In part one (scroll down or check the archives) of our lively conversation with Fab 5 Freddy, the graffiti artist who was one of the pioneers of what has become the global pop phenomenon known as hip hop we discussed the heavy jazz influence on young Fred’s Brooklyn upbringing, which included the significant influence of his godfather NEA Jazz Master Max Roach. One course correction: the crib Fab described in pt. 1 as Max Roach’s home on Gates Avenue, where Max, his dad Freddy Brathwaite, Sr. and other Brooklyn jazz heads, chess players and advanced thinkers would gather for their jazz “sets” was actually rented by Fab’s dad and several members of his crew as a kind of hipster’s clubhouse. “It was not Max’s but he was surely there often,” Fab corrected. “It was known as and always referred to as 212 Gates Avenue.” In part two we explore the continuing influence of Max Roach and his encouragement of Fab’s early forays into what was then known as “rap” music and has become the broader global phenomenon known as hip hop.

WJ: Is it safe to say that some of Max’s early consciousness of what was going on in early hip hop culture came from you?

Fab: Oh yeah. One day Max came to visit my dad and asked what I’m into and my dad said ‘oh, he’s into some rapping thing.’ This was before [hip hop] blew up, this was the early 80s when we were having street block parties and what not [in Brooklyn]. I was already making my moves on the arts scene and I was never trying to be a rapper but I had a few rhymes that I could get on the mic at a block party and do my thing. There was a DJ across the street who had built a nice system in his crib so I would go over there and rap a little bit. So my dad was aware of this, unbeknownst to me; my father was never into much contemporary music – with the exception of James Brown.

So one day I came home and my father said Max had been there and “I told him you’ve been doing this rap thing with your man across the street…” Right away I get kind of nervous because I never at that point considered anything music with the developing rap scene. I knew we weren’t playing instruments, we were making sounds and we were energetic and I knew this was a new thing that I dived into full speed ahead, but I didn’t consider it music — as in musicians. My father said ‘Max wants to check it out’, so I said OK. So we arranged a time a week or two later and he came through, on my block on Hancock Street between Lewis and Sumner [Brooklyn] – which is now Marcus Garvey Blvd… which is very appropriate.

I prepped my DJ and we worked out a little routine. Once again the music is not formulated – the four-minute rap song is not developed, it’s just an in the streets equivalent to just jamming, no real structure. Max comes by and I’m rhyming and my DJ is cutting up, he’s scratching… Max just peeped it. We did a little 20-minute thing and when we’re walking back to the house I’m thinking ‘what the hell is Max gonna think of this shit?’ Max said “Let me tell you guys something, that shit that you and your man were doing was as incredible as anything that me, Bird, Dizzy and any of us were doing…’ I’m thinking to myself [skeptically], ‘that’s so nice, trying to placate a young teenager…’ But that’s how Max was, always very encouraging, but I’m thinking to myself ‘yeah, right…’ Because I’m not seeing this as music, this hip hop thing…

“Rapper’s Delight” was probably out as a big record at that point, nothing really breaking crazy like it is now. It wasn’t long after that through me now making moves on the art scene and people knowing that I’m doing my thing on the downtown scene in New York, graffiti, introducing people to the beginnings of this hip hop culture, that a guy who promotes a lot of things with performance artists says ‘man, I found out that Max Roach is your godfather… We were talking with him about his M’Boom group…’ And he says, ‘man I feel like why don’t you do something with Max together…’ And I’m like thinking ‘huh, how the hell…?’ Next thing I knew Max says “yeah, let’s do it…” So then I started to have these conversations with Max, and Max says “yeah, you’re in charge, put this stuff together…”

This is the kind of enthusiasm he had and how eager they were to check out something new, which is the point Max made to me. He explained how Bird and the guys were about checking out new things, about how when Olatunji came around and they all jumped into the African thing and they were the first [generation] to take African names. He was saying this also to explain how a lot of cats wanted him to continue playing the stuff that they architected back in the 40s and 50s, but Max was always saying ‘I’m always about checking out that new thing…’ Obviously Max was able to put that in full effect. Max had hipped Miles to my show “Yo MTV Raps” and [Miles] was checking it out. This was an extension of how Max would always bring me up when the hip hop thing came up.

