Quotes by Kamasi Washington - Page 2

When I was younger, I'd be walking down the street and suddenly panic because I had a cool idea and no way of getting it down - I'd have to sing it all the way home. Now I can hum it into my phone.
Kamasi Washington /
Panic
Way Home
Hum
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L.A. has always been hated on so much. I remember, the first time I went to New York, I was at jam sessions, and people would hear me and come up to me and be like, 'Oh wow, you're from L.A.? Really?'
Kamasi Washington /
First Time
Jam
Time Me Remember
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Becoming a musician is a strange thing. It's not all cupcakes and ice cream. You're trying to master an instrument, and you sometimes can't tell if you're getting better. You love it, but you also hate it.
Kamasi Washington /
Cream
Ice
Ice Cream
Master
Getting Better
Instrument
Strange Thing
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This notion that I was somehow special and deserving of a more involved education was wrong.I was smart at taking tests, but I knew how smart some of my friends were; they were just smart in different ways.
Kamasi Washington /
Smart
Special
Tests
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Music is this medium to express who I am and what I've been through and my thoughts and what my feelings on the world are. We're all on the planet together; I'm just using this medium to express how I see it.
Kamasi Washington /
Medium
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My dad was a professional musician; my mom played, too, but just for fun. All my siblings played. The house was full of music books, videos, albums. I guess it's not surprising that I ended up becoming a musician.
Kamasi Washington /
Sibling
Surprising
Music Dad Mom
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Funk could very easily be called jazz, but you call it funk. Does that really matter? People dig that they associate themselves with certain genres, but the genres to me are made up things, like an imaginary world.
Kamasi Washington /
Funk
Imaginary
Imaginary World
World Me People
Associate
Dig
Genres
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I grew up with a sense of music being a very spiritual experience while playing in church and with parents who were socially aware, always teaching me to look beyond the obvious in understanding how the world works.
Kamasi Washington /
Obvious
Spiritual Experience
Socially
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Jazz is an interesting music. It's one of the few forms of music where everyone that's performing the music has a creative stake in the music. In jazz, everyone's improvising, and everyone's creating at the same time.
Kamasi Washington /
Improvising
Time Music Jazz
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Los Angeles has always been overlooked as far as jazz, and just high-level music in general. But, like, my dad's a musician, so I've grown up around so many brilliant musicians that nobody outside Los Angeles knows about.
Kamasi Washington /
Brilliant
Overlooked
Music Dad Always
Music Dad Jazz
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The idea of the beauty of diversity came from just growing up where I grew up. Los Angeles is a very big city - there's Little Ethiopia, Little Armenia, Little Tokyo, Chinatown, there's African-Americans, Latinos, Europeans.
Kamasi Washington /
Armenia
Chinatown
Ethiopia
Tokyo
Big City
Latinos
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I used to tell my friends, 'Art Blakey is way more gangster than Eazy-E!' I ended up getting my friends into jazz, and all of a sudden there was this little group of kids in the middle of South Central that were all into hard-bop.
Kamasi Washington /
Gangster
Sudden
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If you asked people, "Do you like jazz?" they would be like, "not at all." But I think that if you're really putting yourself out there and really communicating, music can put you beyond people's preconceptions, beyond their playlist.
Kamasi Washington /
People
Thinking
Would Be
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West Coast hip hop was the sound of my neighbourhood. It was something I could relate to because it had a sound that felt like my surroundings - almost more so than what they were saying. That music was made to be bumped in a Cadillac!
Kamasi Washington /
Surroundings
West Coast
Bumped
Cadillac
Hip
Hop
Neighbourhood
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When I first played some Coltrane-type stuff on the 'Pimp a Butterfly' sessions, Kendrick got it immediately. 'I want it to sound like it's on fire,' he'd say. That's the kind of common ground that the best jazz and the best hip-hop have.
Kamasi Washington /
Butterfly
Common
Common Ground
Fire
Jazz
Sound
Stuff
Played
Immediately
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I think L.A. has one of the most innovative and forward-thinking jazz scenes in the world. New York definitely has the volume - there's more music happening in New York than anywhere else. But to me, L.A. - it's kind of a gift and a curse.
Kamasi Washington /
Curse
Innovative
Volume
Music World Me
Anywhere Else
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We've now got a whole generation of jazz musicians who have been brought up with hip-hop. We've grown up alongside rappers and DJs; we've heard this music all our life. We are as fluent in J Dilla and Dr Dre as we are in Mingus and Coltrane.
Kamasi Washington /
Coltrane
Djs
Fluent
Heard
Jazz
Alongside
Brought
Dr
Dre
Rappers
Generation
Grown
Jazz Musicians
Musicians
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We learned at a young age, with our dad, that even if you weren't doing something, you had to look like you were, or some hard labor was coming your way. That's the reason I started practicing music - when I was practicing, Pops left me alone.
