Best quotes by Kamasi Washington on Music

Checkout quotes by Kamasi Washington on Music

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ So much good music has been looked over because of preconceived notions of genre.

  - Kamasi Washington
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ We've played so many places where, if you asked people, 'Do you like jazz?' they would be like, 'Not at all.' But I think that if you're really putting yourself out there and really communicating, music can put you beyond people's preconceptions, beyond their playlist.

  - Kamasi Washington
  

• ‟ There's this notion that music has to be confined to some small, simple place to be popular, something I never believed.

  - Kamasi Washington
  

• ‟ I grew up with a sense of music being a very spiritual experience while playing in church and with parents who were socially aware, always teaching me to look beyond the obvious in understanding how the world works.

  - Kamasi Washington
  

• ‟ Jazz is like a telescope, and a lot of other music is like a microscope.

  - Kamasi Washington
  

• ‟ Every time you learn a new language, your understanding of language overall grows, so every time I would learn new music, my understanding of music would grow because I was taken to an extreme in a different direction, and that was, in effect, carrying over into what I do.

  - Kamasi Washington
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ All forms are complex once you get to a really high level, and jazz and hip-hop are so connected. In hip-hop, you sample, while in jazz, you take Broadway tunes and turn them into something different. They're both forms that repurpose other forms of music.

  - Kamasi Washington
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ Whenever my dad wasn't practicing, he was listening to music. He had an amazing jazz collection, and my mom had stuff like Chaka Khan to help balance it out.

  - Kamasi Washington
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ 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!

  - Kamasi Washington
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ When you're making music, you're creeping up on your heart and pouring it out into something.

  - Kamasi Washington
  

• ‟ As musicians, we have one of the greatest tools of bringing people together in music.

  - Kamasi Washington
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ 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.

  - Kamasi Washington
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ I went to a music academy in Los Angeles, and some friends started playing me Ravel and Prokofiev, who I liked, but what really blew me away was 'The Rite of Spring.' That's what made me get interested in classical music for real and want to study it.

  - Kamasi Washington