Jazz Great Kamasi Washington Takes Pleasure in the Unexpected

As a jazz musician, Kamasi Washington knows how to let the unexpected moments carry his music forward. One came during the recording of his newest record, Fearless Movement, as the saxophonist and his bandmates were rehearsing a version of Astor Piazzolla's "Prologue," an old favorite from sets at the Los Angeles venue the Piano Bar.

"I was messing around with it with Cameron Graves, and randomly, Brandon Coleman walked in playing this drum and bass thing on his phone," he recalls. "And it was just like, 'Oh, this would be crazy!'"

The band went on to produce a frenetic, album-closing cover of the Argentinian composer's tune. Considered one of Argentina's greatest musicians and a major exponent of nuevo tango, Piazzolla's work was made famous by Wong Kar-Wai's 1997 romantic drama Happy Together about a volatile gay couple from Hong Kong stranded in Buenos Aires. Washington, whose records also erupt with bombast and grandeur, was similarly drawn in by the drama of the composer's work.

"His melody is so powerful; that's what kind of drew me to the song. It's just one of the most powerful melodies."

Washington's music has always felt larger than life. His albums rarely fall under an hour in length. At 83 minutes, Fearless Movement is actually his shortest full-length to date, dwarfed by the 173-minute The Epic from 2015 and its even longer follow-up, the 183-minute Heaven and Earth from 2018. His influence on popular music also looms large. In 2015, Kendrick Lamar recruited Washington to play on the rapper's seminal record To Pimp a Butterfly, which blended hip-hop with jazz and, in the process, garnered more mainstream attention for the genre than it had experienced in years.

Washington has fond memories of working on To Pimp a Butterfly, which remains celebrated ten years later. He had been invited to contribute to the record after showing The Epic to producer and colleague Terrace Martin, who was majorly involved in To Pimp a Butterfly's development. "When I heard what they were doing on that record, I was blown away. I'm like, 'Man, this is going to be a pretty revolutionary album.' It was just so powerful and so incredible, and I was really blessed to be a part of it."

He also partially credits the record for making The Epic more palatable to a broader audience. The record, which had been in production for years, was released on Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder label a few months after To Pimp a Butterfly. It became a critical hit, scoring an 8.6 from Pitchfork.

"I really do feel like when he came out with that album, it kind of opened the door a bit for me when I put out The Epic," he says. "I felt like it really revolutionized the idea of how creative you can be in a kind of popular space in music because behind that curtain, sometimes there's just a notion that you have to kind of really curtail how creative, how dense, how complicated you can have music be and have it still be able to reach the audiences. And I never really believed in that. We'd all made all our records, and we would constantly kind of sneak little gems into music. Because, you know, there was this idea that you can't put too much in. So we have to kind of sneak it in there. And Kendrick was just like, 'Nah, give me, give me the whole treasure chest!'"
That kitchen sink approach seems to have trickled down to Fearless Movement, a stylistic departure from previous releases. In addition to the tango of Piazzolla, the record fuses Washington's symphonically scaled, Coltrane-esque spiritual jazz sound with funk and hip-hop courtesy of an army of collaborators, among them bassist Thundercat, turntablist DJ Battlecat, rapper D Smoke, R&B vocalist BJ the Chicago Kid, and even the legendary funk master George Clinton.

Out of all these collaborators, it was André 3000, the former member of rap duo OutKast who recently turned to jazz himself as a flutist, that upended Washington's preconceptions the most. He ended up ditching the music he had prepared to show to his guest in favor of something both would make in the moment.

"It became very obvious that, like, we should just create something right now," he says. "To me, that's a very fun way to make music because then it's like every time is like an adventure, once you get used to it. It can be a little nerve-wracking sometimes. If you're not open and able to kind of relinquish the illusion of control, then that can be a little bit jarring. But that's kind of always how myself and the guys I grew up playing music with, we always kind of played that way."

"That's one of the fun things about playing live, too," he continues. "Each song is like its own little multiverse like the record is just kind of one life that this music could have lived. And then we go out and start playing live, and then we get to kind of explore some of the other possibilities of a song."

Kamasi Washington. 8 p.m. Thursday, February 13, at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; 786-468-2000; arshtcenter.org. Tickets cost $45 to $120.