“Juneteenth as a national day of commemoration brings me so much joy,” reflects the jazz singer Christie Dashiell. “It also makes me question how we can celebrate freedom when many of us are still fighting for our rights everyday.”
That animating tension — between joy and struggle, celebration and lament — flows throughout a new collaboration between Dashiell and acclaimed drummer-bandleader Terri Lyne Carrington. Released on Candid Records last Friday, We Insist 2025! is their update to We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, which landed on the same label in 1960.
The original album was a brainchild of drummer Max Roach, and a potent vehicle for vocalist Abbey Lincoln, his partner at the time. It’s rightly hailed as a musical landmark of the Civil Rights Movement. “It was a daunting task to revisit such a classic recording,” Carrington, a Doris Duke Artist and NEA Jazz Master, tells WRTI. “And because I knew Max personally and understand the forward-thinking nature of his artistry, I believe he would be happy with this reimagining of his work. I knew I had to be as authentic as I could to Max’s and lyricist Oscar Brown, Jr.'s message, and to current cultural and political conversations happening today, as well to my own artistry.”
WRTI is proud to premiere a video for “Driva’man,” which Roach and Brown conceived as a harrowing vision of plantation life. “‘Driva’man’ is a very heavy song,” attests Dashiell. “Singing about a driva man overseeing enslaved people was really intense. The song also deals with consent and lack of agency. In reimagining the song, I hope we were able to reclaim some of our power.” The video finds Dashiell and Carrington in the Power Station at BerkleeNYC, with Matthew Stevens on guitar and Morgan Guerin on bass. A contemporary dancer, Christiana Hunte, joins them in swirling movement over the arrangement’s syncopated 10/8 groove.
“‘Driva’man’ is probably the most powerful song lyrically on the album,” says Carrington, “and I tried to arrange it so that the music would not only complement the power in the lyrics, but provide its own power to hear the lyrics differently, in a way that connects stories of oppression through time and place. I also wanted it to reflect the openness that blues can have — not blues as a music form, but blues as a foundation of Black culture.”
Roach’s We Insist! — which was reissued in mono last year, for his centennial — famously spoke to its historical moment, just as it delivers fresh truths to us today. Carrington has similar aims in mind with We Insist 2025!, whose date stamp reflects a point in time, and a set of challenges both familiar and strange. “There is a constant relationship between freedom (or emancipation) from the struggles faced then and now, to imagining a future where fairness and justice prevail,” she says. “Juneteenth is the perfect day to not only reflect, but to also resolve, resist and reimagine.”
Listen for tracks from We Insist 2025! during Evening Jazz and Late Evening Jazz on WRTI 90.1 FM and wrti.org.