Another key thing that Max said to me after I gave him that demonstration with DJ Spy, Max said “…you know western music has for a long period of time been a balancing of three different things: melody, harmony and rhythm in equal ways. As black folks have been involved in music we’ve added an increasing emphasis on the rhythm element throughout the development of this music.” And Max, when he would have a conversation like that would always say “…from Louis Armstrong up until…” He said “what you guys are doing is just totally rhythm…” Now that’s one thing that when he broke it down I said “…oh shit, yeah…” just grabbing a piece of the music and having a way to manually manipulate the record to have this extended rhythm was something Max heard clearly. He also told me “man, if you don’t know it, this is so big what you guys are doing…” I’m like “yeah Max, great…” [still skeptical].

It was the early 80s when I had this conversation with Max. By 1988 I’m the host of the first nationally televised show to focus on this rap music [“Yo MTV Raps”] and go around the country interviewing the different people who were defining this culture – everybody from Tupac and Snoop to Will Smith and Run D.M.C., etc., etc. It would all become so much bigger than I ever, ever could have imagined… I’m talking like on a global basis – where people who speak other languages could adopt this thing and make it theirs in a unique way. I thought back to what Max had said and how he was right, and how when we get into it we were just gonna embrace this whole rhythm thing, and how just the verbal, this whole rapping thing was interesting.

At what point did the light go on and you realized that this was part of a continuum – that what your father and Max and those guys were into… there was a straight-line continuum to what you and your contemporaries were getting into in the 80s?

Fab: It was during that time that it blew up. I’m hosting “Yo MTV Raps,” which just came out of nowhere, that was never an intention of mine to be on camera doing things… I always wanted to do things culturally to help stir it up and create these bigger platforms. A lot of my ability and understanding of that were things that I absorbed around my dad and his friends; knowing that Max Roach and these musicians were loved more so around the world than here… The fact that I knew people who were big in Paris, and Italy, and Japan was just amazing to me, it gave me a sense of the world as a very young kid.

Hence key things that I would make happen or launch or instigate in hip hop were motivated by these ideas – knowing that, wait a minute, this stuff that we’re doing in the ‘hood – in the Bronx or Brooklyn – is not happening anywhere else in the world. To me that was interesting and I knew it would be at least accepted in other places around the world because these people had embraced and understood the music we were making and put musicians like Max and them on a pedestal on a par with the greatest European musicians ever, and I felt that these people would at least appreciate the things we were doing, because at that time it was not in any way appreciated by mainstream culture here in America. And that led me to then do things which would become very significant.

The first film on hip hop culture, “Wild Style,” I starred in, I did all the music for, I collaborated with a guy named Charlie Ahearn on the film. The initial idea I had was to make a film that showed that there was a link between this music, this rapping and DJ’ing, this break dancing and this graffiti art… there were no links [established previously]. I felt that they were all very similar and if we could put it together in a movie, in a story that depicted it as such, it would create a much more cohesive cultural picture and a look at what we were doing in the streets and the ghettos of New York. There was no positive press or mentions of a young kid with sneakers on and his hat to the side… you were made to look like you were one of those criminals that was destroying the city. So “Wild Style” the movie became this first look that many people around the world had and a spark that ignited them to get busy, and I’m proud of that. Those ideas came directly from the experiences I had being around those kind of individuals [like Max Roach] and knowing that they made global moves.

OK, so you were sitting around as a young kid doing your thing and these elders were doing their thing, what was it about what you heard or experienced from these jazzheads that inspired you?

