Quotes from Kamasi Washington

If we all give our power to one person, that's what the world will be. If we all decide to make the world a beautiful place, it'll be a beautiful place.

I used to tell my friends, 'Art Blakey is way more gangster than Eazy-E!' I ended up getting my friends into jazz, and all of a sudden there was this little group of kids in the middle of South Central that were all into hard-bop.

At a certain point, when there's a barrier between you and what's right, eventually you have to decide you're not going to allow yourself to be subjugated.

Jazz is like a telescope, and a lot of other music is like a microscope.

When you're making music, you're creeping up on your heart and pouring it out into something.

I've known that about myself, that I've had two sides: one that's pretty tactical, down to earth, aware. There's also a really spacey side. But I realized they're kinda the same thing.

This precious thing of empathy and love and understanding is something we have to hold and appreciate and protect.

In a lot of ways, I feel like I'm just taking the music that comes to me and trying to make it as beautiful as I can. You can't really predict or control how people will receive that music.

The song 'Leroy and Lanisha' on my album 'The Epic' is really my homage to 'Linus and Lucy.'

As musicians, we have one of the greatest tools of bringing people together in music.

Even the greatest musicians, they only represent themselves. You represent who you are and what your experiences are and what you have in your heart, and it's the same for me. I represent who I am and what I've been through and what I'm bringing to the music.

American music comes from the same tree, but sometimes we get to these places in history where we forget where things come from, and they get compartmentalized.