Kamasi Washington /
Labor
Pops
Young Age
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I was hearing music in my head and trying to play it on the clarinet, but it didn't match.' Then, literally the first day, it did with the saxophone. I was like, 'Oh man, that's what I've been trying to do; this is what it's supposed to sound like.'
Kamasi Washington /
Clarinet
Saxophone
Match
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I went to a music academy in Los Angeles, and some friends started playing me Ravel and Prokofiev, who I liked, but what really blew me away was 'The Rite of Spring.' That's what made me get interested in classical music for real and want to study it.
Kamasi Washington /
Classical Music
Ravel
Rite
Spring
Music Me Real
Blew
Classical
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All forms are complex once you get to a really high level, and jazz and hip-hop are so connected. In hip-hop, you sample, while in jazz, you take Broadway tunes and turn them into something different. They're both forms that repurpose other forms of music.
Kamasi Washington /
Broadway
High Level
Sample
Tunes
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Even the greatest musicians, they only represent themselves. You represent who you are and what your experiences are and what you have in your heart, and it's the same for me. I represent who I am and what I've been through and what I'm bringing to the music.
Kamasi Washington /
Music Heart Your
Music Heart I Am
Bringing
Represent
Experiences
Musicians
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People like to compartmentalise music, especially African-American music, but it's really one thing. One very wide thing. I mean, it's like all those great records by Marvin Gaye and James Brown back in the day - there are tonnes of jazz musicians playing on them.
Kamasi Washington /
African American
Wide
Music Great Day
James
Jazz Musicians
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At the time of 'The Epic,' as a core band, we were all spending so much time apart making music for other people that by the time we got together - even though we grew up together and there's a special connection we have - it was like a rare privilege to come together.
Kamasi Washington /
Epic
Time Music Together
Rare
By The Time
Rare Privilege
So Much Time
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We've played so many places where, if you asked people, 'Do you like jazz?' they would be like, 'Not at all.' But I think that if you're really putting yourself out there and really communicating, music can put you beyond people's preconceptions, beyond their playlist.
Kamasi Washington /
Preconceptions
Music Yourself People
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Every time you learn a new language, your understanding of language overall grows, so every time I would learn new music, my understanding of music would grow because I was taken to an extreme in a different direction, and that was, in effect, carrying over into what I do.
Kamasi Washington /
Grows
New Music
Time Music Your
Extreme
Carrying
Overall
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People need to realize that even the greatest jazz musicians, when they listen to jazz, they're not like, analyzing it and deconstructing it - they're enjoying it. It's like listening to any other style of music. It's saying something to you, and you kind of just absorb it.
Kamasi Washington /
Analyzing
Absorb
Music People Jazz
Enjoying
Music Style People
Jazz Musicians
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Gerald Wilson was one of my mentors: he was in his nineties before he passed and, literally, every time I saw him, he'd be like, 'Man, Kamasi, I've got this new thing! Nobody ever heard anything like this before!' It's amazing hanging out with somebody that was born in 1918.
Kamasi Washington /
Wilson
Hanging
Mentors
New Thing
Nineties
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There's a whole stereotype of the jazz musician that's into poetry and reading and metaphysics and all that stuff. Really, it's a sign of someone who's searching, whose mind is open, looking for answers. Whatever ideas you may come up with, the beautiful thing is the search.
Kamasi Washington /
Jazz Musician
Metaphysics
Stereotype
Beautiful Thing
Search
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We started 'Heaven And Earth' in 2016. That was probably the heaviest touring year of my whole life. We probably did almost 200 shows in 2016. We went into the studio, and I honestly didn't know what the album was going to be. So I just kind of started picking songs that I liked.
Kamasi Washington /
Heaven
Just Kind
Picking
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When I was younger... we used to go to this place called Rexall to play 'Street Fighter.' At Rexall, there would be different people from different hoods there playing the game. It was the one place that was like an equalizer. It was just about how good you were at 'Street Fighter.'
Kamasi Washington /
Equalizer
Good Game People
Be Different
Different People
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Malcolm X's separatist ideas were situational. If you think about where African-Americans were in the 1940s and 1950s, we needed to step away because that force, which is still present but more subdued, was very in your face, and we needed to take a step back just to get some clarity.
Kamasi Washington /
Clarity
Malcolm
Situational
Subdued
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If you look up, and you see that all of a sudden the world is really coming down on people with brown hair, I would think the people with black hair would look at that and go, 'Well, that could be me, and so, I shouldn't stand for that any more than those people with brown hair stand for it.'