Fab: Jimmy Gittins had a huge influence on a lot of that because he was an artist, he was a sculptor and he started this program called the Sculpture Workshop that was a community organization that you could work as a kid and teach people sculpture in the Bed-Stuy area, and Jimmy just loved doing that. So these are my beginnings… taking a big chunk of clay and seeing Jimmy carve busts of Malcolm, and King Tut, and just making amazing images of us and things. And then me making something and anything I did Jimmy and all those guys were just encouraging and enthusiastic about. There was no idea or no kind of thing that was beyond at least discussing in my household. Not so much with my father, but Jimmy and those guys that were kind of an extension of [his dad].

It was Jimmy who taught me how to play chess when I was 8 or 9 years old. I felt like their little think tank if you will. They were just the most intelligent men… they were very articulate, they were very hip, they were very slick, they were street, all these things and I guess as those things synthesized in me it was just how I thought. It wasn’t always apparent how connected these thoughts were to what I grew up around, but as I grew older I would realize… and I would constantly think of what I was around as a kid and realize what effect these things had on me. Just knowing that Max was there…

I can remember when I first began to put two and two together and to figure out what I wanted to be a part of, which was the mainstream pop art world, where there was no real precedent of black folks being key in those spaces. It was really like ‘how do I do this…?’ I wanted to be a painter, like the work of Andy Warhol that I had seen as a little kid in a magazine; he looked cool to me… I would find some stuff that inspired graffiti artists, a lot of us that were painting on the trains. So what’s the difference? We’re getting stuff from comic books and ads just like they did, so what’s the difference? I just had to figure out a way to get into the galleries so that people could see me on the same walls they would see a Warhol or [Roy] Lichtenstein and what not.

Through this whole period whenever I would have meetings with Max I would download all this stuff and he would be so encouraging and enthusiastic. The first [art] show that we had, the first press, was at a real prestigious gallery in Rome in ’79. I’m like 19 or 20… it’s crazy!

How did you and Max Roach come to collaborate onstage?

Fab: This story I told you about earlier where the guy put us together, that happened at The Kitchen [NYC]. If you go on YouTube you can find a little clip of it, just a piece of it. I’m like, ‘I’m no musician’ and Max Roach was one of the biggest figures in my life, he’s a musician, how do I even talk music with him? I’m not a musician, but I could make sounds with my mouth. I was so nervous about giving Max instructions, like how do you tell this great master musician how and what to play? I remember at one point we had a conversation after we were rehearsing some stuff. He said “man listen, I know its kind of difficult for you to be able to tell me what to play, but man don’t even worry about that, you’re in charge.” It was unbelievable that he would say some shit like that! I’d have to get my shit together and then figure out how to express it to him.

Max & Fab

There’s a recording that I’ll dig up, one of the things that we recorded and I wrote a rap… It was hard for me to instruct Max how to keep like one beat as simply as the backbeat for any one of a million rap records that have been made since then. How do you tell a guy that plays the drums and makes it sound like there are three people playing at once… I don’t even know how to do that, it just seemed awkward. What I thought about doing, which we did and I found a recording of that – and this was before sampling was a big thing – I said “what we’ll do is we’ll record and then we’ll loop a recording of what I hear from what you played and I’ll get the engineers to loop that up and make a track of that, and from that track I made a rap over that: “Max Roach he’s architect, a pioneer, on the drums he’s an architect, an engineer…” I had fly shit that I just wrote about Max. When I played it back recently I was like “Oh my God, that’s nice… yeah!” But once again it was just unstructured, because the whole song structure [of rap] hadn’t developed and it was just me rapping and Max playing. I think it had a hook and it would have been very interesting had we released it.

It’s hip hop in the sense that… Hip hop is more like… I mean people call Kenny G jazz, but you would have a problem saying that, right?

Yep.

