Saxophonist uses talents ‘to build the world up’
Kamasi Washington has been the recipient of notable accolades in recent years — “the future of jazz” and “the jazz voice of Black Lives Matter,” among them.
The saxophonist with the imposing frame, towering Afro and flowing African tunics was tutored by jazz masters in and around Los Angeles for decades, including his father, saxophonist Rickey Washington.
Despite his increasing stature, though, he remains a soft-spoken student as much as a leader, and his openness to new ideas and fresh inspiration have made him a go-to collaborator for artists ranging from Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock to Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar.
In crossing musical boundaries, he has brought a new energy to jazz and how the world perceives it. A current tour has him playing venues typically associated with rock bands, including a Nov. 28 date at the Taft Theatre in Cincinnati.
“It feels like people are becoming more open,” Washington said. “I found that jazz, when you open yourself up to it, has a very high success rate.”
Washington grew up in a household swimming in jazz recordings and his father’s musical friends.
“I took my dad’s saxophone when I was 11,” he said with a laugh. “I had played drums, piano, clarinet; but when I heard Wayne Shorter play the saxophone, I knew that sound is what I wanted.”
His dad’s reaction “was to take me to my uncle and start playing at church,” he said.
“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, ... but it was such an encouraging environment, I couldn’t fail.”
The improvisational setting opened up young Kamasi to the notion that music is more than notes on a page. He studied music in high school and at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he played alongside masters such as Gerald Wilson and Kenny Burrell. Another key teacher was Snoop Dogg, with whom Washington toured nationally for the first time two decades ago.
“Snoop’s a great student of music in that he understands it, not so much from a technical standpoint but on a human level,” he said.
“A lot of things we thought of as secondary — phrasing, the timbre of how you play your tone, the timing, how you play a rhythm — that was in the forefront for the guys who basically invented West Coast hip-hop. I had to listen to subtleties, rather than just the actual note and the rhythm.”
Such education helps explain how Washington has melded his style with such a diverse group of collaborators. As he was finishing his 2015 breakthrough album, “The Epic,” he was making major contributions to projects by fellow jazz innovator Thundercat, hip-hop producer Flying Lotus and Lamar, for whom he played saxophone and arranged strings on “To Pimp a Butterfly.”
Washington’s latest EP, “Harmony of Difference” (Young Turks), consists of six tracks exploring the idea of musical counterpoint as a metaphor for social harmony, extending a tradition that reaches back to jazz masterworks such as Duke Ellington’s “Black, Brown and Beige.”
“Music doesn’t come out of you; it comes through you,” he said.
“You are almost like a messenger. My experience, my life gets woven into the music. 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.
“Through that came a realization that we all play our part in the world being the way it is. You can build it up or tear it down. I try to use my music, my ability, to help build the world up.”