Kamasi Washington reflects on Heaven and Earth

Experience and imagination come together on Kamasi Washington’s second album, Heaven and Earth.

Tenor saxophonist Kamasi Washington has released his second solo album.

One of the sharpest minds in modern music belongs to Kamasi Washington, the tenor saxophonist whose star has ascended sharply since the release of his debut solo album in 2015. Aptly titled The Epic, it contains nearly three hours of music, received resounding critical applause from outlets such as Rolling Stone and online magazine Pitchfork, and won the inaugural American Music Prize in 2016.

What can explain the transition of a jazz musician from the margins towards the mainstream?

Perhaps it’s that Washington, 37, has been called on to blow his instrument and write arrangements for some of the most vital American hip-hop artists including Kendrick Lamar and Run the Jewels.

It helps, too, that his distinctive look — that impressive hairdo, combined with long, flowing coats — calls to mind two key figures in American musical culture.

One is Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the drummer and joint frontman in Philadelphia hip-hop group the Roots, which has worked on NBC television as Jimmy Fallon’s house band since 2009, in addition to recording a vast canon of some of the genre’s greatest works.

The other figure is pianist and composer Sun Ra, the redoubtable visionary who led the Sun Ra Arkestra, a jazz band known for its brightly coloured costumes and headwear during decades of public performances.

Image means little without the talent to back it up, though, and Washington has plenty of that. His arrangements on his double album Heaven and Earth, released today, are rarely less than engaging, if not outright electrifying, as heard on early singles Fists of Fury and Street Fighter Mas, which thrum with a dramatic urgency more readily associated with hip-hop than jazz.

The man himself is satisfied with these new works, too. “This album really feels like it came unadulterated,” he says. “I could pretty much do whatever I wanted to do, so in that sense it feels like my most complete sentence.”

The genesis of the album — which, at nearly 2½ hours, offers another lengthy excursion — dates back to May 2016. That year, Washington and his band were touring internationally in support of The Epic.

“It’s an interesting way to live life, where you’re in a different city every day, a different country every week; you’re seeing the world in this snapshot way,” Washington says. “A lot of the discussions we would have on the bus among myself and the guys in the band was why different people live different ways.”

For him, the title of his second solo album, Heaven and Earth, ­represents the two sides of how he views life: inwardly and outwardly.

“With this album, there’s that side of what we imagine the world to be and what we experience the world to be, and they’re interconnected with one another,” he says in a track-by-track analysis provided to The Australian. “So, Earth is how I’ve experienced life, and Heaven is how I’ve imagined it.”

The experience of travelling the world while sharing his music informed several of the songs, such as The Space Travelers Lullaby, which opens the second part of the album, Heaven.

“I wrote that song when I was in Europe on tour,” he says. “The bus stopped in this really remote place and I walked outside and there were thousands of stars in the sky. I live in LA, so I’m used to only seeing four stars, and to have this whole sea of light in the sky real­ly inspired me. I thought about the fact that one day we’re going to travel to all of these places.”

Later, while listening to the song in the studio, Washington thought back to that moment of stargazing wonder.

Kamasi Washington LP Heaven and Earth.

“I realised that the reason why I experience life as being this never-ending struggle is because I imagine it being this place of endless possibilities, and our potential being endless,” he says. “I know that about my personality, that I relish in my struggles, because I know I have the potential to overcome them. That’s why I decided to make the album about those two ideas: how I imagine the world and how I experience it, and their connection.”

Art can be funny like that: sometimes the creator thinks they have a firm grasp on the ideas behind a piece while making it, only to change their mind once they step back and see the finished work.

That duality of focusing intensely on one’s art while dreaming of a brighter tomorrow is alive in Washington’s music, too.

“I can be really connected, grounded and conscious of the world and everything that’s happening in it; I read the newspaper every day and I’m really aware,” he says.

“Then there’s the other side of myself that’s completely disconnected, that just stares out the window and imagines flying — all kinds of crazy stuff. My music is usually coming from one of those two places. It’s a bit polarised.”

Born in Los Angeles to musical parents in 1981, Washington enrolled in the department of ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Soon afterwards he met hip-hop producer Kevin Gilliam, better known as Battlecat, who worked with the likes of Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur. His facility with the saxophone led to performances with influential artists such as Snoop, Lauryn Hill and Nas.

Later, Washington was drafted by Lamar to perform on To Pimp a Butterfly, the landmark 2015 album that marked a bold creative left turn for Lamar, largely eschewing big beats and choruses in favour of a subtler, jazz-influenced sound beds. It was the precursor to Lamar becoming one of the most popular artists in the world: it made its debut at No 1 in the US, Britain and Australia. Washington added spiralling tenor tones to a key mid-album track titled u, and arranged strings for the album closer, Mortal Man.

With Heaven and Earth, Washington arrives at perhaps his most complete musical statement to date. It was captured at Henson Studios in Los Angeles with his band, the Next Step, as well as members of a long-running collective called the West Coast Get Down.

“In recording the album, I didn’t really know what I was going to be doing when I first started, so I ended up with songs that had duplicate meanings and duplicate ideas,” he says.

“When we were recording, I’d end up with songs that I felt weren’t either one side or the other, and I didn’t know what to do with those. They were kind of in-between, and I realised that that is a part of it. There is a space between my reality and my imagination — and that’s me.”

From his sharp mind, down through his lungs and out of his fingers, music appears to flow from Washington with the confident ease of a master artist. Following the album’s release, a collaborative film project is due for release later this year.

“I have hundreds of songs that are still in the garden, getting watered and growing,” he says, as he prepares to spend much of the rest of the year touring Heaven and Earth. His schedule is full through to mid-November, with nearly 50 shows booked in the US, Britain, Europe and Japan.

Perhaps somewhere along the way, the tour bus will pull over on a remote road and the artist will cast his eyes to the sky once again, and find another song.

Heaven and Earth is released today on Young Turks/Remote Control. Eric Myers reviews the album in The Weekend Australian Review tomorrow.