Can the beat go on?

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When the late hours on-air would drive my mind into oblivion, and the scratch of the record would start to sound like the concrete running beneath a greyhound bus, I would shake my head, slam down a Cherry Coke, and step into the archives of WUOG where I kept a rare LP of Duke Ellington rolling under the swinging percussion of Max Roach. Roach passed away this week, and there's a part of me that wonders if the beat can still go on.

Roach, remembered aptly here in this CMJ article, was one of the great drummers of all time. He introduced fused rhythms and timings during an era that swung like a metronome, never losing the 2 and the 4 on the snare. But Roach took the trap set to places it had never been, and helped build the sound of Bee Bop into the 1950s.

What was equally as significant for Roach was his dedication to the Civil Rights movement. I tried to think of musicians (or, artists of any kind) who have crossed such a great divide and reached such a large audience in today's corporate entertainment industry. His beat was heard all around the world, from the white snow drifts of Norway, to the muddy banks of the Congo. and in that space, Roach used his music to help break the divide between varying shades of flesh. When you close your eyes, you don't see a person's race, you just feel the beat.

Brian Lehrer, on WNYC aired an old broadcast today taken from an interview with Hip Hop artist Russel Simmons. He was plugging a book he wrote on success. It was nice to hear someone in the music industry speaking out. But Simmon's rhetoric was a little preachy for me. He kept talking about financial success and fusing in spiritual lingo. Yeah, I know. I once was a preacher. But as for the racial divide in this country, God is doing a pretty good job of fighting for the equal rights of humankind (Sharpton, Jackson, et al.). I was wanting to hear the musician shout out to the poverty and segragation that still goes on in this country. I wanted to hear it slung to a beat, the way that Roach to grab your body and soul and throw you down on the dance floor. But I can't find that beat anymore. If anyone hears it, let me know. Because now that Roach is gone, I'm listening hard for it.