Aaron Walter (2:47)

Learn more@wix.com Studio Kamasi Washington welcome to Design Better.

Kamasi Washington (2:54)

Hey thanks for having me.

Aaron Walter (2:55)

I am such a huge fan of your work and excited to talk to you. It's always fun to start from the beginning to find someone's origin story before getting in deep about the work. So you Were born into a pretty musical family. Your dad, Ricky Washington, is a professional saxophone and flute player. Also taught music. Teaches music, perhaps still. And your mom was a high school chemistry teacher. Could you maybe paint a picture for us of the Washington household and, like, the mid-80s, what was that like?

Kamasi Washington (3:27)

Yeah, I mean, my mom is a science teacher, but she actually plays flute, too. And my grandma played violin and great grandfather played saxophone. My uncle played organ. Lulu, that's a dancer. Older brother played piano, too. My younger sister, she wasn't born in the 80s, but she's an amazing painter as well. And I have another sister that's a great designer. She even directed one of the videos from the album. So, yeah, I had a very, like, artistic household, and music was definitely one of the big centerpieces of that. And my father amongst, you know, my generation, was definitely the driving force of that. He's a musician and he was a music teacher. He was just someone that really believed in honing your creativity the way you were going to do it. It was a situation where, like, you know, if I was practicing, I was cool, but if I was watching tv, Pops was. He was going to be on my head, you know.

Eli Woolery (4:19)

So I read a couple different versions of this, but somewhere between the ages of 2 and 3, maybe you already started. You got your drum set. You already started with your drum set. And just reading that, man, this guy must be a prodigy. But from one of the interviews I was listening to, you said your brother, one of your brothers, was actually considered the prodigy. And sort of maybe it took some of the pressure off you and you could kind of get your own thing going. Is that true?

Kamasi Washington (4:40)

Yeah, I had an older brother that was like a. More of a prodigy. I mean, we all played music young, but he was good young, you know, and so, yeah, like, he kind of took a lot of that attention, you know, because, you know, when you're coming from a musical family, there can be some expectations and things like that. So I kind of got to just be a kid that was playing music. Kind of like, music was kind of just fun for me while all those kind of peering eyes, like, how good are you gonna be when you're five? He kind of caught that. And so, you know, what ended up happening is music kind of stayed in a very positive energy for me. You know, there was no pressure with it, you know, until I got a little older.

Aaron Walter (5:22)

So you've got a creative, stimulating environment as you're growing up. You've got some guidance and structure, but it's not too much pressure. And then you get this great opportunity to go to a high school in la. The Academy of Music of Alexander Hamilton High School. That seems like a pretty unique educational experience. Like my son, he's a freshman right now, he's studying AP Gov and taking kind of the standard stuff. But you got to focus on music. Talk to us about what that experience was like and how you changed in those four years as a high schooler.

Kamasi Washington (5:58)

Yeah, it was great. You know there were all different types of ensembles. So I was in jazz band, orchestra, wind ensemble, electronic music, piano theory. You know we had like beautiful nine foot grand Steinway pianos. There was a whole kind of music school within the school. So there was like a music school, humanity school and then like just a regular public school. There were a lot of resources and they did a really great job of giving you a very well rounded musical education pretty early. You know, I was learning different styles of music. They were very good about teaching you about like etiquette, being on time, you know, you learn how to read and be professional, you know, do all these types of things at the same time. I was at Hamilton, my father's teacher, Reggie Andrews, he had a band called Multischool Jazz Man. So after leaving my music high school would go to another music after school situation with a lot of the best young musicians around the city. And that really was like, I mean as good as Hamilton was and Hamilton was great, there were a lot of great musicians and I was inspired by a lot of those kids. When I went to multi school and I heard people like Isaac Smith and Terrace Martin and Stephen Bruner and Ronald Bruner Jr. And Ryan Porter, I was just completely blown away. So I had a really great musical education, you know, my formative years.

Aaron Walter (7:18)

What did that do for your confidence, your motivation like to create a drive in you, did that change the way that you were approaching music?

Kamasi Washington (7:29)

Yeah, I actually like when I joined the multi school jazz band, I had a moment where we played the Playboy Jazz Festival and I was serious about music, but I was lightly serious. You know those other kids in that band, they were serious, serious. And Reggie Andrews, he gave me a solo. I didn't think I had a solo. We played the Playboy Jazz Festival. 17,000 people when going into it, I didn't think I had a solo. And I'll never forget we were playing Red Clay by Freddie Hubbard and He pointed to 8 and I turned around, he's not talking to me, is he?

Aaron Walter (8:01)

So someone standing behind me.

Kamasi Washington (8:05)

And I did my best but I just really wasn't Happy with where I was because I loved music. And in that moment, I didn't like the way I felt. And I was like, you might really share real hard this summer. And that kind of started me on this path of, like, growth. And, like, music is an interesting thing. It's like, the better you get, the more you want to get better. As you get better, the desire to get even better than that grows. And the more you get out of the music, the more fun music becomes and the more it really just becomes food for your soul, you know? I remember I came back after that summer. I had grown a lot. And I remember everybody, like, a little bit shocked. They're like, what happened? And I was like, oh, man, I don't want to get embarrassed no more.

Aaron Walter (8:44)

Yeah, that is fascinating. That, like, shame or embarrassment can be a motivator. Do you know Julian Lodge, that's guitarist?

Kamasi Washington (8:52)

Oh, yeah.

