Max Roach
American percussionist and composer, one of the most influential jazz
drummers. Roach was born in New Land, North Carolina. In 1942 he worked with a
group of American jazz musicians in Harlem, New York, including pianist
Thelonius Monk and alto saxophonist Charlie Parker. The group was experimenting
with a musical style that was to become known as bebop jazz, or bop. Roach was
one of the first drummers to realize fully the potential of stylistic
innovations such as using the cymbals rather than the bass drum for the primary
rhythmic pulse of the music. He became the leading drummer of the bop movement,
and he played and recorded with most of the major jazz musicians of the period.
In the 1960s Roach recorded a number of albums centering on the black-American
cultural arts movement and the struggle for black racial equality. He has also
been a frequent solo performer and has composed music for musicals, motion
pictures, television, and symphony orchestras. More