Fab: Good, me too. Along that line we could differentiate between, like Blondie, something else that I helped make happen, Deborah Harry making “Rapture”, which was the first rap record to go #1 pop. She’s rapping, but that’s not hip hop. Hip hop bespeaks many things, particularly being part of the culture, adhering to all those things that are just… You know what I’m saying? Like there’s white cats… not to dismiss Kenny G because he’s white, but there’s Gene Krupa, there are a lotta white dudes that you could just feel by how they articulate what they do on their instrument… you’re like ‘OK, dude gets a pass…’

I used to love hearing my father and them listening when I was a young boy… ‘Aw man no, that’s so and so, no that’s not him,, that sounds like blah, blah, blah… no, that’s an ofay…’ They weren’t dissin’ white people, but it really meant most of the time that they weren’t as up to snuff as most of the official cats. I know that Gene Krupa got some love and there were some white musicians that my father and them would okay, but not that many…

What we did you could say it was hip hop, but yeah I was just rappin’, because it’s me, because anything I do is officially hip hop because I’m one of the creators of the brand and what not [laughs].

One of the things that Max always said about the development of rapping and eventually hip hop culture relates to yours being the first generation that was denied the opportunity to pick up any instrument they wanted to learn in school; and as a result your generation created rap and hip hop out of raw materials.

Fab: Great point, key point… Yes Max would bring that up, that instruments are gone from the schools… Its funny, I do a lot of work with VH1 and they have this big initiative called “Save the Music” which is a big charitable initiative where they raise all this money to put instruments back in the schools because kids from this generation are not aware for many generations that [the availability of instruments to learn in public schools] was a standard thing in schools, almost a requisite. So you’re right, Max and them would speak to that. It is in a roundabout way one of the things that gives birth to hip hop, this form, this new thing was because kids were not able to develop and become proficient on instruments like many would have wanted to or would have dabbled in to a certain extent. That would be a discussion we would have with Max. He was very aware of things going on as they connected to a historical lineage. A lot of this shit didn’t click then, but I’m glad I remembered it because it all fit into place as the years went by.

May 11, 2011

Dear Randy Weston/arranged by Willard Jenkins (Duke University Press)

Congratulations! It’s my pleasure to inform you that you’ve been nominated as a finalist for a 2011 Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Award in the categories of BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR, African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston

Professional members of the JJA will vote on nominees in 39 categories celebrating excellence in jazz music, production, presentation and digital, print, broadcast and photographic journalism. The representative honorees – “winners” — will be announced at a JJA event on Saturday, June 11, from 1 pm to 5 pm at City Winery, 155 Varick Street (at Vandam) in New York City. The JJA’s annual “A Team” list of activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz will also be announced shortly.

I hope you’re pleased that your works are being celebrated by the 300+ member JJA, a non-profit 501(c)(3) professional organization, which has promoted excellence in an Awards format for the past 15 years. For information on previous Jazz Awards winners, go to http://JJAjazzawards.org

Lost Jazz Shrines – 13th Season

52nd Street in the Modern Mode

BMCC Tribeca PAC’s Lost Jazz Shrines series pays homage to the legendary jazz haunts, musicians, and influences of the 52nd Street jazz scene in its heyday from the 1930’s through the early 1950’s.

Artistic Director: Willard Jenkins. Musical Director: Matt Wilson.

Part One: MULTIMONK

Friday, May 20

7pm – Recollections of 52nd Street – Interview with Dan Morgenstern (NEA Jazz Master & Director of the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University). Moderated by Willard Jenkins. Free.

8:30pm – Concert: $25 / students, seniors $15

Matt Wilson – drums
Scott Robinson – saxophones, brass
Frank Kimbrough – piano
Ray Drummond – bass

No stranger to the 52nd St. scene, Thelonius Monk, considered “one of the giants of American music,” is recognized as a multi-dimensional genius of modern jazz. This concert will be inspired by the great jazz master.

For tickets online click here, call (212) 220 – 1460 or visit Ticketing Services at BMCC Tribeca PAC, 199 Chambers St. (12PM – 6PM, Tue. – Sat.).

