Social Science Becomes Social Art
Waiting Game, the debut album from Terri Lyne Carrington’s new trio Social Science, is a most unusual package. The first disc finds the drummer/leader and her two bandmates—pianist Aaron Parks and guitarist Matthew Stevens—joining hip-hop MCs and R&B singers on songs that address various examples of American injustice. The second disc, by contrast, is a continuous 42-minute free improvisation. It’s as if Carrington were trying to unite the two ends of the contemporary jazz spectrum—fusion with contemporary black pop music on the right and unfettered experimentation on the left—in one project.
“We want someone who hears the first record to be totally surprised by the second record—and vice versa,” Carrington declares. “We like R&B and we like avant-garde jazz. My dream gig would be playing drums for the Rolling Stones, but I also love that I got to play with Steve Coleman early in my career.”
“It was an act of protest to pair those two things,” Stevens continues. “Jazz musicians often feel as if they’ve been pegged as doing one thing well and told they should stick to that. That’s something we’re constantly railing against, because we’re interested in different kinds of music.”
“Disc one is all these carefully crafted pieces that talk about all the things standing in the way of freedom,” Parks adds. “Disc two demonstrates freedom and democracy in action.”
The three musicians are hunkered over drinks at a corner table in the dim light at Dutch
