he had a wealth of material to draw from when they finally joined forces and finished the film.

Roach was the classic Bebop drummer, but he was probably more responsible than any for Bebop’s evolution into Hardbop as the co-leader of the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet. His protest music with Abbey Lincoln was about as avant-garde as any Free Jazz and he later explored the unexpected melodic and harmonic possibilities of his instrument in the all-percussion ensemble M’Boom.

By far, the best sequences in Drum Also Waltzes cover Roach’s relationship with Brown, who died far, far too young, through no fault of his own. The memories of Roach and legends like Sonny Rollins will move many jazz fans to tears.

On the other hand, the biggest absence in the doc is that of Mingus. Roach had a long association with the bassist, as co-founders of Debut, as members of the celebrated one-night-only “Jazz at Massey Hall” Quintet, the rhythm section of Duke Ellington’s Money Jungle record, and the so-called “Newport Rebels.” I suspect Pollard and Shapiro are keenly aware of the oversight and it probably kills them, but maybe one Mingus reference would have necessarily led to another, until he took over the film.

Jazz Score: Friday the Thirteenth

Artist Ray Johnson died on Friday the thirteenth, drowned in the waters of Sag Harbor. Numerologists will take note: he was checked into room 247 of a local hotel, numbers which director John Walter’s documentary How to Draw a Bunny points out, add up to thirteen. In addition to displaying a shrewd sense of humor, Walter’s film also makes keen use of solo drum improvisations by the great Max Roach, making it a welcome, if somewhat idiosyncratic addition to MoMA’s Jazz Score series.

Well regarded by colleagues like Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Chuck Close, and Christo & Jean-Claude, all heard in interview segments, the renown of his contemporaries eluded Johnson. He probably was not helped by his eccentric approach to business dealings, which the film interprets as an extension of his performance art pieces, dubbed “nothings” by Johnson in the pre-Seinfeldian era. Introducing the film Wednesday, Walter explained the initial uncertainty surrounding Johnson’s death—murder, accident or “performance art gone wrong?”

Watching Bunny, so named for the rabbit figures which often adorned Johnson’s graphic work, one is easily convinced the artist was a mad genius. While the film unquestionably accepts Johnson’s artist merits, some of the work shown makes one wonder if he were truly a fine artist or a con artist, pulling an elaborate gag on the art world. Some of his portraits and collages are indeed fascinating, but other smaller works using Lucky Strike packages kind of make one wonder. Indeed, much of his work comes across as an extended joke for his own amusement, like a nothing in which he whipped a cardboard box with his belt while hopping on one foot before a stunned hipster audience.

Regardless of one’s take on Johnson’s art, Bunny is a surprisingly entertaining film. Roach’s solos swing hard, accentuating Walter’s strong visuals. The decision to incorporate footage of Roach’s hands in performance, described by Walter as an “analog” to the creative work Johnson shaped with his own hands, gives a mysterious, almost spiritual dimension to film.

Ultimately, Johnson’s death was ruled a suicide—essentially a performance art piece gone tragically right. Given the artist’s subversive methods used to get his work into the MoMA collection so it could be included in an exhibition curated by Close, the film seems like a particularly apt choice for their Jazz Score series. Documentaries have also been relatively under-represented thus far, so Bunny is a nice change of pace. It is a fascinating story briskly propelled by Roach’s brushes. It screens today at 2:30.