Aaron Walter (8:53)

He had the same thing, same story, like, when he was a kid, like, going in for lessons, he had a couple moments where he was embarrassed, where, you know, his teacher would ask him if he knew, like, a diminished chord or a certain scale or something, and he's like, I don't know. And I don't ever want to have that feeling again that I don't know. And it just lit a fire under him.

Kamasi Washington (9:15)

Yeah. I mean, music, it could be the love of your life, but it can also break your heart because you end up loving it so much. You always want the good for them. And it wasn't that I wasn't doing bad for my age. I think that's the important thing about, like, kids kind of seeing that. Kids, like, you know, I was listening to the record, but those are, like, adults and people that. They felt kind of distant. When you hear somebody your age kind of making the music the way you wish you can make it, this was inspiring for me. I don't know if it was shame, but it was more like it kind of gave me a clear perspective on where I was and where I wanted to be. You know, you can. You can kind of lie to yourself. Like, if you're kind of serious, but you're around a bunch of people that are halfway serious, then you think you're doing good, but then you get around some kids, like, really, really, really on it, you know, and you kind of know, oh, man, I need to. I need to practice.

Eli Woolery (10:06)

Mossy, one of the first big artists that he toured with was Snoop Dogg. I'm a big fan of his, so my kids, his stuff. I'm just curious, like, you speak to your love of music and just rewinding earlier in your childhood, it sounded like artists like Snoop were a big influence. And there was also a danger, like in South Central la, where I believe you grew up, that you might get drawn into a different track, you know, kind of more of a gang track. And from one interview I listened to, he said that that can happen at a really young age. But it was really in part your love of music that kind of kept you away from that. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that.

Kamasi Washington (10:41)

Yeah, I mean, obviously when I started playing with Stoop, I was much older. And the reality is that a lot of times that path is something that you get kind of swept into pretty young, you know, like elementary school. You know, people don't realize, you know, these are just kids, and I don't really realize what they're getting into, you know, until they get a little older. And then by the time you're a little older, you're kind of stuck. And so, yeah, for me, you know, developing a love for music so early, it gave me a focus. You know, I also had other, like, educators, non musical educators when I was young who really just kind of pointed out the pitfalls of the society that I was living in and how there were traps and how to not fall into those traps. So on the subconscious level had music and on the conscious level had people going like, hey, look, look at that, look at that, look at that, look at that. I'm like, oh. Oh, yeah. And so when I got a little older, you know, I was already fully on. On my path. But before music is, you know, kind of when I discovered NWA and Dre and then a little later, Snoop, you know, I never lost my love for that style, for that music, you know, for that feel, that G funk, you know, that whole thing. And when I was a young musician, you know, I definitely gravitated more towards music that was technically difficult. You know, young musicians, that's what you kind of gravitate to. I listened to, like, to Snoop and people like that, but I was studying Charlie Parker, you know, John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, you know, that kind of stuff. Kenny Garrett. And then after high school, Terrace Martin started working with Snoop and he wanted to take a band out. And I remember when I first started playing with Snoop, you know, I would hear the music they want to play, and it was. It seemed like it was simple, but, you know, there's different facets to music. There's technical side, but then there's also just kind of what you playing. And then there's how you play it. And that's kind of what I learned with Snoop. And, you know, I learned about feel. I learned about phrasing. I learned about blending these real subtle things. But that's what that music is really all about. There was no hard lines to learn. It was about, like, how much could you make this little simple line groove? How well could you phrase together with the other horn players? How well could you blend? How well could you make what you're playing sound like it was meant to be there? Because a lot of times we had to make up our part because there was no horn part in the music. So we had to make up our part and make it sound like it was integral part.

Aaron Walter (13:07)

You know, one of your superpowers is that you're just omnivorous with music. Like, you eat it all and you process it all, and you're, you know, sort of like, pulling the best of your favorite things together. I found it super interesting that when you went off to college at UCLA that you studied ethnomusicology, you know, what might have happened is either a, you know, go gig and start a professional path right away, or b, go deeper into theory. But you took a different path with ethnomusicology. I wonder if you could talk about why that and how that influences you today.

Kamasi Washington (13:46)

When I went to school, one, you know, I was looking to learn. I understood the reality of beyond wanting to, like, you know, kind of teach at, like, a high school or junior high school level. My musical degree was just a piece of paper, you know, So I really school to learn, you know, and so when I went to ucla, I was looking at both programs, and I realized that, like, there was so much music in the ethnic music hall department that I was just completely unaware of. I had no idea anything about that. And I was already kind of studying a lot of what was going online in the regular music school. And the reason why I picked UCLA also was that they were just very willing to let me kind of make my own curriculum in a way. I took classes from the music department and also took classes that were not musical that expanded my line. You know, I took calculus, and I took science classes, and I took a lot of history classes, philosophy classes, and I was really there to just expand my line. And I was at the same time, still working professionally. And so, like, part of me wish I would have taken school a little bit more seriously. But I did learn a lot. And I think that all the things that I learned, I've tried to use them in Life. I try to look at me getting some tools I can use that I can add, whether they be different concepts of how to make music, different scales, different ways of thinking about what music is, different ways of thinking about what life is, and learning about history and understanding the plight of humanity. You know, that adds to the fabric of who you are, which adds to the music. You know, I was definitely had that young musician want to just get out there and get and go, you know, And I did miss a lot of school while I was at ucla. You know, I was touring a lot with Snoop and other people, so I was missing class and stuff like that. But I did kind of approach school as like a place for me to learn, you know, more than a place to get a degree.

