Kamasi Washington Quotes

Guys like me and Ray Charles, when we was coming up through our days, country music and soul music was just a very thin line between the two.

Even the most jingoistic person would have to admit that even American cultural music comes from Europe. That's what classical music is, real European music.

The music we're playing now is based on my heritage, which is Russian, Romanian and Hungarian.

I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture.

New Orleans is like my blood; it's not going anywhere. And then I just take different things that I've learned over the years and add them to what I'm doing with the natural New Orleans sound.

Truth of the matter is, jazz is American music. And that doesn't mean bebop. Jazz is really about improvising. All the music that's been created in America has been pretty much improvised... Whether it's hillbilly or rock n' roll for blues, it's basically jazz music... It's basically about another way of hearing what comes out of America.

But an innovation, to grow organically from within, has to be based on an intact tradition, so our idea is to bring together musicians who represent all these traditions, in workshops, festivals, and concerts, to see how we can connect with each other in music.

I come from a pop background, but I'm also a Puerto Rican and I do feel this music. My approach to salsa is a humble one, and I defy anybody to prove that I'm faking it.

Unquestionably, our contemporary world of music is far richer, in a sense, than earlier periods, due to the historical and geographical extensions of culture to which I have referred.

Progressive music probably wouldn't even really exist if not for the people of the United States having picked up on it and nurtured it in the way they did. It really is an American form of music in the sense that it was nurtured here. So it belongs here. It has become part of the fabric of American musical culture.

I have a very musical family from my Scottish roots.

I think every once in a while country has lost its way, but found its way back. It's always going to drift away from the traditional side, but then find a way to return. There's room for all kinds of influences be it pop, blues, gospel or whatever. But I will always say that I think we need more traditional country music coming down the pike.

The difference between psychedelia and digitalia ages will seem like a smooth blending in years to come and will be a mere blip on the screen.

The whole path of American music has been so much about the recognition of stylistic diversity, and the recognition of the importance of music which was from one of the vernacular traditions.

I know that people think of me in terms of Latin music and that's wonderful, that's my heritage, that's who I am, but there's so much more to me and my music.

I love music, that it changes so much, but I also want to keep a bit of the country roots to make it country. I don't want to go too far away from it, or I would do pop music.

What is American music? The most satisfying answer I've come across is that it was a kind of natural comfort with the vernacular which is diverse and regional; it's not one particular set of sounds.

In the range of music that we play - roughly 300 years' worth-there really are more similarities than differences.

When I started to make music at the end of the '90s, I saw myself highly influenced by hip-hop and techno, but I wanted to apply these ideas to something from the local sound; something that had identity, that would say who we were and where we came from.

One very important aspect of our contemporary musical culture - some might say the supremely important aspect - is its extension in the historical and geographical senses to a degree unknown in the past.

I feel that, as a Puerto Rican and Latin American musician, a lot of the stuff that I write, even if I mean it or not, is gonna have some elements of that.

You literally cannot deny the fact that rock and roll was born because of blues, and blues is black man's music.

We're not here as a black band playing white string band music. You know, we play stuff in the Appalachians, we play stuff in the white community, but we really highlight the black community's music.

American music is always best when it comes from a mixture of things.

When I read about Gram Parsons' dream of this Cosmic American Music when I was in my late teens, that stuck with me: that idea, that ambition, to draw off the roots of music but take it somewhere fresh.