QUOTES by Kamasi Washington
Find most favourite and famour Authors from A.A Milne to Zoe Kravitz.
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.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
We do have the power to kind of make this world what we want it to be. But we have to just choose to do it ourselves and not wait for someone else.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
It's either, like, 'Your album was the first jazz album I listened to,' or, like, 'My friend took me to this show, and I've never been to a jazz show before, but, man, I'm so happy I came. I can't wait to go home and see more.' And you can feel it in the crowd, too. You can see the groups of people that don't really know what to expect.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
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!
Quote by -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!
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
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.'
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
What fixes your spirit when Ferguson happens? When Trayvon Martin and those kind of things happen, they hurt your spirit; it hurts your heart and your soul. You need something to fix it.
Quote by -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.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
This precious thing of empathy and love and understanding is something we have to hold and appreciate and protect.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
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.'
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
'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.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
At a certain point, when there's a barrier between you and what's right, eventually you have to decide you're not going to allow yourself to be subjugated.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
The song 'Leroy and Lanisha' on my album 'The Epic' is really my homage to 'Linus and Lucy.'
Quote by -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.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
I've had experiences where people say, 'I hated jazz before I heard you guys!' I'm like, 'You didn't hate jazz before you heard us; you hated the idea of jazz.'
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
Fela Kuti blew my mind. His playing is very unorthodox, but I learned how to appreciate that.
Quote by -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.
Quote by -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.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
In the '80s, a lot of kids, if you were kind of bright, you got bussed to schools out of your community. So you wouldn't know the talented musicians who lived around the corner from you.
Quote by -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.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
When you bring multiple cultures together, there's a degree of push and pull.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
Every day we're here is an opportunity to do what we can to make the world right, to help someone close or far from us, to not get so hung up on what we can't do, and remember what we can.
Quote by -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.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
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.
Quote by -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.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
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.
Quote by -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.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
By the time I was about 15, I was out playing gigs and knew I was going to be a musician.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
We learned at a young age, with our dad, that even if you weren't doing something, you had to look like you were, or some hard labor was coming your way. That's the reason I started practicing music - when I was practicing, Pops left me alone.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
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!
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
I can't really worry about nuclear war any more than I can worry about the aliens coming.
Quote by -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.
Quote by -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.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
There's a deeper level of healing that needs to happen for the world in general. There's a mass of people who are broken.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
Hip-hop and jazz have always been intertwined. Even the G-funk thing. You listen to 'The Chronic,' there's flute solos and everything. It's always been there.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
A legacy is a lot of times determined by how people accept your music. And sometimes people's legacy starts late or starts early, or they last a long time or a short amount of time. As a musician, I've never taken an approach of wanting to try to control that because I don't think that I can.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
I've known that about myself, that I've had two sides: one that's pretty tactical, down to earth, aware. There's also a really spacey side. But I realized they're kinda the same thing.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
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.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
I have to always check back in with my imagination just to remember that I have this infinite potential, and I can do anything, and anything is possible.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
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.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
My dad was really into avant garde jazz: Archie Shepp, John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
My hope is that witnessing the beautiful harmony created by merging different musical melodies will help people realize the beauty in our own differences.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
Gerald Wilson was one of my mentors: he was in his nineties before he passed and, literally, every time I saw him, he'd be like, 'Man, Kamasi, I've got this new thing! Nobody ever heard anything like this before!' It's amazing hanging out with somebody that was born in 1918.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington
Becoming a musician is a strange thing. It's not all cupcakes and ice cream. You're trying to master an instrument, and you sometimes can't tell if you're getting better. You love it, but you also hate it.
Quote by -Kamasi Washington