Eli Woolery (15:40)

Being on tour with Snoop Dogg is not a bad excuse. I think I let any of my.

Kamasi Washington (15:43)

Students go, oh, yeah, I use Snoop. Even when I wasn't touring with Snoop, he was my regular excuse. I had to miss class. I was like, I got. I got the highest percentage chance that this teacher is going to care about me.

Aaron Walter (15:58)

That's great. All of those things you just mentioned, too, like sociology, philosophy, and so forth. I feel like it's in your music and it's in your approach to your music. And it's often these adjacencies. You know, people super focused on a craft. If it's design or painting or music, they just focus on that thing solely and they lose those adjacencies, which are just rich sources for creativity.

Kamasi Washington (16:24)

Yeah, I mean, most of what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to communicate something. You know, to me, music is a great communication tool. I think most of the music that we love, you love it because it's saying something to you on some level. Some people have the ability to marvel at someone's just kind of what they're playing. But most people, connection to music is something a little bit more, you know. And to me, you know, you don't have to really pick one or the other, But I do think that if I had to pick one, I would pick to be able to express something, to say something, to play something that is meaningful. And to me, all my technical ability and studies are kind of in service of that. I'm learning these scales, I'm learning the instrument. I'm studying harmony. I'm studying different scores and all these other things to try to interpret this kind of wall of possibilities that kind of lives inside of me that was given to me, basically. I think that's kind of the journey of Every musician is that you have this music in you, but you don't know how to get to it. Learn and study and practice to find different ways to get to the music that's kind of already in there.

Eli Woolery (17:35)

You talked before a little bit about the difference between creating your own music, that self expression you talk about, and then working with another group, whether that's a larger ensemble or someone like Snoop Dogg, where your own self expression is maybe a little subsumed to the job that you need to do for that particular band or artist. Can you talk a little bit about those two different modes of work and how you, you know, approach then?

Kamasi Washington (17:59)

Yeah, it's like sometimes you're the construction worker, sometimes you're the architect, you know, and most times you're both. And so for me, if I'm going to come and try to make music for someone else, I kind of take that seat. That's then about me kind of figuring out your vision and trying to figure out what you're trying to accomplish and trying to see where do I fit in to help make that happen. Whereas my own music is kind of about, like I said, searching within myself to find something. In the process of making music with other people, you end up searching within yourself as well, because they're like, oh, I need this kind of thing. So then you got to look inward and see, do I have one of those? Oh, yeah, I have one of these. There you go. Both things are beautiful because as much as I love making my own music, I love making beautiful music regardless, because mine is someone else's, you know, so if someone else has something beautiful to make and I can be a part of that, that's its own type of beauty. That's its own reward, and it feels good in its own way.

Aaron Walter (18:59)

You know, just building on that idea. There's something that happened from when you graduated UCLA up to 2015. I wonder if you could help us fill in the gap, because 2015 was a very big year for you. You contributed to Pimp A Butterfly, Kendrick Lamar, some great orchestration that's in that record. It's still to this day, like just such a beautiful piece. And same year, you dropped a major record of your own, the epic. What happened in that? 10 years from your touring with Snoop, you're playing with different people. You're learning at ucla, and then all of a sudden, you kind of come out fully baked in 2015 that you're Force.

Kamasi Washington (19:47)

Well, I mean, the reality is that I was cooking the whole time.

Aaron Walter (19:51)

Okay, all right.

Kamasi Washington (19:52)

We were in the kitchen the whole time, you know, when I was playing with Snoop and I was playing with Lauryn Hill and Rafael Sadiq and Chaka Khan, you know, I would go out and play with them and I would come home and we always had a gig somewhere to go play. We would literally come off the road, just play for 60,000 people, and then go from the airport straight to a gig to play with 60 people.

Aaron Walter (20:16)

That's amazing.

Kamasi Washington (20:17)

