"This is a Brilliant record for its amazing Jazz, Hip-hop, and its voice. There is nothing I like better than helping make records that speak truth to power and this one is a shining star on all accounts." Daniel Cantor
Here is what Downbeat said besides giving it 5 stars." *****
Terri Lyne Carrington never has shied away from discussions of social justice. And in addition to featuring voices like civil rights activist and author Angela Davis on several projects, Carrington initiated Berklee College of Music’s Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice in 2018. But hardly anything she’s done previously can prepare listeners for Waiting Game, a two-disc masterstroke on par with Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 hip-hop classic, To Pimp A ButterÙy, or better yet, Carrie Mae Weems’ 2016 multimedia production, Grace Notes: ReÙections for Now.
Waiting Game (http://j.mp/36MUQPp) absorbs a lot of the Black Lives Matter movement’s simmering fury—as well as the #MeToo movement—and converts it into artistic fuel, as she also addresses homophobia and the genocide of Native Americans. Similar to Weems, Carrington excels at articulating piled-up, conÙicting emotions and the mental fatigue induced by the insistent bombardment of social ills. Her keen focus on songbased compositions during the album’s Ørst half helps shape thematic clarity, as does the scintillating rapport she’s struck with her band, Social Science.
A foreboding heaviness permeates the album’s Ørst disc, as if to convey an unending series of social injustices and the stress of being caught in that cycle. The somber “Trapped In The American Dream” sets the tone as Carrington’s martial beats, pianist Aaron Parks’ repetitive riff, and guitarist Matthew Stevens and vocalist Debo Ray’s howling chorus provide a dirge over which Kassa Overall raps about a canopy of horrors. Inside the interrelated obstacles discussed here is police brutality, particularly against people of color. Carrington, though, puts that into sharper focus during “Bells (Ring Loudly)” on which Ray sings from the perspective of a grieving mother after her child’s been killed by the police. The tempo quickens to a Crescent City bounce on the biting “Pray The Gay Away,” a mocking rebuke of gospel singer Kim Burrell’s 2016 homophobic rant. Underneath the Middle Eastern-Ùavored melody and Nicholas Payton’s lacerating trumpet solo, one hears the antidote—“pray the hate away.”
Carrington dedicates Waiting Game’s second disc to “Dreams And Desperate Measures,” a wondrous four-part orchestral suite that begins with a gossamer arrangement of haunting woodwinds, melancholy strings, a pensive guitar, piano and bass, all in dialogue. The extended improvisation gradually evolves into an undulating groove, propelled by Esperanza Spalding’s elastic bass ostinato.
https://downbeat.com/reviews/detail/waiting-game
12/1/2020
DownBeat Reviews
After receiving a Doris Duke Artist Award, Carrington concludes another triumphant year by releasing an utterly ambitious project, a recording that could be the best jazz album of the year.
