M'Boom was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 jazz percussion

Jazz drumming

Jazz drumming is the art of playing percussion in jazz styles ranging from 1910s-style Dixieland jazz to 1970s-era jazz-rock fusion and 1980s-era latin jazz...

 ensemble founded in 1970 and led by Max Roach

Max Roach

Maxwell Lemuel "Max" Roach was an American jazz percussionist, drummer, and composer.A pioneer of bebop, Roach went on to work in many other styles of music, and is generally considered alongside the most important drummers in history...

. Although originally a sextet in 1970 over the years the group had as many as ten members in the ensemble but the core of Roy Brooks

Roy Brooks

Roy Brooks was an American hard bop jazz drummer.-Biography:Brooks was born in Detroit and drummed since childhood. He was an outstanding varsity basketball player as a teenager and was offered a scholarship to the Detroit Institute of Technology; he attended the school for three semesters and...

, Joe Chambers

Joe Chambers

Joe Chambers is an American jazz drummer, pianist, vibraphonist and composer. He attended the Philadelphia Conservatory for one year. In the 1960s and 70s Chambers gigged with many high-profile artists such as Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, Lou Donaldson, Chick Corea, Freddie Hubbard, Jimmy Giuffre...

, Omar Clay, Max Roach

Max Roach

Maxwell Lemuel "Max" Roach was an American jazz percussionist, drummer, and composer.A pioneer of bebop, Roach went on to work in many other styles of music, and is generally considered alongside the most important drummers in history...

, Warren Smith

Warren Smith (jazz musician)

Warren Smith is an American jazz percussionist.Smith was born in Chicago, Illinois, into a musical family; his father played saxophone and clarinet with Noble Sissle and Jimmy Noone, and his mother was a harpist and pianist. He studied clarinet under his father from age four...

 and Freddie Waits

Freddie Waits

Freddie Douglas Waits was a hard bop and post-bop drummer.He was a member of Max Roach's M'Boom percussion orchestra....

 appear on most of the recordings released by the group.

All of M'Boom's members were percussionists; Roach created the group with the intent of exploring the textures of unusual and non-Western percussion instruments. Among the instruments used by the ensemble were marimba

Marimba

The marimba is a musical instrument in the percussion family. It consists of a set of wooden keys or bars with resonators. The bars are struck with mallets to produce musical tones. The keys are arranged as those of a piano, with the accidentals raised vertically and overlapping the natural keys ...

s, xylophone

Xylophone

The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets...

s, timpani

Timpani

Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...

, vibraphone

Vibraphone

The vibraphone, sometimes called the vibraharp or simply the vibes, is a musical instrument in the struck idiophone subfamily of the percussion family....

s, gong

Gong

A gong is an East and South East Asian musical percussion instrument that takes the form of a flat metal disc which is hit with a mallet....

s, timbales

Timbales

Timbales are shallow single-headed drums with metal casing, invented in Cuba. They are shallower in shape than single-headed tom-toms, and usually much higher tuned...

, chime

Chime

-Musical instrument or tone:* Chime , an array of large bells, typically housed in a tower and played from a keyboard.** An instrument of this kind with 23 bells or more is known as a carillon...

s, bongos

Bongo drum

Bongo or bongos are a Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of single-headed, open-ended drums attached to each other. The drums are of different size: the larger drum is called in Spanish the hembra and the smaller the macho...

, steel drums

Steelpan

Steelpans is a musical instrument originating from The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago...

, glockenspiel

Glockenspiel

A glockenspiel is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone; however, the xylophone's bars are made of wood, while the glockenspiel's are metal plates or tubes, and making it a metallophone...

s, and the musical saw

Musical saw

A musical saw, also called a singing saw, is the application of a hand saw as a musical instrument. The sound creates an ethereal tone, very similar to the theremin...

.

M'Boom played at the Monterey Jazz Festival

Monterey Jazz Festival

The Monterey Jazz Festival is one of the longest consecutively running jazz festivals. It debuted on October 3, 1958 and was founded by San Francisco jazz radio broadcaster Jimmy Lyons.-History:...

 in 1994.

Discography

• 1973: Re: Percussion
  Re: Percussion
  Re: Percussion is the debut album by American jazz percussion ensemble M'Boom recorded in 1973 for the Strata-East label.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Michael G...
  
  (Strata-East)
• 1979: M'Boom
  M'Boom (album)
  M'Boom is an album by American jazz percussion ensemble M'Boom led by Max Roach recorded in 1979 for the Columbia label.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow awarded the album 4½ stars stating "This is a particularly colorful set that is easily recommended not only to jazz and percussion...
  
  (Columbia)
• 1984: Collage
  Collage (M'Boom album)
  Collage is an album by American jazz percussion ensemble M'Boom led by Max Roach recorded in 1984 for the Italian Soul Note label.-Reception:...
  
  (Soul Note)
• 1992: Live at S.O.B.'s New York (Blue Moon Records)

External links

• Concert Review, New York Times, June 27, 1986