So that want to bring to life the music that I had inside of me was always there, and I was always trying to do that. And so basically what happened is, you know, I was playing for a lot of different people. Not just the famous people, like non famous people too. It was. We were talking about that the other day, like, how many songs you think you learned? It's like, man, it got to be hundreds of thousands because I was just playing so many different people and doing so much stuff, you know? You know, I grew up with a kind of a brotherhood of musicians. Brotherhood and sisterhood of musicians. And we all were fortunate to be in demand. We're all gigs with legends and people that we grew up idolizing. But we also valued each other's contribution to music. It was like, as much as I love playing with Shaka, I also love playing with Patrice. You know, I love playing with Stanley Clark, I love playing with Dundicat, and I love playing with Brandon Coleman and Ryan Porter and Miles Mosley and Ronald Bruno Jr. And Tony Austin and all those guys and Cameron Graves. And so we would always make time for each other. It would be difficult sometimes because we'd be working and we had to make a living, we had to eat, we had to pay rent, you know, all those types of things. But whenever we could, we come together and we'd make our music. A lot of us also are second generation musicians. What you get to around actually 2010 was this feeling that the music industry, whatever the industry that we're working for, seems to be interested in us as sidemen, meaning, like, they want us to help them for other people. But it didn't really feel like there was a lot of interest in the music that we ourselves were making. No one was saying, like, all right, now you go make your record. It was like, all right, here's another artist for you to make music with or for. And it was just like, kind of like that's what we were doing. And I think amongst all of us, it wasn't just me. We had this feeling that, like, you know, my dad used to always tell me stories about musicians and music that he and his friends would make, and he would tell these stories, and it would sound so amazing. You know, he'd tell us about guys that would just sound so good. And they were doing this and that and that. And I would say, man, is there a record or album or something like that? And he's like, nope, we didn't make an album. And we all kind of got to this place where we were like, you know what? If nothing else, we should just document what we're doing right now. Even if it doesn't ever go nowhere, let's just make it. Let's just make some music. So we started talking about doing that myself, Miles Mosley, Thundercat, Stephen Brenner, who wasn't known at this point. You know, we know how dope he was. We all started talking about this. And so I was making a little bit money with Snoop, and I actually made a little recording studio on my dad's house, his garage. Like, a lot of the Golden Age of Apocalypse. Donna Cast first album, recorded a lot of that there. So I recorded some stuff there, and we just started recording ourselves. We just got into this thing of like, oh, let's document where we're at right now. And so Stephen made that record. Flying Lows is something that we had met years and years and years ago, and we saw his trajectory. He was doing really well, and he and Steven started working together. And when Stephen dropped Golden Age of Apocalypse, it did great. And that really lit a fire in us. It was like, man, maybe people, even though it doesn't seem like anyone wants to put our music out, the fans love this music. And we kind of knew that already because we would play gigs all over LA and we would play all different types of places, and people loved the music they were making. There was no way for us to get this music outside of Los Angeles, inside of Los Angeles, but we couldn't get it outside of Los Angeles. And so we all decided that we were going to just put everybody else's music that we were working on getting paused, and we were just going to focus on our own music. And all of us are going to make a record, all of us. Because look. Look what Thundercat just did. Look at what Robert Glasper is doing. The movement was starting to move, and we felt like we had something to add to that. And so we all got together. And at that moment, I was. I was also working with Lotus on some of his music, and he expressed an interest in maybe me doing a record for Brain Theater. And I thought about making a Record in my home studio. But I felt like I wanted to go and, like, record. Cause in my home studio, it was on me. Like, if the record. If one of the mic wasn't working, I had to go fix it. Right, Right. Wanted something done. I had to get the piano tuned, and I wanted to go and just, like, record and just only focus on music. So we. We rented a studio together, and we was in there, and it was like a music sweatshop. And for a whole month, we just recorded as much music as we could because we just felt like, if nothing else, I want to be able to. If I tell. If I tell my kids that we sounded good back in the day. That's playful. Here's the truth. We did. I know I'm old now, but look, so after that, you know, I made that record and took a lotus and flying lotus, and he liked it. He believed in the vision. And then it was just kind of was sitting there, I guess, waiting for fate to give me the right time to put it out, you know, because I finished the record in 2013 sitting on it. Hardest thing in the world to do, because I believe it was just, you know, God, it was waiting for the right moment, for the momentum of the music scene to be right for that record. And so 2015 happened, and I really feel like Kendrick turned a musical page for everybody. And when he turned that page, you know, I was like, I just went ahead and slipped my name on. On in there, and it was beautiful, you know, and. And we've been able to, like, really be blessed, to be able to share the music that's in our heart, you know, that's a real blessing. You know, I don't think. You know, there's a time where I didn't really think that was going to be my reality. You know, I thought that I would make good music, but I probably would only get to share the music I made for other people. You know, having the opportunity to then share my own music and have people understand it, relate to it, love it. It's a very big blessing. Yeah, the epic came out, and it just felt like it was connecting with the people.

Eli Woolery (26:43)

Wanted to ask you quickly about improvisation versus orchestrating a piece. And as designers, we often we lean on improv in instances where we're brainstorming new ideas, ideating on. On ideas. And we had a guest a while back, John Cleese from Monty Python, who has this idea of open versus closed modes of thinking. And when you're open, it's sort of more improvisational. You're trying things. You're trying all these different things to see what works. And then the close mode, you go and execute on it. And I'm wondering if there's any parallels in your work where there's sort of more of an improvisational phase and then you move to a more structured phase, or maybe it's something completely different.

Kamasi Washington (27:26)

Yeah, there's always improvisation. There's always space for the moment, you know, because to me, the music always has the final say. Musicians that I grew up playing with, all of us, we kind of all have that philosophy of, like, if something happens in a moment that's not on the page, that's beautiful, that supersedes the written music, no matter what. But I will say that when we're making an album, in general, there's more of a vision for the songs we get in the studio. I have a vision for the song. Now, someone could play something and change that vision. But I do come in with a vision, you know, I come in with an idea of something that I want to get to, you know? But when we play live, I deliberately go, let's try to explore all the possibilities. Let's just go to all the different places. You know, it's almost like trying everything on the menu. You know, you go to a restaurant that's known for the, you know, whatever for the burgers, and you had the burger. So now you want to like, okay, now let's try all the other stuff on the menu and just see what's what. We treat each song like that each night. And so, you know, for me, that's kind of like our version of that, because we always improvise. That's part of the culture of jazz, you know, coming in, but recording versus live. And when we play live, that's when we're exploring all the possibilities we're recording. That's when we're trying to realize a vision. And they're both valid and they're both important.

Aaron Walter (28:57)

One thing that I'm really struck by in all of your work is there's a few things. There's a great deal of layering. There's complexity, but it doesn't feel complex for the sake of being complex. There's a lot of pieces to it. There's a lot of depth and the vision in the epic. And your new record, Peerless Movement, it comes through very well. But I'm always struck by how you are generous with, you know, the musicians with you. And last year, I saw Herbie Hancock perform in South Carolina, in Greenville, and I was Blown away by, you know, here's a legend on stage with super talented people, and he'd give them, like, as much time as they wanted to build something. He had a vision and they had some sort of, like, agreement, but he was going to give people as much space as they needed to build something, and then that would come back around into Herbie's vision, his orbit, whatever. How did you think about that when you're recording the Epic? Because that seemed like it had, like, lots of structure and clarity. Was it also open to collaborators, visions as well?

