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" My mum liked gospel and R&B, Chaka Khan, and Whitney Houston. "
Kamasi Washington
Whitney
Houston
Gospel
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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
" You have to dig deep to make great music, and it gets harder and harder. It's a difficult, painful process to reach deep in there and pull out the real gems. And you have to have that little bit of anxiety of, 'Can I really do this? Am I good enough?' You need that in the recipe to really get down in there. "
Kamasi Washington
Great
Music
You
" I think the open mind is the one that's reachable. "
Kamasi Washington
Mind
I Think
Think
" 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
" 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! "
Kamasi Washington
Sound
Surroundings
Saying
" When you bring multiple cultures together, there's a degree of push and pull. "
Kamasi Washington
Bring
Cultures
Push
" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
Musicians
Generation
Jazz
" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
Gangster
Way
Group
" 'Harmony of Difference,' to me, was an opportunity to celebrate one another. And 'Fists of Fury' is an opportunity for us to protect one another. "
Kamasi Washington
Opportunity
Harmony
Celebrate
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
Band
Black
Dope
" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
Heart
I Am
Musicians
" I don't want to live my life to necessarily overcome struggle, but when I am going to hit struggle throughout my life, I face it head on. "
Kamasi Washington
Live
Life
Struggle
" 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
" American music comes from the same tree, but sometimes we get to these places in history where we forget where things come from, and they get compartmentalized. "
Kamasi Washington
Forget
History
American
" 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
" All John Coltrane's records are amazing. "
Kamasi Washington
John
Coltrane
Records
" My hope is that witnessing the beautiful harmony created by merging different musical melodies will help people realize the beauty in our own differences. "
Kamasi Washington
Beautiful
Beauty
Help
" I think the reason why I see life as this never-ending struggle is because I imagine it having endless potential. "
Kamasi Washington
See
Life
Think
" When I was younger... we used to go to this place called Rexall to play 'Street Fighter.' At Rexall, there would be different people from different hoods there playing the game. It was the one place that was like an equalizer. It was just about how good you were at 'Street Fighter.' "
Kamasi Washington
Be Different
Good
People
" 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
" Jazz is an interesting music. It's one of the few forms of music where everyone that's performing the music has a creative stake in the music. In jazz, everyone's improvising, and everyone's creating at the same time. "
Kamasi Washington
Jazz
Creative
Time
" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
Beautiful Place
Power
Beautiful
" The musicians I really looked up to as a kid were the ones who could play everything. "
Kamasi Washington
Play
Kid
Everything
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
Brother
Someone
Love
" There's this notion that music has to be confined to some small, simple place to be popular, something I never believed. "
Kamasi Washington
Simple
Music
Small
" 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