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" I can't really worry about nuclear war any more than I can worry about the aliens coming. "
Kamasi Washington
Worry
More
I Can
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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
" When I was working on 'To Pimp A Butterfly' and 'DAMN.,' I'm really making music for Kendrick. It's a different mindset than when I'm making music for me. I'm trying to get into his head and figure out what he wants because it's his vision. That's what I expect from people when they're playing on my records. "
Kamasi Washington
Me
Music
People
" Music is an expression of life, who you are, and what you've been through. "
Kamasi Washington
Music
Through
You
" The musicians I really looked up to as a kid were the ones who could play everything. "
Kamasi Washington
Play
Kid
Everything
" 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, following along, but it was such an encouraging environment, I couldn't fail. It was all, 'Yeah baby, you sound real good' no matter what you play. It was a great way to learn. "
Kamasi Washington
Good
Baby
Day
" When you bring multiple cultures together, there's a degree of push and pull. "
Kamasi Washington
Bring
Cultures
Push
" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
People
Style
Saying
" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
People
Musicians
Music
" We've played so many places where, if you asked people, 'Do you like jazz?' they would be like, 'Not at all.' But I think that if you're really putting yourself out there and really communicating, music can put you beyond people's preconceptions, beyond their playlist. "
Kamasi Washington
Yourself
Out
Music
" 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
Me
People
Think
" I went to a music academy in Los Angeles, and some friends started playing me Ravel and Prokofiev, who I liked, but what really blew me away was 'The Rite of Spring.' That's what made me get interested in classical music for real and want to study it. "
Kamasi Washington
Spring
Music
Me
" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
People
World
You
" I think L.A. has one of the most innovative and forward-thinking jazz scenes in the world. New York definitely has the volume - there's more music happening in New York than anywhere else. But to me, L.A. - it's kind of a gift and a curse. "
Kamasi Washington
New York
Me
Think
" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
Parents
Music
Experience
" My dad was very much a Pan-Africanist and instilled in me and my siblings a want for that knowledge. "
Kamasi Washington
Want
Much
Me
" I wanted to be a positive force in the world. "
Kamasi Washington
Wanted
Positive
Force
" My mum liked gospel and R&B, Chaka Khan, and Whitney Houston. "
Kamasi Washington
Whitney
Houston
Gospel
" A legacy is a lot of times determined by how people accept your music. And sometimes people's legacy starts late or starts early, or they last a long time or a short amount of time. As a musician, I've never taken an approach of wanting to try to control that because I don't think that I can. "
Kamasi Washington
Think
Time
Music
" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
Diversity
Growing Up
Beauty
" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
Down
Two
Earth
" My dad was a professional musician; my mom played, too, but just for fun. All my siblings played. The house was full of music books, videos, albums. I guess it's not surprising that I ended up becoming a musician. "
Kamasi Washington
Up
Professional
Music
" I was hearing music in my head and trying to play it on the clarinet, but it didn't match.' Then, literally the first day, it did with the saxophone. I was like, 'Oh man, that's what I've been trying to do; this is what it's supposed to sound like.' "
Kamasi Washington
Head
Day
Music
" If you look up, and you see that all of a sudden the world is really coming down on people with brown hair, I would think the people with black hair would look at that and go, 'Well, that could be me, and so, I shouldn't stand for that any more than those people with brown hair stand for it.' "
Kamasi Washington
People
Me
World
" Whenever my dad wasn't practicing, he was listening to music. He had an amazing jazz collection, and my mom had stuff like Chaka Khan to help balance it out. "
Kamasi Washington
Balance
Amazing
Music
" I feel like I'm musically free to do what I want. "
Kamasi Washington
Like
Free
Want
" 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! "
Kamasi Washington
Over
Sing
Take
" All forms are complex once you get to a really high level, and jazz and hip-hop are so connected. In hip-hop, you sample, while in jazz, you take Broadway tunes and turn them into something different. They're both forms that repurpose other forms of music. "
Kamasi Washington
Music
You
Hip-Hop
" At a certain point, when there's a barrier between you and what's right, eventually you have to decide you're not going to allow yourself to be subjugated. "
Kamasi Washington
Going
Yourself
You
" Malcolm X's separatist ideas were situational. If you think about where African-Americans were in the 1940s and 1950s, we needed to step away because that force, which is still present but more subdued, was very in your face, and we needed to take a step back just to get some clarity. "
Kamasi Washington
Clarity
Face
You
" When I started saxophone, my dad took me to my uncle's church, and I started playing there, too. At its best, music serves a greater purpose, and that showed me a whole other side to spiritual jazz, one which you can hear in the music - the gospel and blues feel, the soul that's embedded into the more avant-garde records. "
Kamasi Washington
Spiritual
Music
Best