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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. "

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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

People

Music

Beauty

" 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. "

" I've known that about myself, that I've had two sides: one that's pretty tactical, down to earth, aware. There's also a really spacey side. But I realized they're kinda the same thing. "

" I feel like I'm musically free to do what I want. "

Kamasi Washington

Free

Want

" My hope is that witnessing the beautiful harmony created by merging different musical melodies will help people realize the beauty in our own differences. "

" 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

People

Think

" As a musician, your instrument is almost predetermined. I had played drums, piano, clarinet, but when I heard Wayne Shorter play the saxophone, I knew that sound is what I wanted. "

" Jazz is like a telescope, and a lot of other music is like a microscope. "

Kamasi Washington

Microscope

Music

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I started playing drums at three, then piano at five, then clarinet. But it wasn't till I picked up a saxophone aged 13 that I really got serious about music. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I think people psych themselves out before they listen to jazz a lot, thinking that they have to, like, put on a suit or something. That's not what it is. "

" The fact of the matter is that nobody understands what John Coltrane is doing except John Coltrane. And maybe not even him. So we're all experiencing it on this subconscious level. "

" 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. "

" There's a deeper level of healing that needs to happen for the world in general. There's a mass of people who are broken. "

" I'm trying to just keep pushing on the things I've been wanting to do in my life and in music. And think of new things to do! "

" 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. "

" If we all give our power to one person, that's what the world will be. If we all decide to make the world a beautiful place, it'll be a beautiful place. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" My dad was very much a Pan-Africanist and instilled in me and my siblings a want for that knowledge. "

Kamasi Washington

Want

Much

" The thing about hip-hop is, like, that the instruments were taken out of schools. But - you might have taken the instruments out of schools, but we'll take the records and sing over them! "

" We're the only ones who can change our reality. "

" Every day we're here is an opportunity to do what we can to make the world right, to help someone close or far from us, to not get so hung up on what we can't do, and remember what we can. "

" I never had a problem moving between jazz and hip-hop. "

" Hip-hop is a collage. It samples from all different styles of music. "