Part Two: TOPSY TURVY – A BEBOP REDUX

Friday, May 27

7pm – Interview with Musical Director Matt Wilson. Moderated by Willard Jenkins. Free.

8:30pm – Concert: $25 / students, seniors $15

Matt Wilson – drums
Jeff Lederer – reeds
Tia Fuller – reeds
Kirk Knuffke – brass
Curtis Fowlkes – brass
Vijay Iyer – piano
Mary Halvorson – guitar
Chris Lightcap – bass

New York’s 52nd St. is most often associated with small-combo jazz performances. However, a wide range of larger groups graced the stages of the clubs of Swing Street. This concert will focus on the music of these groups. Dizzy Gillespie, Mary Lou Williams, Fats Waller and other notables of the era will be explored.

For tickets online click here, call (212) 220 – 1460 or visit Ticketing Services at BMCC Tribeca PAC, 199 Chambers St. (12PM – 6PM, Tue. – Sat.).

Part 3: ARTS & CRAFTS & CANDI

Friday, June 3

7pm – Film screening of Candido: Hands of Fire. Free.

8:30pm – Concert: $25 / students, seniors $15

Matt Wilson – drums
Terell Stafford – trumpet
Gary Versace – piano / organ
Martin Wind – bass
Candido Camero – conga

Dizzy Gillespie partnered with many artists to create a new style of music called Afro-Cuban Jazz. This unique fusion of sounds became a significant part of the jazz landscape. This concert pairs together ‘Matt Wilson’s Arts and Crafts’ jazz group with the legendary Candido, who performed with Dizzy Gillespie and other Afro-Cuban pioneers. This concert will focus on those collaborations as well as music from Candido’s jazz debut, Candido.

For tickets online click here, or call (212) 220 – 1460 or visit Ticketing Services at BMCC Tribeca PAC, 199 Chambers St. (12PM – 6PM, Tue. – Sat.).

For more information about this series and video clips click here.

BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center is located on the campus of the Borough of Manhattan Community College, 199 Chambers Street, New York, NY 10007.

NEA JAZZ MASTER RANDY WESTON TO RECEIVE HIS MAJESTY KING MOHAMMED VI’S HONOR FOR HIS LIFELONG COMMITMENT TO MOROCCO’S GNAOUA MUSIC TRADITION ON MAY 11

The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), New York’s premiere French cultural center, welcomes leading Moroccan cultural and intellectual figures for a series of talks from May 1-21 on the occasion of the fourth edition of its annual World Nomads Festival, which this year celebrates the arts and culture of Morocco. On May 11, Randy Weston will receive His Majesty King Mohammed VI’s honor for his lifelong engagement with Morocco and deep commitment to bringing Morocco’s Gnaoua music tradition to the attention of the Western world. His collaborator of over 50 years, Gnaoua maestro Maleem Abdellah El Gourd will be present for the occasion and will also be honored. Mr. Azoulay will represent His Majesty the King for this occasion.

The great NEA Jazz Master, Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship winner, and Chevalier in France’s Order of Arts and Letters Randy Weston has contributed six decades of musical direction and genius to the world. He remains one of the world’s foremost pianists and composers today, a true innovator and visionary. Encompassing the vast rhythmic heritage of Africa, his global creations musically continue to inform and inspire. He has had a deep commitment to Morocco and the Gnaoua culture since the 1960s when he was introduced to the world of the Gnaoua by maestro Maleem Abdellah El Gourd who represents the Tangiers Gnaoua tradition. Maleem Abdellah El Gourd and Mr. Weston have collaborated together in concert presentations throughout the world including at an unprecedented concert at the Canterbury Cathedral in England.

In African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston (Duke University Press, 2010), Mr. Weston recounts his experiences living in Morocco for seven years, where he ran the African Rhythms Club from 1967 to 1962, and describes the beauty of Morocco and its people. Weston’s latest CD, The Story Teller (Motéma Music), was released in November 2010.