Kamasi Washington /
Look World Black
Sudden
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A legacy is a lot of times determined by how people accept your music. And sometimes people's legacy starts late or starts early, or they last a long time or a short amount of time. As a musician, I've never taken an approach of wanting to try to control that because I don't think that I can.
Kamasi Washington /
Determined
Legacy
Time Music Long
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Music is an expression of who you are, and - at least in that sense - I think I epitomize Black Lives Matter. I'm a big black man, and I'm easily misunderstood. Before I started wearing these African clothes, people would assume that I was a threat and that it was O.K. to be violent toward me.
Kamasi Washington /
African
Music Man Me
Assume
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L.A. is a big city that has a lot of music in it but is not necessarily known for it. A lot of musicians got lost in that. You can make a living; you can gig a lot within the city and never get out of it. That was something that me and my friends, our generation, were afraid of happening to us.
Kamasi Washington /
Our Generation
Big City
Music City Me
Gig
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I kept thinking about how ironic it is how people who live in places where there is diversity tend to love it - and the people that don't live in particularly diverse places tend to be the ones attacking it. In a way, that's similar to music, which is essentially the art of bringing things together.
Kamasi Washington /
Attacking
Diverse
Ironic
Love Art Music
Bringing
Essentially
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You have to dig deep to make great music, and it gets harder and harder. It's a difficult, painful process to reach deep in there and pull out the real gems. And you have to have that little bit of anxiety of, 'Can I really do this? Am I good enough?' You need that in the recipe to really get down in there.
Kamasi Washington /
Gems
Great Music
Harder
Little Bit
Painful
Process
Good Music Great
Deep
Dig
Gets
Pull
Reach
Recipe
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When I was working on 'To Pimp A Butterfly' and 'DAMN.,' I'm really making music for Kendrick. It's a different mindset than when I'm making music for me. I'm trying to get into his head and figure out what he wants because it's his vision. That's what I expect from people when they're playing on my records.
Kamasi Washington /
Butterfly
Damn
Mindset
Music Vision Me
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My third day playing saxophone, I was in front of a congregation. I still didn't know the names of all the notes. I was playing by ear, following along, but it was such an encouraging environment, I couldn't fail. It was all, 'Yeah baby, you sound real good' no matter what you play. It was a great way to learn.
Kamasi Washington /
Encouraging
Congregation
Following
Notes
Saxophone
Good Great Day
Ear
Great Way
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When I started saxophone, my dad took me to my uncle's church, and I started playing there, too. At its best, music serves a greater purpose, and that showed me a whole other side to spiritual jazz, one which you can hear in the music - the gospel and blues feel, the soul that's embedded into the more avant-garde records.
Kamasi Washington /
Avant Garde
Embedded
Saxophone
Gospel
Best Music Dad
Blues
Uncle
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When I was about seventeen, I had a group called the Young Jazz Giants. We played all originals. When we would finish playing, people would be like, 'Oh my God, that was so nice, that was so great.' But Pops would never tell us we were the best. He would give it to us straight, like, 'You're out of tune. You're dropping beats.'
Kamasi Washington /
Beats
Dropping
Giants
Originals
Pops
Seventeen
God Best Great
Finish
Oh My God
Tune
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In general, in my life, one of the coolest things that I've been able to do is to go to different places and meet different people and see how they view the world and to learn what their music is and what their language is, and the food they eat and everything. That idea of the beauty of the vastness of the world has just been my life.
Kamasi Washington /
Vastness
Coolest
Different People
Different Places
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It's either, like, 'Your album was the first jazz album I listened to,' or, like, 'My friend took me to this show, and I've never been to a jazz show before, but, man, I'm so happy I came. I can't wait to go home and see more.' And you can feel it in the crowd, too. You can see the groups of people that don't really know what to expect.
Kamasi Washington /
Home Man Me
Go Home
Listened
My Friend
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My dad's also a musician, so jazz was always around the house. When I was 11, I developed an interest in it, and he took me to Leimert Park. At that time, it was the artistic hub of L.A., and it was right in South Central. The first concert I went to, I saw Pharoah Sanders at the World Stage club there, which only holds, like, 30 people.
Kamasi Washington /
Hub
Jazz
Musician
Stage
Time Dad Always
Central
Club
Concert
Developed
World Stage
Holds
Park
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There were two things I discovered when I toured with Snoop. One was that the band was all jazz musicians. The second was to instil in me a respect for other styles of music. From then on, whenever I played a new kind of music, I came with the same kind of open mind. What are they trying to do? What are they hearing? How do they see music?
Kamasi Washington /
Open Mind
Jazz Musicians
New Kind
Styles
Toured
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Kamasi Washington Quotes - Page 2

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