Jun 3, 2025 11:25 AM
In Memoriam: Al Foster, 1943–2025
Al Foster, a drummer regarded for his fluency across the bebop, post-bop and funk/fusion lineages of jazz, died May 28…
Christie Dashiell, left, and Terri Lyne Carrington demonstrate the resilience of Max Roach’s classic ’60s protest recording.
(Photo: Erick Bardin)We Insist 2025!, the new album by Terri Lyne Carrington and Christie Dashiell, resonates from its core with echoes of déjà vu that are impossible to ignore. “It’s crazy! I don’t know how I keep doing it,” says Carrington, the Grammy-winning drummer, composer, bandleader and educator, sitting on the patio of the Watergate Hotel. We’re discussing obvious similarities between the nation’s sociopolitical climates in late 2019, when she released her masterpiece Waiting Game (Motéma), and in the increasingly turbulent spring of 2025.
The Watergate, a Washington, D.C., landmark infamously associated with a political scandal of presidential proportions, makes for an appropriate setting as Carrington reflects on the inspiration behind reimagining Max Roach’s seminal 1960 LP We Insist!
During the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second U.S. presidency, he has doubled down on a perceived disdain for many of the beliefs Carrington holds dear through a barrage of legally questionable executive orders. His administration has sought to upend higher education and some of the nation’s most heralded arts and cultural institutions — including the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian, Voice of America and the National Endowment for the Arts — in an aggressive onslaught against “woke” culture. The blitzkrieg targets diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and seeks to silence dissenting voices.
Carrington says that she’s “praying” that the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, which she spearheaded in 2018, will be secured. “[The Trump administration] would come after the school before they will come after us individually,” she says, before mentioning a concert that the Institute held a few weeks prior, which attracted some social media trolls posting negative comments advocating for the end of DEI. “But I can’t really worry about that. This is not the time to say, ‘Oh, I’m not going to make space for people anymore.’”
“… I think that the past is all that makes the present coherent, and further, that the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.”
—James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son
Six years ago, Carrington released the double album Waiting Game, which showcased her leading a new ensemble, Social Science. The seeds of that combo germinated in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election in which Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. Disappointed with a candidate she perceived as misogynistic, racist and having no experience in government running aginst Clinton, a candidate with her own baggage yet bona fide political expertise, Carrington had some meaningful conversations with pianist Aaron Parks and guitarist Matthew Stevens about the path the country was embarking on.
The conversations led to the formation of Social Science and the making of Waiting Game, a brooding protest album that captured the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements as well as the plight of Native Americans and the LGBTQ community in the U.S.
We Insist 2025! (Candid) arrives months after Trump was elected a second time. He defeated Kamala Harris, the former U.S. vice president, who stepped into the race after President Joe Biden withdrew his candidacy.
When Carrington was in the studios last September recording We Insist 2025!, she was “cautiously hopeful” that Harris would win and become not only the first woman president, but also the first Black female and the first Middle East Asian-descended U.S. president. Back then, Carrington said, she thought it was nearly inconceivable to elect Trump again.
“Honestly, I was certain that [Harris] was going to win,” Carrington laughs. “I wasn’t thinking so much about the election when we were making this record. I thought the album was going to be a celebratory record.”
“If now isn’t a good time for the truth I don’t see when we’ll get to it.” —Nikki Giovanni
For all of the sociopolitical-contextualized coincidences between the making and timing of Waiting Game and We Insist 2025!, the latter was mostly inspired by last year’s 100th-anniversary celebration of Max Roach, a major influence who passed away in 2007. Carrington had already written several arrangements of Roach’s “Freedom Day” prior to the centennial.
As his 100th birthday approached, Carrington continued to conceive ideas about how she would like to salute the pioneering drummer, composer, conceptualist, educator and social activist. She’d also begun a relationship with Candid Records, the imprint owned by Archie Bleyer in 1960 for which veteran jazz writer and social activist Nat Hentoff acted as A&R director.
Not only has Candid risen from the ashes with reissues of its storied catalog, but it has also been releasing new material from the likes of trumpeter Milena Casado, vibraphonist Simon Moullier and multi-instrumentalists Zacchae’us Paul and Morgan Guerin — all of whom appear on We Insist 2025! It’s no coincidence. Carrington also happens to be Candid’s A&R consultant.
