"Whisper, Say We’re Free”: Visualizing the “Freedom Now Suite” and Abbey Lincoln’s Voice of Protest

Abstract

Following the critical success of the 1960 record “We Insist”: Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite, a project which foregrounds Black American and African politics and protest, Roach took this project on tour performing across the United States and Europe. In early 1964, this suite was featured on Belgium's Jazzprisma––a BRT (Belgische Radio en Televisie) network series. Like the album, what stands out is Abbey Lincoln's profound performance and sonic embodiment of Black trauma through the scream in "Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace," however, now it is visible. This paper highlights Lincoln's performance in particular and centers video recording of the 1964 performance as an opportunity to observe, audio-visually, Lincoln’s complete protest aesthetics. My analysis focuses on three main elements: (1) the ways in which extreme close-up camera angles create an abbreviated view of Lincoln's performance, (2) the significance of the international stage and how Lincoln and the other artists are performing the suite’s protest messages to a transnational audience, and (3) how Lincoln confronts and appropriates politics of gender here and how that has carried over through her early career. Thinking with scholars such as Jayna Brown, Daphne Brooks, Eric Porter, and Ingrid Monson who confront issues of intersectionality, timbre, and the voice, I view Lincoln’s scream and improvisation as a sonic signifier of historical violence against Black folks. While these authors focus on the piece in its recorded form, I expand upon their work and consider the audiovisual elements of Lincoln's protest displayed here. I argue that while this 1964 live performance provides an opportunity to visualize Lincoln's scream, a hyper-focus on the scream through extreme close-up camera angles draws attention away from the totality of Lincoln's protest performance.