More Information: http://www.motema.com/press/thestoryteller/

Back in the early 80s, when hip hop was in its nascent stage, a young man who grew up in Brooklyn – definitely one of the root beds of the form – named Fred Brathwaite, Jr. was making his moves on that cutting edge. Originally an aspiring graffitti artist, young Fred immersed himself in those early experiments, basment-rapping with an aspiring DJ friend in the rawest sense of what became hip hop.

According to Freddy Brathwaite’s Wikipedia entry: “As a teen in the 70s he was a member of the Brooklyn-based graffiti group The Fabulous 5. He got his name for consistent graffiti “bombing” of the number 5 train on the IRT [subway line]. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he was an unofficial bridge between the uptown graffiti and early rap scene and the downtown art and punk music scenes.”

Eventually Freddy Brathwaite made some pioneering moves that elevated what was originally designated rap music, then morphed into a global form of its own known as hip hop. But long before that he’d come under the spell of jazz music, a form which was never far below the surface of his music consciousness as rap music was blossoming and coming into its own.

Freddy grew up in Brooklyn’s fabled Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in a household where jazz music was king. And besides the influence of jazz platters constantly spinning on his mom and dad’s turntable and wafting out of home radios, young Fred’s godfather was none other than than the great drum pioneer Max Roach.

During the course of our many interviews for his autobiography African Rhythms on his growing up in Brooklyn and all the people who influenced him in the borough – musicians and lay people alike – Randy Weston often spoke of Freddy’s dad, Fred Brathwaite, Sr., Max Roach, sculptor Jimmy Gittins, and jazz enthusiast-photographer Jimmy Morton. And Randy mentioned on several occasions that one of the younger keepers of that legacy, one who had collected many of Jimmy Morton’s Brooklyn jazzlore photographs, and one who as a youngster had really paid attention to the influence of jazz music around his home and neighborhood was, as Weston characterized him “the rapper, Fab 5 Freddy.”

About 18 months ago when I was blessed by the Weeksville Heritage Center with the opportunity to conduct oral history interviews with Brooklynites – interviews which for The Independent Ear have yielded priceless insights into such Brooklyn venues as the East and the current successor Sista’s Place (scroll through the archives contents) – interviews largely focused on the borough’s rich tradition of jazz venues, clearly I had to catch up with Fab 5 Freddy. What follows is part one of excerpts from our interview with the loquacious brother with a keen memory. One gorgeous fall afternoon we caught up with Fab at his Lower Manhattan studio.

Willard Jenkins: Since your father was so heavily involved in jazz, what’s your earliest recollections of jazz music?

Fab 5 Freddy: My earliest recollections were [of] jazz being played all the time in the house, along with fiery discussions about everything affecting us as a people. I’ve got vivid memories of jazz being played in the house going way, way back. The jazz station that I can recall was WRVR with Ed Beach, who was a hipster with a massive collection of the music. I remember as a young kid wondering how they could know who a guy was just by the instrument that was playing! I would later learn to do that myself.

My dad and Max Roach were friends from teen years at [Brookyn] Boys High School. Max played in drum & bugle corps as a kid and then he became this young whiz kid drummer playing with big bands. He quickly rose in the 40s to be one of the architects, and my dad was right along with him. There was a group of friends who had formed a social group that referred to itself as The Chessmen; they developed a love of chess during World War ll.

Max lived in a big, kind of old mansion at 212 Gates Avenue. This house, I understand, had a huge living room and a huge baby grand piano and they would have these sets. As Max became prominent he would bring other Brooklyn jazz guys to come and hang with my dad and his friends. Hence that became a scene of jazz hipsters and frontrunners in Brooklyn.

