Kamasi Washington
The tenor saxophonist who took the sound he once breathed alongside his childhood neighborhood friends and gave it to the world as a three-hour epic.
At a glance 🔭💭
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Companions ⏳🌊
- FamilyRickey Washington
His father, a saxophonist, flutist and music teacher, who led his son into music and later shared the stage with him as well.
- InfluenceWayne Shorter
The musician who made him choose the saxophone, and still the hero he names most often.
- MentorGerald Wilson
UCLA's veteran composer, who brought him into his big band and taught him the principles of large-ensemble arranging.
- ColleagueThundercat
A neighborhood friend he met at about ten and a bassist, he is a core member of the West Coast Get Down.
- PatronFlying Lotus
The producer who introduced him to the world by releasing “The Epic” on his own label, Brainfeeder.
- ColleagueKendrick Lamar
He brought him onto “To Pimp a Butterfly” as a player and string arranger.
I. A child of Inglewood · 1981–1998 (age 0–17)
(Birth) He was born in February 1981 in Los Angeles, California. His father, Rickey Washington, played saxophone and flute and taught music in the schools. There were always instruments and records in the house, and he has recalled in many interviews that the sound of his father rehearsing with colleagues was his first music classroom. Little has been made public about his mother and siblings. (Inglewood) Much of his childhood was spent in Inglewood and the South Central area, southwest Los Angeles. He has recalled that the first neighborhood he lived in as a child was a fairly dangerous place. For him, music was a bridge to another path. (Shorter) The first instrument he picked up was the drums; by way of piano and clarinet, he moved to saxophone in his early teens. He has recalled that it was while learning Wayne Shorter's tunes that he settled on the saxophone. Shorter remained the hero he names most often. (Friends) Around this time he began playing with the Bruner brothers from the neighborhood — bassist Stephen Bruner, later known as Thundercat, and drummer Ronald Bruner Jr. — and with pianist Cameron Graves. While attending the music program at Hamilton High School, he learned the sound of a large ensemble in a combined student jazz band led by the local music educator Reggie Andrews. This friendship, begun at around ten, became the ground beneath his music for nearly thirty years.
II. UCLA and Leimert Park · 1999–2004 (age 18–23)
(UCLA) After high school he went on to UCLA to study ethnomusicology. The university's jazz program was led by the guitarist Kenny Burrell, and elders such as the big-band composer Gerald Wilson and the drummer Billy Higgins taught there. Studying music from many parts of the world alongside jazz, he said, gave him an eye for seeing sound as the life of a community. (World Stage) His school outside the classroom was Leimert Park. In this neighborhood, a center of Black culture, the small venue the World Stage — said to have been founded by Higgins together with the poet Kamau Daáood — often hosted jam sessions. He has recalled learning by standing on that stage before his elders. Higgins died in 2001. (Wilson) Gerald Wilson invited him into his big band. Beside this veteran, who had started out in Jimmie Lunceford's orchestra in the 1930s, he learned in his body the principles of arranging that make dozens of players move as one. That experience came straight back to life years later when he wrote large-scale works drawing in choir and strings. (Giants) In 2004, with the Bruner brothers and Graves, he released a first record under the name the Young Jazz Giants. The neighborhood friends had simply become a band. It drew little attention, but it was the first document of the lineup that would astonish the world a decade or so later.
III. The sideman years · 2004–2011 (age 23–30)
(Sideman) For several years after college, his living came from other people's stages. He played saxophone in Snoop Dogg's touring band and took part in performances and recordings by singers such as Lauryn Hill, Chaka Khan, and Raphael Saadiq. He also played on records by the bassist Stanley Clarke. The solid grooves he learned on hip-hop and R&B stages blended straight into his jazz. (Livelihood) Sideman work brought a steady income, but it offered no outlet for putting his own music into the world. He is known to have spent years writing tunes and stockpiling them. Nor was it an era when major labels readily funded long, serious jazz works. (Colleagues) Meanwhile, people gathered around his childhood friends. Miles Mosley on upright bass, Brandon Coleman on keys, Ryan Porter on trombone, Tony Austin on drums, and Patrice Quinn on vocals joined the Bruner brothers and Graves to form a collective called the West Coast Get Down. They kept up regular gigs at small bars in Los Angeles, playing one another's tunes. (Sessions) In late 2011 they rented a studio for a month and recorded one another's tunes in a single sweep. The plan was to make several people's albums all at once; some 190 tunes were recorded in all, 45 of them his. It was the moment when the years of standing on others' stages to make a living gathered into a single great stride for his own music.
