The editors of JAZZIZ have the good fortune of being able to listen to new…
Tag: Terri Lyne Carrington
The winners of the 65th GRAMMY Awards were announced at a pre-show ceremony and main…
The Week in Jazz is your roundup of new and noteworthy stories from the jazz…
While they’re often overlooked, Terri Lyne Carrington keeps the focus on women who’ve contributed to…
The Week in Jazz is your roundup of new and noteworthy stories from the jazz…
The Week in Jazz is your roundup of new and noteworthy stories from the jazz…
If you’re looking for some great new music to discover this weekend, look no further…
The live recording of a one-night-only jazz supergroup concert; a collection of reinterpretations of Blue…
The editors of JAZZIZ have the good fortune of being able to listen to new…
The Week in Jazz is your roundup of new and noteworthy stories from the jazz…
The editors of JAZZIZ have the good fortune of being able to listen to new…
The Week in Jazz is your roundup of new and noteworthy stories from the jazz…
If you’re looking for some great new music to discover this weekend, look no further…
Historians may quibble over the exact origins of jazz. But few will doubt that, at…
The Week in Jazz is your roundup of new and noteworthy stories from the jazz…
The weather in Detroit was perfect for a festival crowd this Labor Day weekend. Unfortunately,…
The winners of the 63rd GRAMMY Awards were announced on March 14 during a ceremony…
The Week in Jazz is your roundup of new and noteworthy stories from the jazz…
The Week in Jazz is your roundup of new and noteworthy stories from the jazz…
On a December afternoon in 2017, I gathered eight prominent musicians around a dining-room table…
Matthew Stevens: "[Teri] wanted us to bring in material, and all she really told us was, ‘I want the songs to talk about this particular moment in time, and I want to frame our issues in ways we can feel good about. … Musically, all we adhered to was a level of performance and production. Lyrically, all she thought about was truth.” Photo: Delphine Diallo.[/caption]That evening, Carrington played some of the new songs with Morgan Guerin alternately playing electric bass and tenor saxophone, and vocalist Debo Ray either singing or speaking in chant-like tones. (On the album, these musicians are complemented by an impressive cast of instrumentalists, singers and rappers.) Yet even stripped down, the music’s power was palpable. “Waiting Game,” which appears in two versions on the album, began as an anthem and ended more like a ballad; Ray’s voice lent stinging force to Carrington’s lyrics — “How much can we endure? … Complacency has its price.” “I wrote that one right after the 2016 election,” Carrington said afterward. “But it’s interesting how relevant the words are right now.”
Some of the songs evolved from existing pieces. “Bells” was composed by Parks and recorded as an instrumental on his last release. On Waiting Game it’s reimagined as a statement about police brutality against African-Americans, blending Carrington’s lyrics with Malcolm Jamal-Warner’s rapping. “I wrote that one after seeing that horrifying video of Philando Castile getting shot in front of his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter. I wanted to tell the story from the perspective of the family members who have to live with this horror and loss.”
Another Parks composition, originally written for trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire’s band, became the riveting protest song that opens the album, “Trapped in the American Dream,” which is about the American prison system, as articulated through music that builds in intensity and the urgent rapping of Kassa Overall. The music of “Purple Mountain,” over which rapper Kokayi addresses the genocide of Native Americans, began as an untitled interlude that guitarist Stevens composed for his own trio. “Like our political lives, our artistic lives are organic,” Stevens said. “Things change over time, especially in terms of your connections with other people. Instrumental music is a manifestation of our thoughts and feelings. So, there, Terri ended up making my own song clearer to me.”
Carrington had worked with both Parks and Stevens in different contexts. “And one day, right after the election,” Parks said, “she just called up and said, ‘It’s time to start a band.” Stevens, who received a similar call, says, “She wanted us to bring in material, and all she really told us was, ‘I want the songs to talk about this particular moment in time, and I want to frame our issues in ways we can feel good about. There was no talk of genre or sound. Musically, all we adhered to was a level of performance and production. Lyrically, all she thought about was truth.”
Throughout her career Carrington has gracefully blended jazz and pop impulses, acoustic and electric elements. Her drumming moves easily from understated to fierce, and always sounds authoritative. She’s just as skilled as a producer. The latter quality is best evidenced by “No Justice (for Political Prisoners),” a slowly unfolding ballad that includes in its richly layered mix spoken-word and sung sections by Meshell Ndegeocello and samples of commentary by, among others, Angela Davis and Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The album’s first disc is, by turns, hard-hitting and tender. The second disc was drawn from one 42-minute improvised session for which Carrington gathered Parks, Stevens and bassist Esperanza Spalding (and to which Edgar Colón later added orchestration). After a full disc of songs about activism and liberation, these improvisations sound fully committed, political in their own way, and, well, free. - Larry Blumenfeld https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIZDHb8fF2I
Featured photo by Delphine Diallo.