(Editor’s note: Read about those days from Randy Weston’s perspective in Chapters 2 and 4 in African Rhythms, and also in Robin D.G. Kelley’s extraordinary Thelonious Monk bio An American Original, about Monk’s days performing in Brooklyn when loss of his cabaret card prohibited his playing Manhattan clubs.)

Was it your sense that this group of guys, the Chessmen, was hanging in clubs in Brooklyn?

Fab: Yeah… There was the Putnam Central, which I heard a lot about. Along with having these gatherings – sets as they called them – at the house on Gates Avenue there was a period of time where my dad and his friends were promoting their own [jazz performances] at this place called Tony’s Grand Dean, which was on Grand and Dean Streets in Brooklyn. I’ve got a series of photos [from Jimmy Morton’s collection] which I let Robin Kelley use for his Thelonious Monk book which document that scene.

The interesting thing about these pictures [displays one with Monk, Mingus, Miles, and Max on the bandstand in Brooklyn] – [they were] in color, one of the first 35mm slide cameras, the beginning of that technology, and Jimmy Morton had one. Its very rare to see color shots of jazz guys from the early 50s, everything is always in black & white. These slides that Jimmy has given me over the last 20 years document this scene. I’ve heard stories about countless times when the vibe would hit the right pitch at our house and the music was right, my dad and his friends would always go back to things that happened at Tony’s. It was always exciting to hear these guys get real geeked up talking about what happened and I would often be a little kid playing in the room with my toys and things, but would tune in to these stories.

During a critical period for Monk when they had taken away his cabaret license, which as you know was his ability and legal right to play in clubs… he couldn’t feed his family. So these particular gigs [primarily at Tony’s] were gigs that helped keep Monk alive. Robin even found a little ad in the Amsterdam News archives of one of those gigs at Tony’s that Jimmy Morton blew up and I framed.

You talked about those sessions the Chessmen used to have at Max’s house on Gates Avenue; what were they like?

Fab: That was more like jam sessions. The musicians would come and play and it was just like a scene. The thing that was infectious to me was the enthusiasm and the energy they would have when they would get into those conversations. Jimmy Gittins, who I would say was such a huge influence on me and what I even do now, was like a big brother/uncle to me. It was Jimmy Gittins, Lefty Morris, my dad, and [drummer] Willie Jones. Willie was always there, and Willie was an activist. He was at my house three days of every week until I was an early teenager; he was like a fixture at my house, along with at least three other [jazz] guys.

At what point did you become more conscious of what they were about?

Fab: I was always conscious; as a little boy I was aware of these things and I would hear these tapes, but I was pretty much still a kid playng with army men and stuff that kids would do. I’m a kid with all my issues being taken care of by my parents, so I didn’t get to experience what they knew as black men you had to experience at that time. Especially when musicians went on the road and how they had to live, the situations these young, intelligent men were forced to deal with when they went out into these different environments and were very actively concerned with making change. I’m saying all that to say that I also realized later in life that my dad was a big part of Max [Roach]’s consciousness and awareness at that time.

How so?

Fab: You hear it in [Max’s] music. It was all further explained o me when I grew up and as an adult Max would explain things to me himself. One of my earliest remembrances of a Max Roach record is the “Freedom Now” suite, “We Insist” – that record. One of those records has a photo on the cover of Max and some men sitting at a lunch counter, and as a very small boy I always wanted to know what this was about. My dad and them would explain this to me. I destroyed a lot of my parents’ records as a kid playing with them, but the images on those records… there was great photography at that time, abstract art, etc. I would later see records and I’d be like “Oh my God’!…

My mother had all the jazz singers – Sarah Vaughan, Nancy Wilson, etc., ec. and my dad had a nice collection of a lot of the bebop records and they would listen to them both. But my mother was always into the singers. My mother hung out a little bit with Dinah Washington, she hung out a little bit with Etta Jones, and I remember the imagery from those records. So if I see them now I’m like “Oh my God, I’ve seen this, I know this…”

I have a little collection of photos and I think I was developing my visual sense at that time through looking at and playing with these records, but particularly the “Freedom Now” suite. As I grew up and got to understand a little bit more about Max I realized that was one of the first protest records; the beginning of the 60s, the beginning of anti-war protests, the whole cultural revoltution that transpired at that time. I realize that Max was at the forefront, and my dad’s influence [was important], because when they came to my house my dad pretty much held court. He had read the complete works of Mao, Marx, and Lenin – all this stuff.