IV. An epic · 2012–2015 (age 31–34)
(Editing) After the sessions, he spent several years sifting through and refining the vast tapes. Over the band recordings he arranged and layered a string section of some thirty players and a choir of about twenty. The feel for big sound he had learned in Wilson's big band came back to life here. Wilson died in 2014. (Flying Lotus) It was longtime colleagues who opened the way. The producer Flying Lotus, close to Thundercat, brought him onto his record “You're Dead!” Herbie Hancock also appeared on that 2014 album. Flying Lotus — who is also Alice Coltrane's grandnephew — decided to release his album on his own label, Brainfeeder. (Kendrick) Around the same time, he also took part in the recording of Kendrick Lamar's “To Pimp a Butterfly,” on saxophone and as a string arranger. When the album was embraced as a hip-hop monument in March 2015, the names of the musicians who played on it became known too. (The Epic) Two months later, in May 2015, “The Epic” appeared — close to three hours of music across three discs. His father, Rickey, would later join him onstage on flute and soprano saxophone. For a newcomer's debut full-length it was a reckless length, but critics and young listeners took the record as a sign that jazz was meeting the wider world again. It was the result of long-stockpiled tunes and the sound of twenty-year friends bursting out all at once.
The opening track of “The Epic.” It is the moment when long-stockpiled tunes and the sound of twenty-year friends first burst into the world together with choir and strings.
- After a brief piano introduction, the choir enters and the stage of the piece suddenly widens. It is worth listening for how the choir and strings, layered over the band recording afterward, become a single mass.
- There are two drummers. Tony Austin and Ronald Bruner Jr. both played on the recording of “The Epic,” and the thick rhythm the two of them build together drives the whole piece forward.
- The tenor saxophone solo repeats a short motif (a melodic fragment of a few notes), gradually widening its range until it peaks in a rough, high-register cry. Many have said it recalls the spiritual jazz of John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders.
- On upright bass, Miles Mosley plucks with his fingers and at times draws the bow, firmly supporting the soloist from the low register.
The most song-like track on “The Epic.” A song that speaks calmly of a heart unchanged by the passing years, sung by his longtime colleague Patrice Quinn.
- The title reads as a pun: it twists the jazz term for the famous chord progression (rhythm changes) drawn from Gershwin's “I Got Rhythm,” layering over it the sense of a changing life.
- Patrice Quinn's voice sings without strain, calmly, as if speaking. It is a manner of quietly offering the listener a promise.
- Over a gently swaying groove (a steady rhythmic flow that pulls the body along), the choir and strings softly enfold the song.
- When the singing ends, the tenor saxophone takes up the melody and unfolds the song's feeling once more in the language of the instrument.
V. The harmony of difference · 2015–2018 (age 34–37)
(Touring) After “The Epic,” he and the band toured major festivals and venues around the world. They played rock and hip-hop stages more often than jazz clubs, and many in the audience were young people seeing a jazz show for the first time. In 2016 the album won the first American Music Prize. Unlike in his sideman days, he was now a leader who filled the stage under his own name. (Counterpoint) In 2017 he was invited to the Whitney Biennial at New York's Whitney Museum, where he presented the suite “Harmony of Difference.” Its structure presented five distinct melodies one at a time, then layered them all together in the final piece to make a single music. He explained that it translated into musical texture the idea of seeing difference itself as beauty, rather than something to be endured. (Anger) In 2018 came the double album “Heaven and Earth.” He explained that the Earth disc held the world as he sees it outwardly, and the Heaven disc the world as he sees it inwardly. He said in interviews that opening the Earth disc with the theme from a Bruce Lee film carried the feeling that one must stand up to injustice. (Conviction) He made no secret of his belief that music can change people. In interview after interview he spoke of community, justice, and imagination, and those words carried over intact into large-scale choirs and long improvisations.
The final piece of the suite “Harmony of Difference,” presented at the Whitney Biennial. Here his idea of seeing difference as beauty comes through most clearly in the texture of the music.
- The distinct melodies of the five preceding pieces all overlap at once in this one. At its heart is the technique of sounding several melodic lines simultaneously while weaving them into harmony (counterpoint).
- It begins at a slow tempo and builds little by little over more than ten minutes. It rewards following the process as instruments are added one by one and the sound thickens.
- From the middle onward, the choir enters and the individual melodies merge into a single vast wave.
- The saxophone solo reaches the highest point atop the accumulated sound, then melts back into the ensemble.
The opening track of the Earth disc of “Heaven and Earth.” It pours into music from a Bruce Lee film the feeling that one must stand up to the injustice of the world as it is now.
- The original is the theme music from a 1972 Bruce Lee film. Washington set new lyrics to it, turning it into a song of resolve to stand up against an unjust reality.
- The two voices of Patrice Quinn and Dwight Trible sing in alternation and together, trading call and response.
- Strings and choir build a dramatic, film-score tension, and over it the tenor saxophone breaks through, raw and rough.
- Drums and bass stubbornly repeat the same rhythmic figure, giving the piece the force of a march.
VI. Fearless movement · 2019–2026 (age 38–45)
(Becoming) In 2020 he scored Becoming, the Netflix documentary about the life of Michelle Obama. Film music, which supports the story from behind the screen, demanded a restraint quite unlike the roar of a large ensemble, and through this work he broadened his range as a composer. (Pause) That same year the COVID-19 pandemic brought performances to a halt. For him and his band, who had spent most of every year on stage, this meant losing their livelihood and their rhythm at once. He is said to have kept writing music even during this period. (Father) In the meantime he became a father, and he said in official interviews that this experience became the starting point for his next album. He also said that remembering his own father, Rickey, who had led him to music, made him think anew about the feelings passed from one generation to the next. (Movement) In May 2024 the album Fearless Movement was released. He introduced it as a dance record, an album meant to make the body move. André 3000 on flute, the funk elder George Clinton, and his old friend Thundercat were among the guests, and it was received as an album that drew closer to life and joy here on this earth than his earlier work, which had sung of the cosmos and the soul. (Now) He still takes the stage with his West Coast Get Down colleagues, with Los Angeles as his base. That the friends he met at around the age of ten still play at his side shows most clearly where his music began.