Kamasi Washington (30:10)

Yeah. I have a place that I want the music to go, but I have no ego involved in it. So it's not like where I want the music to go is where it should go. And none of the musicians I play with approach to music with any ego. We all check our ego at the door. And so what happens is, you know, if it's my record was, whatever my music that we're playing, then obviously I've spent more time with it. So I'm going to come in with a clearer vision for the music than anyone else. So with my vision that I have for it, you know, a lot of times is the one that we end up kind of going with. But, like, there's a song called the Rhythm Changes and we recorded it on the Epic, but before we recorded on Epic, I recorded it at my house. So when I wrote that song, I wrote it with a bass line. It was like. It was like, you know. Yeah, it was. There was a rhythm. It had a little bit of a Latin and kind of almost feel to it. So I wrote that down and I gave it to Thundercat and Thunder Cat looked at it and he went. And then Ronald came in with a drum beat and it was like, that is not what I wrote, but it's better than what I wrote. And so that's what we're going to do. So what happens is, I think with most musicians that really are kind of putting the music first is I want the best musical experience that we can have. And so I'm playing with these amazing, great musicians. It wouldn't make any sense for me to not give the listener an opportunity to hear them make music. I look at it like more like that. It's just like, well, this is just what makes sense. Brandon Coleman up here playing piano. I got to give him some space to play all this wonderful music he has in him. I try to offer up the best musical experience. I understand. I'm going to make room for myself. It's going to be A time and a place for me to offer up something, for sure. But I'd rather give two offerings and then Brandon also be able to give an offering. Then I give three offerings, and he doesn't get to give in. That doesn't serve the music. The music is better served. But two offerings for me and one for him. It's better served that way. The music is better.

Aaron Walter (32:40)

You've talked about the experience working On Top of Butterfly with Kendrick Lamar, and it seems like it's maybe similar and different at the same time, that he's, like, very detail oriented, focused, and he wants to be involved or witnessing kind of like what contributions are going to come into the record. Could you just talk a little bit about what that process feels like comparatively?

Kamasi Washington (33:03)

Yeah, his process, it's equally open. It seems like he gives space to anyone that he's working with to give whatever they feel like the music needs, and he takes it all in, and then he carves out what he needs, what he wants for that, and in that, he's a master at getting the best of whatever you give him. You know, most producers I work with, people all work with artists, and you gave them seven diamonds, and you only use two of them, you know, and them two that he used, you kind of snuck those two in there, you know, everybody doesn't always perceive the beautiful things, you know, and so Kendrick is a master at perceiving those things and finding a way to implement them while maintaining his vision, you know, And a lot of times, at least from my perspective, you know, like, he. And, you know, soundway chairs, like, they have a vision that's clearer to them than it is to like to me, you know. And so when I work with Kendrick, you know, I've learned to just to give him the full pie, you know, here's everything I'm hearing. And then he's a master at taking the parts that I gave him that work with what he's going for, you know, and that's kind of his approach.

Eli Woolery (34:28)

Wanted to ask you about different modes of creativity and going to start in a kind of a strange place. But the video game Street Fighter, and I heard you talking on this other show about playing Street Fighter. I grew up with that, too. I don't play so much anymore, but I dropped endless quarters into an arcade with friends, played Street Fighter, and I was frankly terrible at it. You know, I'd use the sumo wrestler guy often with like, the slapping hand motion. That was like my good. But you talked about how it's not difficult for you to Focus on something. If it's something you love doing, you will focus, whether that's a game, like a Street Fighter game or music, like practicing endless hours as music. And I think a lot of the people that we talk to that are very creative oftentimes maybe have ADHD diagnosed or undiagnosed, and may have trouble focusing on certain things, but can focus very well on others. Yeah, I'm just curious how that focus has affected the way that you approach your own creativity.

Kamasi Washington (35:20)

I definitely have trouble focusing, you know, I probably have trouble breaking my focus. You know, the walls could be falling down. Oh, I could be on fire. And I'm, you know, I get lost in things easily. My creative process is a very explorative one. I have songs that sometimes I sit with for years until I find that one thing about it. Like there's this song called Journey that I have for years I had the whole song. I just couldn't figure out what the drums are supposed to do. And my studio, especially when I was younger, like the studio had at my dad's house, it was a bit of a, you know, organized chaos, you know, and people used to laugh because like I just had these post it notes. I used to write songs on these post it notes and like that song set on a posted note for years. And a lot of people liked it. And I was like, yeah, I like it. I just don't know. I don't know rhythmically what it's supposed to do. I was just playing on around the piano and Miles Moley, bass player, jumped on the drums and randomly just played the perfect rhythm for that song. Oh, there it is. Now you go from a post it note to manuscript paper and off you go to the bandstand. I can move fast if I need to. I have a deadline or something like that. But I'm confers. I. I have a bunch of songs like, you know, this book here full of songs that I'm just fiddling with. I kind of go like that. You know, I'll write a song and then I write another song tomorrow and I might learn something that I go back to that song I wrote three days ago, mess around with it. That's kind of my process. It's my strength and my weakness because I can get sidetracked on something and get too focused on that drop a week and not even realize what happened to it.

