ABSTRACT
African American culture had produced a musical form that would allow individuals to join together to express both their refusal to submit and the faith that change was on its way. Many of the freedom songs were spirituals or gospel tunes that had emerged directly from the African American folk tradition. The performance of these songs featured the cornerstone characteristics of black music in America: the call and response pattern, polyrhythmic accompaniment, and improvisation. The recording of the “Freedom Now Suite” by drummer Max Roach in the summer of 1960 dramatically revealed the ability of music derived from the black folk idiom to produce new and innovative forms which express the tenor of the times for African Americans. Max Roach’s career as a jazz artist personifies the evolutionary nature of the black music heritage in America. Like so many other Black Arts writers Dumas finds a sense of community and a sense of racial identity in African American music.