The quietest piece on Fearless Movement. In place of the roar of a large ensemble, it looks inward through a conversation between two wind instruments.
- André 3000 plays the flute. It is the sound of the period when he, famed for his rapping, had immersed himself in the flute, and its soft tone, every breath audible, sets the mood of the piece.
- The texture of drifting sound takes precedence over a groove in fixed meter. It seems meant to create the feeling of time flowing as in a dream.
- The tenor saxophone does not cry out; it converses with the flute in a low voice. Unlike his other signature pieces, this one stands out for its restraint.
- Keyboards and the reverberation in the background create a wide space in which the two wind instruments move slowly.
Lesser-known stories
The Epic is usually remembered as one man's debut, but the month-long recording sessions at the end of 2011 were originally meant to make albums for all of his West Coast Get Down colleagues at once. He recalled that many of them played on one another's pieces at the time. A few years later Cameron Graves, Miles Mosley, Ryan Porter and Brandon Coleman are known to have released albums under their own names as well. The collaborative nature hidden beneath a single name is an important key to understanding his music. The names given to the three discs — the plan, the glorious tale, historic repetition — came from a dream he had, as he explained in several interviews. It was a dream, he said, about a guardian keeping the gate at the top of a mountain and about those training in the village below to challenge him. It is a design that remains largely hidden from listeners who hear the album merely as a collection of tracks. The physical release of Heaven and Earth in 2018 contained another album, The Choice, hidden inside the packaging. Because it could be found only by tearing open the packaging oneself, people who listened only on streaming could easily pass by without knowing it existed. It was a device that translated the album's theme — a choice between earth and heaven — into the form of an object.
Glossary 📚🔎
Sideman
(Literal meaning) A compound of the English words side and man, meaning a player who stands at the leader's side. (In jazz) A musician who is not the leader of a band under his or her own name but is hired to play in someone else's band. Sidemen follow the tunes and direction the leader has chosen while adding their own skill. It is like a supporting actor in a school play — not the lead, but helping fill the stage. Many masters became leaders only after long years as sidemen.
Jam session
(In jazz) Not a prearranged performance but a gathering where musicians play well-known tunes together on the spot. Even people meeting for the first time can fall in together at once if they know the same tune. It is like splitting into teams with kids you have never met in the park for an impromptu game of soccer. For young players it also served as a school, a place to be tested and to learn in front of their elders. (Elsewhere) Jam can also mean the jam made by boiling down fruit, or being stuck or blocked.
Big band
(In jazz) A large jazz orchestra of around fifteen players, in which trumpets, trombones and saxophones each form sections of several players, supported by piano, bass and drums. The parts are arranged in advance so that each section plays the same melody together in harmony or trades phrases with the others. It is like a whole class entering a choir competition with divided parts — sopranos and altos practice separately and then join as one on stage.
Groove
(Literal meaning) The English word groove originally means the channel cut into a record. Just as the needle glides along the groove, it came to describe the feeling of music carrying the body along naturally. (In jazz) The flow that bass and drums create by repeating a steady rhythmic figure, making the listener's body move of its own accord. It does not come from keeping exact time alone; it arises when the players push and pull ever so slightly in step with one another's breathing. That feeling when several people jump rope together, the turners and the jumpers all surrendering to a single rhythm — that is groove.
Rhythm changes
(In jazz) The chord progression (the order in which harmonies change) used in George Gershwin's song I Got Rhythm. The name comes from the fact that in English the changing of chords is called changes. Jazz musicians built countless tunes by laying new melodies over this progression. It is like the game of singing different lyrics to the same accompaniment — the accompaniment stays the same, but the melody differs from person to person.
Counterpoint
(Literal meaning) The Korean term daewibeop (對位法) means 'the method of positions (位) set facing (對) one another.' It comes from the Latin punctus contra punctum, that is, 'note against note.' (In jazz) A compositional technique of sounding several different melodies at once while keeping each one alive and making them blend together. It developed originally in Western classical music such as Bach's, and Kamasi Washington used this principle to layer five melodies in Truth. It works the same way as a round, in which several people sing the same song at staggered intervals and the different sounds overlap yet harmonize. Counterpoint, however, makes even entirely different melodies fit together.
Spiritual jazz
(Literal meaning) The English word spiritual means of the soul, or of the spirit. (In jazz) A current led in the late 1960s by John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and others, which sought to bring great themes such as faith and meditation, the cosmos and the soul into music. It is marked by long improvisations, repeating rhythms, and expansive sounds such as harp and choir. Think of the swelling emotion you feel when the whole school sings the school song with one voice in the gymnasium. Kamasi Washington's music has been widely praised for reviving this current today.