Kamasi Washington Quotes

Ornette Coleman is a real musician. He takes all of the things he's thinking about in the world - which is a whole universe upon universe - and translates this into music.

Why can't jazz musicians just leave a melody alone?

Jazz vision for me is seeing my art in musical term. It offers me an visual expressions in an ever-changing musical palette.

I don't play the traditional Charlie Parker songs. But I do improvise and I do create with my instrument, and that to me is jazz. But there are people who use the word 'jazz' only in a traditional sense, and they would be offended by that, and that's fine.

The jazz chord substitutions in a country song... that was another thing that bent people's ears. I guess that my favorites are the unique ones. It's not how fast you play. It's that unique blending of different stuff I'm most proud of.

We're trying to do what Miles Davis would have wanted us to do, which is approach it as artists with his life as the canvas.

I wanted to make a jazz record. I didn't want it to be a standards record.

I don't know any jazz stuff. I don't know how to jam in that way. So jamming, for me, is writing a tune.

I always leaned toward free jazz... experimental jazz and progressive jazz. I feel like jazz is just part of the flavor and palette that you have as a musician to experiment with.

I just wanted to experiment with the bass, and my main influence from Jaco Pastorius inspired me to write music in a certain way.

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.

As time passed on, got to hear some players who were straight up funky, not just jazz. Nat Adderley, for instance - he's a funky trumpet player, so he was my man.

You can start from any source material, and you can approach it with a jazz ear, and then it will become a jazz moment.

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.

Jazz is an interesting music. It's one of the few forms of music where everyone that's performing the music has a creative stake in the music. In jazz, everyone's improvising, and everyone's creating at the same time.

Someone like Allan Holdsworth sometimes plays the wackiest things, but does it with panache, such taste.

There are two types of session guitar players. One reads and only plays what the 'dots' say. The other adds that something special and plays notes and solos you dream of. Big Jim Sullivan was such a player.

I try to make my flow sound like a John Coltrane solo.

Jazz is something that's constantly changing. Its sole purpose is to let people improvise, to let them solo differently each time they play. And that's always been what I like best.

Jazz musicians have always taken the standards of their time and performed them with a jazz sensibility.

I love Monk's song, 'Just a Gigolo.' It's probably a minor song for him, but whenever I hear a recording of him playing it, I'm mesmerized because Monk clearly loved pop music. He took it very seriously and made an amazing thing out of it.

Jack Bruce really showed me that you could go anywhere with a bass part, and as long as you stayed in time, as long as you held down the groove, the door was wide open.

I love playing jazz because I love the freedom you have to improvise. It has given me a feeling in my classical repertoire of creating the atmosphere of the here and now.

I remember playing Billy Cobham's 'Total Eclipse' for Snoop Dogg. I also played him Frank Zappa, 'Apostrophe.' And I played him 'Saint Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast.'

Somehow, you realize you can kind of do anything in music. You don't have to be good at a certain thing; you can just do whatever you want.