Saxophonist and composer Kamasi Washington is back home for the first time in a while.
He has been constantly touring the world, so any opportunity to be home is one Kamasi relishes. He’ll soon be on the road again, travelling to Australia to tour including a performance at WOMADelaide.
Kamasi is big on collaboration, having worked with a lot of forward-thinking musicians including rapper Kendrick Lamar on his landmark album ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’. “That’s been my personality since I was a kid. I like to let everybody come to the party,” Kamasi says.
“What Kendrick [Lamar] did is he took [jazz] from the background and put it in the forefront.”
“The first band I ever had was a band called the Young Jazz Giants - Thundercat was in that band - and our first gig was a John Coltrane competition. We won it and Robbie Coltrane came to give us the award and he brought his little cousin Steven Ellison, Flying Lotus, whose aunt is Alice Coltrane. So we met him way back then in the mid-'90s.”
After reconnecting with Flying Lotus, the producer asked if Kamasi wanted to record an album for FL's record label, Brainfeeder.
A sign of their strong friendship was when Kamasi came back with a three-hour long jazz odyssey, ‘The Epic’, and Flying Lotus accepted it. “I didn’t think he was going to do that,” Kamasi laughs.
“He just said 'do what you want to do and bring it to me when it’s done'. Basically, we were in the studio for a month and when I started making this record I reached out to all my friends.
"I presented them all with the motion that instead of me just working on my record, why don’t we all work on the record together and use this time to document all this music because I was surrounded by all these amazing, creative musicians.
“Coming out of that, I actually had 45 songs; this amazing huge chunk of music. Collectively we made about 190 songs.”
Kamasi has worked with a long list of collaborators, especially in hip hop. At 19-years old, his first gig was playing sax for Snoop Dogg’s live shows.
Jazz records have always been sampled in hip hop, but Kamasi believes Kendrick Lamar made jazz visible again. “What Kendrick did is he took it from the background and put it in the forefront by having people like Terrace Martin taking solos.
“We had all of these elements that would normally be pushed to the background and brought them to the forefront and celebrated the history of African-American music and how intertwined hip hop and jazz are.
"It really changed people’s perception of jazz and their perception of hip hop, and squashed a lot of the misconceptions that are commonly believed about both.”
Kamasi has toured Australia many times, with his last visit in 2016. Fans can expect a completely different and celebratory experience, especially if they bring their energy with them. “What I try to do when I play live is I tap into the energy of the city, the place, the venue, the audience.
“I try to reach out and connect with the whole room and we have a shared experience where we go on a journey together to where the music is.
"We play the music differently every night and it’s changed by the energy of the people that we’re playing for, and we get wrapped up in that energy and at a certain point the music takes control and we’re just playing.
"By the end of the night we’re all in one mind and we’ve gone on this journey together.”
Kamasi Washington Tour Dates
Fri 9 March – Forum MelbourneSat 10 March – Golden Plains Festival (Victoria)
Sun 11 March – WOMADelaide (Adelaide)
Tue 13 March – Sydney Opera House
Wed 14 March – The Triffid (Brisbane)