Aaron Walter (37:03)

You know, I wanted to talk about maybe a different direction. So writing a song from scratch and finding these pieces and assembling that versus discovering something that is fascinating and reimagining that Claire de Lune. Actually your version of it came up in a prior episode with the founder of Automattic, the company who makes WordPress. It's like 50% of the web runs on this platform and he's a jazz fan. And we started talking about that and he just went on and on about Claire Lune and how magical it is. Which is interesting because I too have that same connection to that song. I've already written it in my will. I told my wife this is the song I want played at my funeral. It's powerful. It's like a musical cathedral. There are some songs that are already just magnificent in their first imagining, and my understanding is that took a long time to build. Took years to build originally. But why revisit that song? What was it that attracted you to it? And tell us a little bit more. Take us into the process of reorchestrating it.

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Kamasi Washington (42:13)

In general, you know, for me, I'm a music kid. I love listening to music and from time to time I'll hear something in a song. You know, I just hear a song and I go, oh man, I'll just hear it. I'll be listening to the way it is and I'll hear another way it could be. And I curious. I'm interested. We did this this Way now with Claire de Loom. That is what happened. But I have a mentor. I had A mentor named Gerald Wilson. And, you know, we would talk about music a lot, and, you know, he loved Debussy, and he's always just talking about how soulful he was. He talked. So for those. Those romantic French composers were that idea, you know, that juxtaposition of kind of like this dude from the, you know, late 1800s, early 1900s, and French guy, probably with a puffy shirt, like, this is like a soulful person. I was looking for it. I was like, I wonder what Gerald meant by that. And I listening to that song, and I was like, man, this is. This is like. This is like the blues.

Aaron Walter (43:19)

Yeah.

Kamasi Washington (43:19)

You know what I mean? I heard it and I listened to it. I was like, man, we could play this song like that. So then it turns into, you know, just kind of range song. I was like, man, but after the Henstro, you know, I was like, you know, instead of playing the middle of the song as an intro, you know, so, like, we. We played a song up to one point, and the intro was at the breaking point. You know what I mean? So that was just me wanting to give a nod to the original. And then when we started playing it, it was like, man, I just had this vision of, like, this beautiful celestial being coming down to earth and kind of meeting all these soulful people. I'm lucky that I grew up with musicians that I've known my whole life. And so usually when I have an idea, they just immediately understand it. And so when I said we're gonna play this classical song, like, it's just straight soul, you know, they, oh, okay. You know, I rolled out some of the parts, and I, you know, I was. Kind of showed them what I was thinking, but they kind of got it straight away.

Aaron Walter (44:25)

I would love to talk about spirituality with you. Every time I listen to any of your work, that's the feeling I have is like some spiritual connection. I don't know if that's what you're telling me when I listen to your music, but I feel like Claire Lune is one example, but there's so many other. Like, Truth is another song where I feel like you want to show us something. Like you want to show us something that's bigger than us, and I want to know what that is. Like, what. What are you showing us? And where does that come from?

Kamasi Washington (44:56)

That's hard to answer. I do truly believe that this life, who we are, what I am, what we are, is more than just flesh and bone. You know, I do feel like we. We have spirits and, like, we're spiritual beings. And that's why music affects us in the way it does, because it's a medium that really kind of mixes those two levels of reality. And that's why, you know, music has the power it has, you know, over. It's kind of inexplicable. It's hard to explain why you love a song. It's really hard. Even if you're, you know, the greatest musical theorist ever, it's hard to really explain what makes a good song a good song. And I think that it is putting a piece of who you are. And I think that it's possible in any form. It's possible in a poem, it's possible in a painting. It's possible in a clay pot. You know, it's possible. And some food that you make, you can put a piece of that deeper self of who you are, that other part of yourself. Not that your body is not yourself, but there's another part of yourself that we can't see. And if you put that into what you're doing, it speaks to people. I feel like there's something in all of us that wants a connection on that level. When I go see a Rembrandt painting, I feel it. There's something else in that thing, you know, or, you know, I can go and eat someone's food and go like, man, you. This is, you know, you really putting your soul into it. And so when I first started playing music, first thing my dad did, like, the very first thing he did was he took me to my uncle's church and was like, this is where we're going to learn how to play music. When I really started really playing saxophone, he was like, let's go here and let's go play. And when I was playing there, all that music was made for some greater purpose. So my original foundation in music kind of comes from there. You know, it was like, we're doing this to praise God. And it was like, oh, wow, okay. And you could feel it. I used to play this church. There was this lady that she used to sit in the back of the church. She wouldn't join the choir if we played and sang good enough. She would catch the spirit and sing over the whole choir and the whole band with our speakers and everything, and just bring everybody to tears. But we had to get her there. As you start to play music, when you start tapping into that, you start tapping into your spirit, start tapping into your soul, we start tapping into something that's more than what, you know, we see. It just feels good. It's the best music. It just really is. And that's the reason why it just feels good to play music that way. It's the music I love the most, you know? And so whenever I make music, I'm usually trying to get there. And there's different ways, different paths, different ways, different avenues. And I love trying new paths and new ways to get there, but I'm always trying to get there for no other reason. Then I just. It feels good. It feels good over there.

Aaron Walter (48:20)

The video for Truth feels like a visual embodiment of the feeling of so much of your music. How much of that was you kind of directing that or was that a collaborative process? What was that like?

