Musician challenges and rewards
Kamasi Washington’s multilayered, super-detailed, eclectically conceived work reflects several genres
Welcome to 2016, where the only way to succeed as a musician is by singing snappy pop singles — unless you’re Kamasi Washington.
Last week, the Los Angeles-born saxophonist played his first Canadian concert, supporting a threehour album called The Epic, and1,500 people, most of them young, packed the Danforth Music Hall.
They cheered uproariously for a twohour jazz show whose set list included only seven tracks, one of which was an extended two-drummer “solo.” Has Washington somehow opened a portal back to the 1960s? Maybe it’s just that the music business underestimates today’s audiences.
Relaxing in the antiseptic basement of his downtown Toronto hotel, a carved wooden staff from Kumasi, Ghana (the city after which he was named) by his side, Washington explained: “Recently, I got into Game of Thrones. You watch 27 hours of it until you catch up. My grandfather could never sit and watch 27 hours of a show. I think (now) people have a greater attention span.”
The key, he said, is that people will de- vote their time to something that rewards their attention, such as Washington’s multilayered, super-detailed and eclectically conceived music.
The Epic includes arrangements of Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” and the jazz standard “Cherokee,” and it touches on soul, Afrobeat, funk and gospel.
“It unfolds slowly,” he said. “But it doesn’t feel as long. As it unfolds, you look up, like, ‘Oh, it’s been eight minutes.’ ”
It helps that Washington has a way with a tune and that his music grooves, thanks, in part, to touring with Snoop Dogg in the middle of an ethnomusicology degree.
“When I played with him, it was all about, ‘How are you going to play this?’ Changes to the timing of a horn hit or a riff that may seem “superminute,” Washington said, “create a little emotional tension that sneaks into your heart.”
The Epic also swings. Washington, whose father, Rickey, plays sax and flute in his band, was hooked on jazz by age 11, drawn to the melody and soulful feel of drummer Art Blakey’s band, the Jazz Messengers. He left his South Central neighbourhood to study at a high school with better resources, an experience that opened his eyes to how his commu- nity was being neglected.
Washington played on and arranged strings for Kendrick Lamar’s own magnum opus, To Pimp a Butterfly, which references his growing up, near the saxist, in Compton.
“There’s this perception of (the area) being a place where there’s only guns, drugs and gangs,” Washington said, “but there’s a positive side to it as well. We’ve both tried to use our music to show that balance and we are examples of that balance. I am the stereotype of the person portrayed as being this very dangerous drug addict/gangster/killer.”
For a teenage Washington, The Autobiography of Malcolm X dispelled the allure of gangs. On The Epic, the dramatic “Malcolm’s Theme” incorporates part of the orator’s last speech. At the end of Washington’s Toronto concert, as the eight-piece band built a triumphant crescendo on the resolute “Rhythm Changes,” with singer Patrice Quinn declaring, “I am here,” Washington raised his fist in a black power salute that the multiracial crowd returned.
Clearly his determination reso- nates, as does Lamar’s. But where To Pimp a Butterfly is full of overt conflict, The Epic feels mainly serene. It reflects Washington’s own presence: onstage, with his stature, solidity and force-of-nature sound, he’s like an oak tree playing sax.
What’s more, many of his band members have been friends since they were children.
“No one’s trying to outshine; everyone’s just trying to connect,” he said. “All my favourite jazz records have a lot of moments where you can just feel, ‘Those guys have mind-melded, straight-up Vulcan style.’ That’s the difficult part: to try and make that happen.”
Recently Washington has been recording new music that promises to stretch his listeners — and his bandmates — even further.
“I don’t treat harmony as separate from melody anymore. . . . It took a long time for me to show the guys what I meant: ‘Kamasi, what is this? A chord every beat?’ ‘No, it’s just a melody that’s broken up into five or six pieces.’ ”
However ambitious his music may be, Washington trusts his fans will get it — and others, too.
“Lots of people that I can tell would be into jazz haven’t really listened and come to a real opinion,” he said. “The music is so open and freeing and cleansing, the audience is bigger than it is.”