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" Music doesn't come out of you, it comes through you. You are almost like a messenger. "
Kamasi Washington
Out
Music
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" My dad was really into avant garde jazz: Archie Shepp, John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. "
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" By the time I was about 15, I was out playing gigs and knew I was going to be a musician. "
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" We started 'Heaven And Earth' in 2016. That was probably the heaviest touring year of my whole life. We probably did almost 200 shows in 2016. We went into the studio, and I honestly didn't know what the album was going to be. So I just kind of started picking songs that I liked. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" I never had a problem moving between jazz and hip-hop. "
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" My dad was very much a Pan-Africanist and instilled in me and my siblings a want for that knowledge. "
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" As a person who grew up in Los Angeles - that's a very diverse place - I've always felt like that diversity is a blessing. It's not a problem to be solved: it's a gift to be thankful for. "
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Gift
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" 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! "
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New Things
Life
Think
" 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. "
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Level
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" Hip-hop and jazz have always been intertwined. Even the G-funk thing. You listen to 'The Chronic,' there's flute solos and everything. It's always been there. "
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Listen
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" When you bring multiple cultures together, there's a degree of push and pull. "
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" My mum liked gospel and R&B, Chaka Khan, and Whitney Houston. "
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Whitney
Houston
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" I think the open mind is the one that's reachable. "
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Mind
I Think
Think
" As musicians, we have one of the greatest tools of bringing people together in music. "
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People
Together
Music
" 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. "
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Sound
Saxophone
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" At the time of 'The Epic,' as a core band, we were all spending so much time apart making music for other people that by the time we got together - even though we grew up together and there's a special connection we have - it was like a rare privilege to come together. "
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Special
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" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
Walking
Street
Home
" 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
" Isaac Smith sounded like Curtis Fuller, Corey Hogan sounded like Sonny Rollins, Terrace Martin sounded like Jackie McLean. Already, at 13, 14, 15 years old. "
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Years
Isaac
Like
" 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. "
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Piano
Three
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" All John Coltrane's records are amazing. "
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John
Coltrane
Records
" Gerald Wilson was one of my mentors: he was in his nineties before he passed and, literally, every time I saw him, he'd be like, 'Man, Kamasi, I've got this new thing! Nobody ever heard anything like this before!' It's amazing hanging out with somebody that was born in 1918. "
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New
Born
Time
" 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
" We've now got a whole generation of jazz musicians who have been brought up with hip-hop. We've grown up alongside rappers and DJs; we've heard this music all our life. We are as fluent in J Dilla and Dr Dre as we are in Mingus and Coltrane. "
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Musicians
Generation
Jazz
" When I was about seventeen, I had a group called the Young Jazz Giants. We played all originals. When we would finish playing, people would be like, 'Oh my God, that was so nice, that was so great.' But Pops would never tell us we were the best. He would give it to us straight, like, 'You're out of tune. You're dropping beats.' "
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Best
Great
Nice
" West Coast hip hop was the sound of my neighbourhood. It was something I could relate to because it had a sound that felt like my surroundings - almost more so than what they were saying. That music was made to be bumped in a Cadillac! "
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Sound
Surroundings
Saying
" When you're making music, you're creeping up on your heart and pouring it out into something. "
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Out
Your
You
" I used to tell my friends, 'Art Blakey is way more gangster than Eazy-E!' I ended up getting my friends into jazz, and all of a sudden there was this little group of kids in the middle of South Central that were all into hard-bop. "
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" I think the reason why I see life as this never-ending struggle is because I imagine it having endless potential. "
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