KAMASI WASHINGTON

Following his lavish cosmic explorations, KAMASI WASHINGTON comes back down to Earth with an album inspired by new life and the need to overcome old divisions. But the reigning king of jazz saxophone is still cleaving close to his radical mission to soothe the soul and inspire the mind. “Music cleanses us,” he tells Sam Richards

Beads here now: Kamasi Washington in 2024 at the cover shoot for Fearless Movement

Photo by B+

Sax and the city: Washington in New York, August 2015

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AROUND midnight most evenings, Kamasi Washington will sit down at the piano in the living room of his home in Inglewood, Los Angeles, and begin to compose. Despite being synonymous with the saxophone, he only ever writes on piano, which goes some way towards explaining the harmonic richness of his music. “The piano is so much more versatile as far as being able to play the different parts and hear the song in its entirety,” he explains. “I played piano before I played saxophone, so it was always the logical choice. The saxophone is the racehorse, but the piano is the workhorse.”

He never tends to get much written during the day. “When the world gets quieter, it’s easier to focus. There’s rarely something Ihave to do at one in the morning.” But there’s another reason for his nocturnal schedule: lately his piano has been monopolised by adifferent, smaller pair of hands. Born during lockdown in 2020, his daughter has already shown aptitude for the family business, even writing one of the songs on his new album, Fearless Movement. “She’s very musical,” beams Washington. “She would get up every morning and go play piano. Sometimes she wouldn’t let me get on! Normally she’d play abit more random, but one time she was playing this melody over and over again. Luckily, technology’s cool – pulled my phone out and recorded it. Then I started messin’ around with it, slowed it down, added some chords to it. And it made the record!”

The simple, rousing chorus of “Asha The First” –along with some funkier rhythms and aclutch of star cameos –helps to make Kamasi Washington’s fifth solo album his most accessible to date. But it’s still alavish and expansive piece of work. Washington hasn’t become the most celebrated saxophonist of his generation by crossing over, dumbing down or condensing his vision into Spotify-sized snippets. Instead, he’s flourished as aradical maximalist, making music that’s vast in sound and scope, without losing sight of where he’s from. Indeed, at the heart of each record is the same tight-knit core of musicians, most of whom have been together since their teens, jamming in the garage between bouts of Street Fighter.

“HE’S ONE OF THE FUNNIEST PEOPLE I KNOW”

BRANDON COLEMAN

“I feel like his music reflects his personality,” says keyboardist Brandon Coleman, who first knew Washington as the linchpin of South Central LA’s formidable multi-school jazz band, “comprised of all the baddest musicians in innercity schools”. Later they roomed together as students, playing church gigs on the weekend. “Kamasi’s one of the funniest people Iknow. He can talk to anybody about anything. He’s a genuine person, just asincere individual. [With the music] his intentions are to create something magical, something unique. And he always stays true to that, even in moments where everyone else is trying to project another idea. He has a very clear stance on what he wants.”