1 Heaven And Earth by Kamasi Washington
MOJO’s best album of 2018 was a cosmic explosion that felt like a step-change. “There’s an interest in music that’s more free,” its creator tells
IN THE RECENT video for Kamasi Washington’s Hub-Tones, the Californian saxophonist’s maximalist take on Freddie Hubbard’s 1962 post-bop tune, a beautiful black woman, sporting diamante Nina Simone/Sun Ra coif and crystal-adorned eyelids, wearing emerald green African dress, and draped in a banner declaring “Nation Time”, stood serenely, with her eyes closed, shaking a tambourine as, in front and behind, her two companions danced, enraptured. Shot in a hypnotic slow-motion single-take, the video brilliantly summed up the power and importance of Washington’s music in 2018, and the critical and audience success of his double CD (quintuple vinyl!) album, Heaven And Earth. The exceptional successor to 2015’s debut, The Epic, here was a pan-national Afrofuturist music that simultaneously felt political, ecstatic and defiant. An attempt to represent both “the world I’m part of [and] the world that’s a part of me”, Heaven And Earth moved from soaring choirs to Latin grooves, on to jagged horn solos and then West Coast cool and hip hop breaks, often all in the same track. In the age of Trump and Black Lives Matter, it reclaimed and reinvigorated a powerful AfricanAmerican art form for a new audience and did it with force, artistry and boundless joy. Heaven And Earth is MOJO’s Album Of The Year, and it is the first jazz album to ever receive that accolade… Oh wow. That’s surreal. Thank you. You make music in the hope people get into it and appreciate it, but when they do… it’s nice.
Why did Heaven And Earth have such a big impact in 2018? Hard to tell. I think there’s a correlation between what the music is speaking on and what society is dealing with, and when those things come together, people gravitate towards that music.
Heaven And Earth was written in a dark political time, but the music offers inspiration, almost the idea that these events we’re living through can be transcended… Yeah. Because when you look at the history of the world, that’s the history of world leaders. The real reality is what the most of us make it to be. When I travel the world the people I meet just want the world to be a beautiful place, with their lives full of love and peace, and they want that same thing for everyone else. Atrocities are happening everywhere but the hope is that the world will start to mirror more of that majority.
Can we make connections between the success of Heaven And Earth, the Black Panther movie and Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer as a mainstream upsurge of Afrofuturism in the age of Black Lives Matter? Those ideas have always been there. I guess the real anomaly is them being appreciated beyond the African-American community, becoming more universally accepted, which they should be, you know? The reality of living in a world where your life can be taken from you because of your skin colour should alarm anyone. None of us are safe in a world like that.
How do you feel being the de facto spokesperson for this cultural uprising? I’m not doing anything other than stating my own existence. Black Lives Matter didn’t start with that slogan. I’ve lived that my whole life, and my father, grandfather, my grandfather’s grandfather… It’s
been a reality way too long. I’m just speaking my reality, and my reality has become entangled with a movement that’s trying to change something. I’m not a spokesperson. We all spokespersons.
Why has jazz become a resurgent art form in the past five years? Jazz has always been there. It’s like a vine. It’s tangled up with hip hop, rock’n’roll, R&B… It was there in A Tribe Called Quest, Dre, Nas… all these artists constantly pulling from jazz; the studio musicians they played with were into jazz… The major change happened with the perception of the word “jazz”. Now, because information is so accessible, people have a better understanding of what “jazz” means. There’s also an interest in music that’s more free, that taps into a space further into your being, and between those two things that’s when you get words like “resurgence”.
[Sons Of Kemet’s] Shabaka Hutchings sat in with you at your Roundhouse gig in May and you’ve been hanging with some of the UK jazz scene. What are your impressions? It’s really happening. I’ve been taken to new clubs, watching great musicians playing really interesting music, really pushing forward. You realise the world is big, but it’s also little, you know? Shabaka sounds like he came from [South LA district] Leimert Park (laughs). But it’s great to meet all these kindred spirits. You go some place that’s completely different from where you live and they had that same experience. It’s amazing.
You’re part of a large community of musicians. How have they responded to your success? I think they’ve been inspired. I’ve grown up with so many brilliant musicians, and for a long time it felt like none of us had a way out. But right now, all my friends, they all feel this sense of opportunity to share their own music.
Do you still want to make this maximalist expansive sound, or is there a part of you itching to play with a just a drummer and a bassist? I don’t know. Ideas come to me and I try and make them what I think they want to be. I definitely love the textures and opportunities you have with large ensembles, but I also enjoy playing with a smaller group because of the space and freedom.
Where next? Well, Heaven And Earth was a big project so I haven’t started working on my next project yet. The biggest thing on my mind is writing a graphic novel, based on a dream I had while I was working on The Epic. But who knows? Tomorrow I could hear some chord or rhythm that completely takes over my thought processes and that could be the next thing. You never know.
What’s the best thing that you’ve heard all year? I recently got into David Axelrod’s Songs Of Experience, but Brandon Coleman’s Resistance is pretty high up there, especially the song Walk Free. It’s a song about love that has the feel I feel when love hits me. It’s such a personal thing that everyone experiences differently, but Brandon somehow captured it. When I heard it I thought, Man, I wish I wrote that. And love is such a needed thing. It’s always needed, but we need it right now, for sure.