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" L.A. is a big city that has a lot of music in it but is not necessarily known for it. A lot of musicians got lost in that. You can make a living; you can gig a lot within the city and never get out of it. That was something that me and my friends, our generation, were afraid of happening to us. "

Kamasi Washington

Music

Friends

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" This precious thing of empathy and love and understanding is something we have to hold and appreciate and protect. "

" 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. "

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

Kamasi Washington

Free

Want

" The musicians I really looked up to as a kid were the ones who could play everything. "

" When you're making music, you're creeping up on your heart and pouring it out into something. "

" 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. "

" 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

Think

" Fela Kuti blew my mind. His playing is very unorthodox, but I learned how to appreciate that. "

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

" I like living on that edge, musically. I like a bit of insecurity and that feeling of not really knowing what's going to happen. "

Kamasi Washington

Edge

Living

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I think the open mind is the one that's reachable. "

" 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

World

" What fixes your spirit when Ferguson happens? When Trayvon Martin and those kind of things happen, they hurt your spirit; it hurts your heart and your soul. You need something to fix it. "

" My mum liked gospel and R&B, Chaka Khan, and Whitney Houston. "

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

" I started playing with this band, the Polyester Players. It was my introduction into funk. So I went and got a James Brown record. 'Black Caesar' is a film score, but it's so dope. "

" I think the reason why I see life as this never-ending struggle is because I imagine it having endless potential. "

" There were two things I discovered when I toured with Snoop. One was that the band was all jazz musicians. The second was to instil in me a respect for other styles of music. From then on, whenever I played a new kind of music, I came with the same kind of open mind. What are they trying to do? What are they hearing? How do they see 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Someone like Donald Trump can't control the way I show love to my brother. He can't control the way I feel about my neighbors. "

" 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. "

" So much good music has been looked over because of preconceived notions of genre. "

" 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. "

" 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. "