Link to full film: https://vimeo.com/377651723/76b10c9d32

This photo of Max Roach and Dizzy Gillespie is from James E. Hinton's Collection in the Harvard Film Archive, titled In Search of Improvisation: The Essence of Virtuosity in Jazz. This documentary made and produced in 1983 follows American jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and American jazz drummer Max Roach, co-creators of the bebop, speak about the history of jazz, swing, and bebop in America. Their work laid the foundations for mainly bebop, and both worked in swing and ragtime through their unique takes on music and their need to modernize the fluidity of their sound. Taking influence from various regions of Africa, the Caribbean, and South America, their multicultural music spanned across traditional musical divides, and using their unique musical styles redefined a musical era as two incredibly talented Black men. Both artists share they key to improvisation and redefining music to be taking what someone else has done, giving proper credit, and making that music their own in as many ways as possible. In this creation, the music becomes more that notes on a page and is instead an extension of the musicians' creativity that can last through time and even be reworked. Gillespie is also shown directly teaching and guiding young, Black, college-age musicians and narrating the importance of not only improvisation but feeling and expressing through music.

The necessity of art and its connection to expression is also emphasized by Audre Lorde in her book Zammi: A New Spelling of My Name as she shares the story of her life and how her poetry was an outlet for pain, loss, love, and the array of emotions felt by Lorde too fragile and strong to be directly said. Both forms of art were revolutionized in America by Black people, in the 60s to 80s in New York and beyond and show the history and necessity of Black storytelling within all forms of art. What is particularly radical about this piece is that, unlike Richard Wright in White Man Listen! (1957) and Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth (1961), the overarching need of the ‘Native intellectual” is completely gone. Instead of one superior man giving specialized knowledge to colonized Black people, especially Black people being exploited in America, both Roach and Gillespie stress  the importance of community in creating something uniquely Black and uniquely American. Nothing wither musician does is cited as being theirs alone and the ability to pick up and continue music created by and for Black people is essential to everything they did. A community of Black people and their Blackness in America, with everyone coming together to claim a new freedom and redefine their own experience is at the heart of Gillespie’s and Roach’s work and this documentary immortalizes this process.