Creativity Quote by Max Roach

Roach’s phrasing is blunt, almost mischievously physical: “got me off” makes musical discovery sound like a jolt of pleasure, not a polite appreciation. That’s the point. He’s pushing against the idea of jazz drumming as mere timekeeping or tasteful support. The drummers who moved him weren’t just “good” in the narrow, professional sense; they were turning the drum kit into an argument about possibility.

“Dealing with the musical potential of the Instrument” is studio-clean language after that raw opener, and the contrast matters. Roach is naming a shift in values: the kit isn’t a background machine, it’s an instrument with melody, harmony-by-implication, color, narrative. In bebop and post-bop, Roach helped redefine the drummer from accompanist to co-author, trading predictable accents for conversational phrasing, orchestration across toms and cymbals, and solos that weren’t athletic detours but thematic statements. His admiration is really a lineage claim: he’s aligning himself with innovators who treated percussion as composition.

There’s subtext, too, about respect. “Instrument” is capitalized in spirit, if not on the page. Roach is rejecting the condescension that can cling to drums as primitive, purely physical, or secondary. Ironically, he embraces the physical charge first, then insists on intellect and structure. Pleasure and rigor aren’t opposites here; for Roach, the thrill comes from hearing someone prove the drums can think.