“I thought it would be cool for the Max Roach centennial to do something,” explains Carrington regarding her working relationship with Candid. Her original idea was to have five drummers, including her, interpret each of the compositions from the original We Insist! But with her schedule, time slipped away.
“I never got around to do it. Then the centennial happened, but the idea was stuck in my head, ‘Damn, I was supposed to do that.’” Carrington recalls. “When we got to August, I said, ‘I still got time to do something.’”
Carrington jettisoned the idea of a project featuring five drummers in favor of releasing her own interpretation of We Insist! for the sake of time and personnel management. And since she was instrumental in signing a lot of emerging artists on Candid, she marshalled the aforementioned musicians for the project.
“I did that so that it would feel like a Candid family record in a sense,” she says. Concept in hand, the project came together rather quickly.
The first arrangement for We Insist 2025! was “Freedom Day.” Unlike the original, on which Abbey Lincoln sings atop of Roach’s fast-paced arrangement while conveying a sense of urgency, Carrington’s arrangement takes a more serene stance. Dashiell sings the triumphant lyrics calmly, channeling an enchanting vibe of 21st-century soul balladry. Moullier’s glistening vibraphone and Casado’s tart trumpet beautify the interpretation. With a cinematic splendor worthy of an Ava DuVernay movie, “Freedom Day, Part 1” sounds like secured liberty after a hard-fought battle.
Carrington thought it was great to have two interpretations for “Freedom Day,” so she asked Dashiell for another arrangement. “Freedom Day, Part 2” retains the future-forward soul sheen, but it shuffles with uptempo ebullience.
Dashiell also arranged the regal a capella opening for “Driva’man” on which stirring vocal harmonies insulate her emotionally piercing yet poised vocal, which depicts the relentless work in the cotton fields and flagellation many Black Americans historically faced at the hands of white people.
“I’ve never had a bandleader call upon me to use that part of my artistry,” recalls Dashiell. “In my own band, I write and arrange everything. But when working with other leaders, I’m normally just singing. But [Carrington] said, ‘This is your record, too. Arrange. Be creative. I want you to have as much input as you can.’ She made me feel empowered.”
Carrington also felt that it was important to co-bill We Insist 2025! with Dashiell because the singer carries so much weight on the project.
“I will never again play anything that does not have social significance. We American jazz musicians of African descent have proved beyond all doubt that we are master musicians of our instruments. Now what we have to do is employ our skill to tell the dramatic story of our people and what we’ve been through.”
—Max Roach
The original We Insist! was recorded in late summer of 1960, on the eve of another landmark election. This time it was John F. Kennedy, who became the country’s first Roman Catholic president, narrowly defeating Richard Nixon. The Cold War with the Soviet Union loomed large, and so did the civil rights movement. The sociopolitical turmoil of that era feels all too familiar today.
The original artwork of three well-dressed Black men sitting in a diner manned by a white waiter references the civil rights “sit-ins” that began in February 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina. The burgeoning movement inspired jazz musicians such as Roach to explicitly address the sociopolitical plight of Black America. That sense was spreading globally, with African nations such as Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia and Togo declaring independence.
A year prior, Roach was working with singer/songwriter Oscar Brown Jr. on an extended work to be performed in 1963 to commemorate the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation. The events of 1960 helped shape some of those original compositions into music for We Insist!
In addition to incorporating Brown’s lyrics, Roach assembled a masterful ensemble that included tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins and Walter Benton, percussionist Olatunji, Ray Mantillo and Tomas du Vall, trombonist Julian Priester, trumpeter Booker Little, bassist James Schenck and, most significantly, singer Abbey Lincoln.
Roach performed We Insist! for the first time in January 1961 at New York’s Village Gate. The Congress for Racial Equity sponsored that date. From there, he performed it at the NAACP National Convention in Philadelphia. Yet, for all of its eminence, the album received mixed reviews, with some critics proclaiming that it was too bitter and too controversial.
The potency and fury of the album was nonetheless undeniable, so much so that it was banned in apartheid South Africa.
Dashiell was already familiar with the original We Insist! when Carrington requested her involvement. “But I had never really sat with it, dissecting and digesting it,” Dashiell says. “So, I can’t say that I was as familiar with it as I was with, say, Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue or Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On.”
