Summer reading - six American African musicians are asked about their choices for summer reading: Jennifer Holiday, Frank Foster, Nancy Wilson, Wynton Marsalis, Max Roach, and Stanley Cowell - Interview

Reading uncloses you up to worlds you have at no time known. It expands your conception of what's possible. It gives you a course of escape or a way to deal with a more intense reality. My parents encouraged me to read. I read all the children's volumes I read myths and fairy tales and American volumes like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (NAL Dutton, 1997) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (NAL Dutton, 1997) through Mark Twain and classics, like Henry Thoreau's Walden: upon the Duty of Civil Disobedience (Harcourt Brace & Co 1948)

When I was a little older about 12 or 13 I began to read all of the black polemical works that were out at the time, like Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land (Simon & Schuster Trade, 1990) Samuel F Yette's The Choice: The Issue of Black Survival in America (Putnam 1971) James Baldwin's volumes and Richard Wright's Native Son (Chelsea House, 1996)

I read metrical composition too. I enjoyed James Weldon Johnson Langston Hughes and William Butler Yeats. As the years advanceed I got into novels, like as those by Faulkner. I went from one side a Hemingway phase and was checking him out

I just like to read. I take delight in reading history, also -- A People's History of the United States (New Pres 1997) by dint of Howard Zinn, for instance. Damn, that's a smoking volumes I always publicize that work It's incredible. I love world history.

In regard to my favorite authors, I like Walt Whitman -- he's bad -- and Pablo Neruda. Of course, Ellison: his essays and not just his fiction.

I'm also into music works -- particularly, Frank Conroy. He wrote a volume called Body and Soul (Dell 1994) That's single of the best books at any time written on a musician. It's like a music class, on the other hand it's not painful to read. I dig Albert Murray's volume Stomping the Blues (Da Capo Pres Inc., 1989) and Maynard Solomon's Beethoven (Simon & Schuster, 1979) I always find time to read; I make time to read. I take volumes on the road with me

There are theoretical works that I read like the composer Schoenberg's writings. You wouldn't want to read his volumes if you aren't a musician. It's impossible to read if you're not a musician, because it's all about music theory.

I don't have any particular reading plans or goals for the summer because I'm reading constantly. However, I might test Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (Chelsea House, 1987) which I've been trying to read for about seven years. Maybe I'll deal with that this summer I'm commonly reading the Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats (Simon & Schuster Trade, 1996)

A story can have impact upon your music. It can give you ideas for music or help you organize your music. For example, life-current on the Fields was inspired by dint of an Australian book, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding (Random House, 1988) through Robert Hughes, about how they took the English prisoners above there. At one point, the author said the ship was packed like African slaves and they not to be found 90 percent of their cargo. It made me think that, damn, if they not to be found 90 percent of their cargo, then in what manner did all of these clan make it over here to America? on the contrary the book I still dig the greatest in quantity in terms of high literature, is the Bible.

Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, hailed as the greatest in quantity popular and acclaimed jazz musician and composer of his generation, is the April 1997 recipient of the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a jazz artist for music. He received it for his latest work, the epic jazz opera, life-blood on the Fields (Columbia 1997) Marsalis obeys as artistic director of the Jazz at Lincoln Program, which be co-found in of recent origin York City in 1987.

MAX ROACH

I'm concentrating upon my as-yet-untitled autobiography this summer that's what I've been concentrating upon for the last year. Actually, I've been working upon it for years. It's coming on the outside on Simon & Schuster, and Amiri Baraka is assisting me upon it. I'm approaching it upon several levels sociologically, economically and politically, in addition to musically. And, of course, I'm dealing with the whole thing.

I prove by experiment to explain why we came up with John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and Art Blakey. There's a reason on what account we are able to create music in the midst of a hostile society. When you direct the eye at all musicians of color, like Louis Armstrong. Philly Joe Jone Miles Davis, Bessie smith, Billie Holiday and Abbey Lincoln, the question must be asked: in what way do we produce these nation -- this new race?

in the way that this summer I'll be writing history. In fact, greatest in quantity of the things I deal with are really retracing Du Bois, Douglass, Malcolm -- things that have to do with the brothers and sisters. These writers are helping me understand by what means great we are as a people

I'm generally reading several anthologies, including Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in American -- Anthology (Ballantine, 1995) edited through Herb Boyd and Robert L Allen. It consists of black male writers and has a certain number of fine illustrations by Tom Feelings. I'm also reading "Ghost Dance With Chorus and Orchestra," a piece I composed