Can you imagine a night where Floating Points and the late Pharoah Sanders jam on acid at Ronnie Scott's? Here, Kamasi Washington's new album Fearless Movement it could be the finale of that evening. Inspired by the desire to celebrate life, the musician mixes jazz with rap, electronica and sweet cosmic melodies. He starts from his balancing acts on the sax, but goes further thanks to an all-star group of musicians that includes André 3000, Thundercat, George Clinton.
«Working at Prologue, one of the first tracks to see the light, the conviction arose that the music that was being born had a dance feeling”, he tells us. «So I thought: why not make an album that pays homage to the movement and the people who express themselves by dancing, rather than just listening to music? Yes, in short, why not make a… dance album? The others looked at me strangely, like: “Dance? Seriously?”. The thing is, I don't mean dance in the literal sense, I'm referring to the fact that improvised music and typical dance movement lead to something unknown. Either way, you don't know where you'll end up.”
If in the past the jazz musician's albums expressed “cosmic” and existential concepts, in Fearless Movement it celebrates the joy of exploring everyday life, with the idea of constantly moving bodies in the background. The change in perspective was also influenced by the birth of his daughter. «The album was born, I had just become a father, I felt that my life was changing in a profound way. Now there was another person at the center of things, no longer me. If before music was the most important thing to think about, now being a father was. When I look back on this transition I would say it was… what's the right word… it was worrying. I thought I would lose my talent now that music was no longer my main focus, although in the end that didn't happen.”
In Fearless Movement Washington continues to celebrate the rich tradition of black music in Los Angeles, connecting past and future accompanied by a kind of cosmic orchestra: in Get Lit puts George Clinton and rapper D Smoke in dialogue, younger than the Parliament and Funkadelic guru of about forty years, André 3000 plays the flute in Dream StateBJ the Chicago Kid is featured on the blues ballad TogetherCoast Contra in Asha the First. «Those guys are very strong. I saw them at the Hollywood Bowl where they were opening for Dave Chappelle. We chatted backstage and within a week we had finished recording the song. Nice to hear rap on music that isn't based on a loop.”
In Asha the First the saxophonist's daughter also appears. «She has always been very musical. For a long time she had the habit of playing the piano as soon as she got up. When she was 2 years old she just played with it, then she understood that by playing the same sequence of keys she would come out with the same melody, a kind of revelation. I recorded it to transform that game into a song and moreover the idea of movement that underlies the record is particularly significant for children: for them everything changes constantly, every day is different.”
Speaking of André 3000, the saxophonist recalls that «he came bringing with him a large bag of flutes. He showed them to us and meanwhile played absurd things, as if a different song could come out of each instrument, you know? Brandon Coleman said we should create something on the spot and that something became Dream State. The thing I like most about playing like this and doing it with these people is that we all become servants of the music. She pushes us, we follow her.”
Considered the godfather of the new intellectual jazz, today Kamasi Washington has another style that lies somewhere between the jams at Ronnie Scott's in Soho and the music of a club with “intelligent” programming. At the center is the determination to talk about change, both on a personal and musical level. «If we want to evolve and move forward, we must put what we have behind us. We cannot move forward and at the same time cling to what we have.”
The idea behind Fearless Movement is well represented by the very particular video of the single Prologue directed by the Spanish AG Rojas, the story of an individual who makes a change that transcends life itself. And he does it, needless to say, among people who dance. «If I put a piece called Prologue at the end of the album is because I believe that often the beginning of something represents the end of something else. You can't get where you need to go until you leave where you are behind. The beginning is also the end.”