When you say that your dad had an influence on Max Roach as far as his political consciousness, explain that.

Fab: My dad had read all the works of Mao, Marx, Lenin and also African nationalists; my dad wanted my middle name to be Lumumba but my mother wasn’t going for it [laughs]. But later I learned who Lumumba was and how incredible these guys were and how a lot of my dad’s ideas were right in terms of alternatives that were much more viable – whether they worked or not in other countries – 30 or 40 yeas later we can see that those things didn’t pan out as well as they were sketched out in those books… But that’s what went on at my house. These guys would roll up and do their thing, listen to music, and have these intense discussions and debates. Often my dad would have the most insight because he had read the most and had this kind of broader understanding of what was going on in Africa, what was going on in China… as all these African countries were getting their independence.

What’s your recollection of how the music interacted and spurred some of that discussion, because the music was obviously more than a soundtrack for those discussions?

Fab: Yes, absolutely! My dad’s den/study was in the basement where the real shit would go down. Thelonious Monk… as I’m growing and becoming a young teen I’m beginning to now discern who the musicians are that I like, that I’ve been hearing forever and ever. Monk becomes that musician; I became fascinated about this whole thing with Thelonious. One day I looked in my father’s phone book and I saw Thelonious’ phone number, and I call his house and I speak to Nellie [Monk, Thelonious’ wife].

How old were you at the time?

Fab: Twelve, maybe a little younger. Remember, I’m still kinda little boyish because when I look back to that I think ‘God, that’s such a kid thing to do!’ She could tell it was a little boy calling and I said ‘hi, I’m Freddy Brathwaite’s son and I want to talk to Monk, I know my dad knows you.’ She was really sweet and I started talking to her and I guess I was telling her that Monk was a musician that I really liked and in the course of discussing that she said, “you know Freddie, jazz is like a conversation, and in the beginning of the conversation somebody makes a point and then they go on to explain that point.”

I’d been listening to this music all the time and from that I now get what’s going on: the song starts off, the theme is stated, and then these guys all go off and do their own interpretation and you could still hear the theme going through there, like that’s the point. And I get it now, this became really apparent to me and I was like ‘wow, yes…’ and now when I’m hearing songs I could understand them and see how different guys do their thing as they get into the improvisation and all that stuff. But I guess I also began to understand that the guys making this music were really intelligent and they were really aware of their times, so the music was a reflection of this, therefore the music was an articulation of the intelligence and point of view of these very sophisticated and modern musicians.

I knew that Max and my dad were in synch with a lot of the same thoughts, and then once I got older I figured out a lot of these things for myself. You just realize that these are very intelligent men and they’re very concerned. I’m not trying to say that all jazz music had this protest, let’s make revolution thing but it clearly was an affirmation of us as these modern individuals, which I guess is the thing that had the most impact on me because I always saw them in that light. Those conversations that went on, I realize that these particular individuals had a lot of conversations like this.

I remember later, when I became a young man and spent a lot of time with Max and things that we would do together. I remember Max telling me how when Olatunji first came over [from Nigeria] how him and Dizzy were so excited about this new thing going on. And I remember Max explaining this to me because Max was a very big, early supporter of me being involved in hip hop music and culture. So Max essentially instigated us having gigs together.

STAY TUNED TO THE INDEPENDENT EAR: IN PART TWO FAB HIPS MAX ROACH TO HIP HOP’S INCUBATOR STAGE AND THEY FORGE A COLLABORATION.