Grammy-nominated saxophonist and composer Kamasi Washington headlines Saturday night of the 49th Annual Atlanta Jazz Festival. Ahead of his set, WABE Arts & Culture Editor Sherri Daye Scott spoke with Washington about what’s feeding him creatively, from his late-night reading habits to the record collection curated by his five-year-old daughter.
Washington is one of the most distinctive forces in modern jazz. His catalog moves fluidly between jazz, hip-hop, soul and the cosmic. His 2015 debut, “The Epic,” a three-hour, triple-LP, won the inaugural American Music Prize. He arranged the horns on Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly”; scored the Netflix documentary “Becoming,” earning Emmy and Grammy nominations; and co-founded the supergroup Dinner Party with Robert Glasper, Terrace Martin and 9th Wonder.
He has a particular history with Atlanta. It was the first city he ever flew to for a gig, playing with poet and musician Kamau Daoud, a friend of his father’s. He estimates he has played Atlanta roughly 15 times since. When he’s in town, he said, he gravitates toward the city’s musicians, tapping friends like drummer and producer Lil John Roberts to find where the music is happening.
Comics and Khalil Gibran
When Washington is not writing or performing music, he is reading — broadly. He returns often to the Lebanese-American poet and philosopher Khalil Gibran. But lately, his most consistent companion has been “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; The Last Ronin II Re-Evolution HC,” a graphic novel.
Washington said the draw of comics and graphic novels is the same thing that draws him to music: the construction of worlds.
