Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" We're the only ones who can change our reality. "
Kamasi Washington
Who
Change
Only
Related Quotes:
" 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
" 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
" I kept thinking about how ironic it is how people who live in places where there is diversity tend to love it - and the people that don't live in particularly diverse places tend to be the ones attacking it. In a way, that's similar to music, which is essentially the art of bringing things together. "
Kamasi Washington
Love
Art
Diversity
" 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
" In a lot of ways, I feel like I'm just taking the music that comes to me and trying to make it as beautiful as I can. You can't really predict or control how people will receive that music. "
Kamasi Washington
Control
People
Music
" When you bring multiple cultures together, there's a degree of push and pull. "
Kamasi Washington
Bring
Cultures
Push
" Hip-hop is a collage. It samples from all different styles of music. "
Kamasi Washington
Different
Music
Collage
" 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
" Jazz is a part of me. "
Kamasi Washington
Part
Me
Jazz
" There's a whole stereotype of the jazz musician that's into poetry and reading and metaphysics and all that stuff. Really, it's a sign of someone who's searching, whose mind is open, looking for answers. Whatever ideas you may come up with, the beautiful thing is the search. "
Kamasi Washington
Ideas
Beautiful
Reading
" Music is an expression of life, who you are, and what you've been through. "
Kamasi Washington
Music
Through
You
" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
Time
People
Jazz
" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
Music
Los Angeles
Jazz
" 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
Like
" 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
" 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
" Music doesn't come out of you, it comes through you. You are almost like a messenger. "
Kamasi Washington
Out
Music
Like
" 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
" 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
" I was that kid who made his friends listen to the albums they didn't want to. "
Kamasi Washington
Made
Who
Want
" 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
" 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
" So much good music has been looked over because of preconceived notions of genre. "
Kamasi Washington
Over
Because
Much
" 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
" All John Coltrane's records are amazing. "
Kamasi Washington
John
Coltrane
Records
" Jazz is like a telescope, and a lot of other music is like a microscope. "
Kamasi Washington
Microscope
Music
Like
" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
Level
Him
Matter
" 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
" The musicians I really looked up to as a kid were the ones who could play everything. "
Kamasi Washington
Play
Kid
Everything
" 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. "
Kamasi Washington
Special
Together
Music