M'BOOM

In 1970 legendary American percussionist Max Roach called up peer and contemporary Joe Chambers with an idea. Roach planted the seed for a kind of percussion orchestra and although he didn’t have a clear idea of what it would entail musically, he knew that it was something that would be very significant for the future of music. “Damn! What are we going to do? Have six guys on a drums set?”, came Chambers’ immediate response over the telephone. “No, no, no”, said Roach “We’re going to play percussion”. Shortly after, Chambers, Fred King Warren Smith, Freddie Waits, Roy Brooks, Omar Clay, Francisco Mora, and Eli Fountain found themselves in a room together with Roach laying out the details for a percussion orchestra project that would eventually be called M’BOOM and also include Ray Mantilla in the final line-up. “Max had that vision”, recalled Waits in an interview with Modern read more...