In terms of embodying the album’s ferocious lyrics, Dashiell remembers compositions such as the somber “Driva’Man” and the scorching “Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace” being emotionally and physically challenging.
“We’re talking about the consummate storyteller,” Dashiell says of Lincoln. “She really embodied the lyrics. Some people will be listening to our version expecting to hear me sing like Abbey. But there is no way that I can. I had to identify what Abbey did that I really liked and that I could take on; and I had to identify parts of her sound that I knew that I couldn’t emulate.”
Such was the case with “Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace.” Instead of blood-curdling screams on the revised “Triptych: Resolve/Resist/Reimagine,” Dashiell’s harmonies and wails both caress and convey soulful pain atop Carrington’s turbulent drums, Casado’s darting trumpet lines, Devon Gates’ haunting bass prowls and Guerin’s lurking saxophone and bass clarinet asides.
As with Dashiell, Carrington encouraged other band members to contribute fresh arrangements of the original five compositions. Moullier co-arranged for “Driva’man” with Carrington; Guerin arranged the propulsive “Tears For Johannesburg” and Gates helped Carrington reconfigure “Triptych.” Carrington handled the gorgeous arrangement of “All Africa.”
“I, Abbey Lincoln, sing about what is most important to me, and what is most important to me is being free of the shackles that chain me in every walk of life that I live.”
—Abbey Lincoln, Smithsonian Oral History
We Insist 2025! features contributions from Priester, who performed on the original album. “[He’s] an elder statesman in the jazz community; and I am grateful to have him on the recording,” Carrington says. “I think we, the jazz community, have to do better with honoring and celebrating our elders. There is so much to learn from them.”
Carrington extends We Insist!, however, with several original compositions such as the hip-hop-influenced drum and spoken-word pieces “Boom Chick” (for Roach) and the poignant “Dear Abbey,” the latter of which reasserts Lincoln’s invaluable contribution to both Roach’s music and to the jazz canon.
“There are some hidden meanings in the poetry of ‘Dear Abbey’ because she was complicated,” says Carrington, who spent time with both Roach and Lincoln. Carrington argues that even though both musicians were social progressives, they were in some respects people of their time. “Abbey tended to believe that men were to play jazz; and women were to sing it.”
“When We Insist! was released, I don’t think it gave Abbey the credit that she deserved,” Dashiell says. “She was just as important as Max Roach on that record. I think Terri writing ‘Dear Abbey” was a way to reclaim how important she was to this record.”
“Your silence will not protect you.”
—Audre Lorde, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”
The ensemble for We Insist 2025! reflects Carrington’s cosmopolitan outlook even when most of the album centers on racial equality. Not only is the band intergender, it’s also interracial, international and intergenerational. The ensemble includes Ghanaian percussionist Weedie Braimah, Dominican Spanish trumpeter Milena Casado, French vibraphonist Simon Moullier and Canadian-born guitarist and frequent collaborator Matthew Stevens.
“Terri maintains an uncompromising vision,” Stevens says. “Yet, she moves her collaborators by inviting input and encouraging authenticity. The result is a collective process in the music and the messages behind it. Terri’s passion for social justice is inseparable from her music.”
Moullier echoes Stevens about working with Carrington. “Terri has been a guiding force in helping us understand how music can be a powerful tool for social justice and creating real change,” he says.
Casado didn’t listen to the original We Insist! until she arrived in the U.S. Neverthless, as an Afro-Latina, the themes resonated. “Interpreting a lot of this music was really personal for me,” Casado says. “I also struggled with some of those [racial inequalities] in Spain as a Black woman growing up.”
Regarding the role of artists in fighting inequities worldwide, Carrington says, “We just have to keep on doing the work. We may have to work even harder, because so many things now seem more critical. But on the other side, I’m not going to let the fight kill me. I’m getting older. Before all this madness, I was trying to think of ways to work less and explore more.
“I’m going to figure out a way to fall in love again with the drums, practice and reinvent myself,” she insists. “Right now, there are so many other things pulling at me. But the music takes care of me. Music is my happy place.” DB
Foster was truly a drummer to the stars, including Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson.
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