By Michael J. West | Published July 2025
No mere repertory exercise, this — perhaps even less so than drummer Terri Lyne Carrington’s inspired 2013 update of Ellington/Roach/Mingus’ Money Jungle. Always in touch with her social conscience, Carrington reimagines Max Roach’s 1960 We Insist! Freedom Now Suite from top to bottom with an eye toward its current-day relevance.
The scope of her reconceptualization is clear in her choice of collaborator. Absurdly gifted though she is, vocalist Christie Dashiell’s instrument doesn’t have the urgent authority of Abbey Lincoln’s (could anyone’s?). Instead, she deals in subtlety and understatement: On two different versions of “Freedom Day,” her “whisper, listen” leans far more in the former direction; her “Driva’man” expresses sadness and fatigue rather than raw effrontery. Dashiell appeals to our compassion, not our rage, and it is in its own way every bit as effective.
It’s not just the vocal that’s different, though. Carrington changes the aforementioned “Driva’man” from an aggressive work song to a pathos-laden piece of Afropop, with bassist Morgan Guerin, guitarist Matthew Stevens and percussionist Weedie Bramah meeting her in beautiful polyrhythmic convergence. The suite’s most incendiary section, “Triptych,” remains shaped by wordless vocals — but also a section of shouted slogans by Dashiell, offset with solos and interplay from trumpeter Milena Casado, bassist Devon Gates, multi-reedist Guerin (who here plays saxophones and bass clarinet) and Carrington. If it’s not the primal screams that Lincoln made infamous, it instead carries the weight of the 65 years of history that have lapsed in between the two versions of the work.
What, then, does Carrington and Dashiell’s re-envisioning of We Insist! say about the world on the near side of those 65 years? Black America is no less angry today than it was then (nor should it be). Perhaps, though, there’s a hope that the rest of us — living in a media-saturated world that constantly beats us over the head with facts and fictions alike — can better relate to anguish and exhaustion. Here’s hoping we get it.
