KEVIN McCORRY, HOST: I’m Kevin McCorry and this is ‘Jukebox Journey.’
[MUSIC MONTAGE: “Squabble Up” by Kendrick Lamar, “Street Fighter Mas” by Kamasi Washington]
KM: We’re unstuck in time, jumping through decades and genres, meditating on a theme. This week, it’s an artist spotlight edition with Kamasi Washington.
[MUSIC SWELL]
KM: Washington is a modern jazz saxophone pioneer known for infusing his work with influences from all over the musical map.
[MUSIC MONTAGE: “Cherokee” by Kamasi Washington, “Get Lit” by Kamasi Washington, George Clinton and D Smoke]
KM: He grew up in L.A. in a musical family, including a saxophone-playing dad who instilled in him a deep reverence for the craft.
KAMASI WASHINGTON: “It was kinda always there for me. It’s like trying to remember when you first started talking or something, you know?”
KM: By elementary school, it was second nature to quickly learn the hits he heard on the radio.
KW: ”I remember taking my clarinet to school and playing Boyz II Men songs for my friends, and they thought that was super cool that I could do that.”
[MUSIC: “It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye to Yesterday” by Boyz II Men]
KM: His appreciation for jazz grew as he learned how it influenced the hip hop surrounding him in the late 80s and early 90s.
[MUSIC MONTAGE: “A Chant for Bu” by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, “Excursions” by A Tribe Called Quest].
KW: “ I was into, like, N.W.A., and something about the Jazz Messengers, it felt kinda like connected to gangsta rap somehow to me. I don’t know why, but it did.”
KM: From there, as a teenager he went headlong into the saxophone — with an almost obsessive devotion.
KW: “When you get real serious about music, it kinda consumes you and it changes your life. So, like, my friends that I used to go hang out with, I wasn’t really hanging out with them like that, you know? So I was in the house eight, nine hours a day, all day long, just practicing my instrument. My mom actually thought something was wrong with me, like called a therapist. Like, ‘Kamasi, are you sad?’ And I was like, ‘Nah, I’m just listening to this Cannonball Aderley record.’ You know, it becomes a kind of a solitary life, but you gain something. You get an insight into yourself.”
[MUSIC: “Transition” by John Coltrane]
KM: A formative record for him was John Coltrane’s posthumously released album “Transition” from 1970.
[MUSIC SWELL]
KW: “Oh, man, I hear, I hear the whole universe, man. It felt like, when I got that record, I’ll never forget it.”
KM: It was a favorite of his dad’s but he couldn’t really appreciate it….that is until he happened upon it in a Tower Records in Hollywood, bought it and popped it on his discman on the bus ride home.
KW: “ And I lost myself. I forgot that I was on a public bus. And I was already a big guy. I was, like, maybe 14 years old, but I was already a pretty big dude. And I just remember opening my eyes, and this lady was, like, holding her purse, like: ‘What is wrong with this guy?’”
KM: The Yin to Coltrane’s Yang was James Brown.
[MUSIC: “The Boss” by James Brown]
KW: “ I went through my little ‘jazz snob era,’ where I only wanted to listen to jazz… and it was James Brown that pulled me out of that…Trane is like the telescope. He’s looking at the farthest parts of the universe and the galaxies and all that. And James Brown is like a microscope. He’s looking at the innermost workings of a singular cell. It’s so simple, but there’s a whole universe in that simplicity.”
KM: Washington established himself as a top player by college and got gigs backing his heroes: Snoop Dogg, Lauryn Hill and Chaka Khan. But what really put him on the map was his collaboration with Kendrick Lamar on K-Dot’s genre-bending 2015 classic “To Pimp a Butterfly.”
[MUSIC MONTAGE: “For Free (Interlude)” by Kendrick Lamar, “U” by Kendrick Lamar]
KM: Washington was inspired by Lamar’s willingness to experiment with his sophomore record after a more traditional debut.
KW: “Man, people don’t usually do that. People have a hit record, they go somewhere around close to what they just did. And he just went a whole different direction, and it gave me so much respect for him as an artist. I really feel like this record, it changed music.”
KM: After years as a player, Washington’s solo breakthrough came that same year with his own ambitious triple record “The Epic.”
[MUSIC: “Change of the Guard” by Kamasi Washington]
KW: “I did have a feeling of, like, ‘When am I gonna be able to kinda share my music with the world?’ I just wanted to make sure that even if I never had an album that got a public release, I had a recording of what we were doing…We felt like we had something special. I felt like I had something special to give to the world. And, so yeah, that was always gonna kinda happen no matter what. No matter how popular it got, like, the music was gonna exist.”
KM: In the decade plus since, Washington’s career has been defined by experimentation and collaboration. That includes his work scoring the Shinichirō Watanabe anime show “Lazurus.”
[MUSIC: “Lie in Memory” by Kamasi Washington]
KW: ”It’s like we have a moment where we all know where we’re going, without saying it. It’s like we all can see it. Like, ‘We going right there?’ ‘Yeah, that’s where I’m going.’ ‘That’s where I’m going.’ And we meet there. And this convergence — this moment happens that’s beautiful where we all kind of connect.”
KM: And his latest, about to be released project, with his group called Dinner Party, with Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper and 9th Wonder:
[MUSIC: “If It Ain’t Broke (Love Wins)” by Dinner Party feat. Phoelix and 9th Wonder]
KM: In all of it, Washington sees a common thread.
KW: “You know, I think one of the biggest lies, one of the most disabling thoughts that we have is that ‘you’re separate than me.’ And in that, like, ‘I don’t really care what happens to you as long as it doesn’t affect me.’ When the reality is that we’re all connected, every single last one of us, all 7 billion of us… That sense of humankind being one — if we could, if we can get even a small fraction of that — it would, it would go a long way.”
[MUSIC SWELL]
KM: I’m Kevin McCorry and this has been a Jukebox Journey on WHYY. And you can catch Kamasi Washington with his group Dinner Party this Sunday evening at Union Transfer.
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