Kamasi Washington (48:38)

Oh, definitely collaborative process. Hazy Rojas is another one of those people that he puts his soul into what he does. You know, the idea of Truth is that this is a six part movement where the curse five Loomis. You play these five songs and the six part Truth, we're playing all five songs at the same time. It's kind of metaphor for just the reality that as much as it seems like we fight over dominance over each other, we fight for our place at the table, there's room for everybody. There's room for all of us, you know, and it was a very, like, serendipitous thing because when I brought that song to record, I. I told the musicians, told the guys in the band, like, like, what we're going to do. I'm like, okay. And so we. First thing we did was record the five songs separately. And never forget, like, after we record the fifth song, they're like, we gonna play all that together at the same time. But they didn't believe it. They didn't believe that these songs, these melodies could be played at the same time. Now that's perfect. That's just perfect. Because that is the whole point of this, is that we don't believe. I can let you be who you are and I can be who I am and we can be right up next to each other and it could be fine. I don't need to change you and you don't need to change me we can just be together and it's beautiful. Actually, not just fine, it's beautiful. It'll be beautiful. Us right next to each other, learning from each other, bouncing off each other, interacting with each other. You know, that was the idea of it. And so I want to give it that, like, almost another dimension by also having this idea be expressed in other mediums at the same time. So I had my sister Create paintings. Five paintings in the same way. Five paintings. And then she would combine those five paintings in a six painting. And then I asked H. Rojas to do the same thing with a video montage. He did short clips for each individual song, and then that culminated into him making it Video for Truth. You know, I just talked to him about what I thought about life in the world, what I thought about that peace. And he came up with a beautiful treatment. And, you know, A.J. and I, that's how we kind of usually work. I kind of really just kind of tell him what the music that I'm making like, what it means to me, and then he'll come up with a way of how to express that meaning, and then we'll shoot it, and then we'll kind of come together to kind of, like, figure out how to, like, you know, really get it to line up and really kind of be one thing, you know, and we both kind of. I think we hear music, we hear life. We have a good synergy and how we see things. But, no, he created that treatment and directed it, and we worked together, obviously, to get it to his final stage. But I'll say his work.

Eli Woolery (51:25)

Your dad plays a part in your newest album. And I remember hearing a story of growing up, you're a hip hop fan, and you first started realizing that they're sampling these jazz records, and your dad's got this big collection of records, and you actually start taking them and moving them into your own space, and you sort of. That music that was his had became yours in a certain way. And then now it feels. I don't know if full circle is the right way to phrase it, but now he's playing together with you on an album. How does it feel? It must be a pretty powerful moment.

Kamasi Washington (51:59)

Yeah, Yeah, I still got his records. Yeah. You know, my dad. Yeah, he was my teacher, and, you know, he was my access point for anything I wanted to do musically. So if I. There's a book I wanted, he probably already had it. There's an instrument I wanted to play. He probably had it. If, you know, there was something I couldn't understand in music, I could always go to him and he would. He would tell me what was going on. My dad made a decision when we were very young to focus more on teaching so that he could be home to raise us. He didn't want to go on the road and have us not have him around, you know, and so, you know, I remember being a kid and, you know, before all the famous people. My first role Model with him. And I remember I was just wish he would go out and play more, you know, I used to ask him all the time how you go play. Like I get up 6 o' clock in the morning, you know. And so Debbie came out the same year he retired. And so when I got my first tour, you know, and that was, that had been a dream for me to actually tour my own music. And I said, you want to come on tour with us? He said, yeah. And it was great for me. It was like a childhood dream for me to see him playing every night and really like doing his thing. He always makes cameos, something like that on my records. And you know, to have him be more featured on this last record was great, you know, and I'm always happy to, you know, to be able to have Pops be involved. And he's the reason why I'm musician. There's no other way to put it. I'm a big fan of, you know, sticking with the people that stuck with me, you know. And Pops has been there since day one, obviously, so it's great. And I love hearing him play and hearing his contribution. And it was funny because we were kids, you know, he's always yelling at us because we didn't sound good. And now, now he's playing with us, he don't yell at us no more.

Aaron Walter (53:47)

You can yell back, I guess. Yeah, that's great. You've talked about a number of the amazing people that you've worked with and there's a much longer list that we could go into. But I wonder if we could talk about just a couple people to see what you learned from them. One person I'm particularly curious about is Wayne Shorter. Because Wayne was just an amazing human being. There was a great documentary done on him recently. And so listeners, if you don't know much about Wayne Shorter and you want to just know a little bit about how people around him thought about him, go check it out, it's on Amazon Prime. You got to meet him in high school, is that right?

Kamasi Washington (54:28)

Yeah, first time I went shirt over in high school, he came down to that band, the multi school jazz band I told you about. Yeah, he came and he sat right next to me and literally like Wayne Shore was the reason why I want to play saxophone. Blake and Jazz Messengers was my favorite band in elementary school. And it was the version that had Wayne Shorter. That was my favorite version of that band. Shorter and Lee Morgan. I mean, I love obviously all the different variations of the band, but that one was just. That was my One, you know, I never forget he was sitting next to me and I was like, I gotta say something. I gotta say something. I gotta say something. I don't say. All I can think of is say. I was like, hey, man, were you and Lee Morgan friends? You guys sounded like you were friends, kind of. I didn't have a whole lot of opportunities to play with Wayne. I had a few, you know, I had that time played once for the Monk Institute's saxophone competition. I wasn't in the competition, but I played with him, with George Duke. I had a chance to play with his band. That should be for him. But I studied his music my whole life. And Wayne Shorter, to me is just like a guiding light into the endless possibilities of creativity. I think that's what anyway, Shorter fan kind of loves the most, is that Wayne just feels like he's always coming from the most honest place and he has such a creative spirit. He hears the notes that no one else would have. And he's so comfortable in that space, the uniquely Wayne Shorter space. And it's so beautiful to hear, you know, and it's so beautiful to see. And to me, what inspired me the most was just to be comfortable and being myself. Not to get too caught up into trying to be something that I think other people want me to be. To just be happy and to be grateful and to explore and to enjoy who I am. That's what I got the most lame. Probably more from listening to him in that documentary too. It's like. It was kind of like, very affirming. Yeah. When I got to really hear him talk about that stuff, I was like, oh, wow. I said, I thought, I thought. I thought you meant that. And even like just playing with his band and then, you know, when I played with this band, they were trying to pass on a lot of the things they learned from him to Terris. And I both played with him. I felt like, you know, I grew so much from that one experience, you know, and the few times that I did get a chance to play with him or next to him, felt like I got so much out of him. Even though they were short and they were. And they were far between, they had a meaningful and lasting effect on me.

Aaron Walter (57:15)

The last person I'll ask you about is Herbie Hancock, because he. I think he's a different type of guy. He was best friends with Wayne Shorter, also an LA guy. Presumably your paths cross semi regularly. He's been touring recently. What have you learned from your interactions with Herbie?

Kamasi Washington (57:34)

Yes, I've had more Opportunities to play music with Herbie. I feel like the thing I learned from Herbie, it's a similar thing. Like I told him all the time. I told him that my song yesterday. I feel like Herbie has his own harmony that God set aside just for him and nobody else can tap into it but him. As many people try to copy Herbie Hancock and they learn his solos and they try to play like him, there is a place that only he can get to. And the most kind of profound lesson that I find that I'm able to grasp for some reason, more like holy, when I get a chance to play with them, is that there is no wrong notes, there is no wrong place. There's just different places and music. And that's a very powerful state of mind to be in. If you can get yourself into that state of mind, then none of the possibilities are closed off to you. And that is how you get to those uniquely, you uniquely, you know, personal spaces that they seem to just live in. It's like they seem to just live in these spaces that's like, man, no one else plays that. How do you get there all the time? I think it comes from that feeling of, like, I can go anywhere, I can do anything. I can play anything I want over this court, but what note do I want to play? Do I want to play? Do I actually want to play? What not Am I actually compelled to play? What am I actually feeling? What do I actually want to do in this moment? It sounds simple, but it's very difficult, actually. But it's so beautiful and so fulfilling when you can get into that space, you know, with Herbie. I have more time with Herbie, and we did a tour together, like, we were doing shows together, like a tour in that sense. He was 80 years old, and I felt like he sounded better than he ever sounded.

Aaron Walter (59:30)

Totally.

Kamasi Washington (59:31)

Who is their best at 80? And I was like, wow, man, music, you really can keep growing in this. You really can keep doing this. Here he is. He's doing it. I'm looking at him. And as good as Herbie has been all his whole career, somehow, some way, he's even further now than he was then. It was super inspiring to hear it every night.

Eli Woolery (59:59)

Mossy. I'm not as much of a jazz aficionado as Aaron, but there are a few albums that I really love, and probably because they were introduced by my grandfather who played jazz piano. One is just the classic Duke Ellington and John Coltrane album back from the early 60s. And I kind of want to get my kids into more jazz music. They might not like that particular style. I'm certainly going to share your new music, but I'm just wondering if there's any artists right now that you're sharing with your kids or they're inspiring you that would make a good kind of, like, segue into these different realms of music.

Kamasi Washington (60:33)

You know, music is so much more related than we sometimes realize, you know, so, like, when I heard Art Blakely and Jazz Messages, it reminded me of nwa. It's just something about the energy of it. It just had that same feel, you know, and then, you know, then I was also listening to, like, Tribe Called Quest and stuff like that. And so they were sampling some of that stuff, and it was just a connection between that and that kind of, like, made it feel familiar to me. And then that was the start of my journey. And then from there, I learned this, and I'll start liking that. You know, it just kind of goes from there. I mean, my daughter actually started off really into, like, some pretty heavy stuff. Like, Eric Dolphy was her favorite. Nice. It was, like, two weeks old. We drove her mother crazy because she only wanted to listen to Eric Dolphy for, like, a year straight. But, you know, since then, she's kind of grown. What I kind of usually try to do is I listen to, like, whatever she's into, and then I just offer up things that I feel like are adjacent to that. At one point, she was, you know, really, really into Michael Jackson. So I started playing her some Weather Report and other stuff like that. I looked at what she was into, and it's just so. There's such a wide range. Jazz music has so much in there. And I would just play the music that I thought she would like, you know, based off the music that she already liked. And I found with her that as I just play music around and I mix it in with the stuff that she's listening to, it just makes it feel like it fits.

Aaron Walter (62:02)

Fantastic. Kumasi, it's been such a treat to talk to you. The new record is Fearless Movement. It's wonderful. It's a great record. I spent the whole morning just enjoying this, my living room. So thank you so much for being on design better.

Kamasi Washington (62:17)

Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me.

Unknown (62:33)

This episode was produced by Eli Woolery and me, Aaron Walter, with engineering and.

Aaron Walter (62:38)

Production support from Brian Paik of Pacific Audio. If you found this episode useful, we hope that you'll leave us a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to finer shows or simply drop a link to the show in your team slack channel designbetterpodcast.com it'll really help others discover the show. Until next time.