From The Epic to Kendrick Lamar, Jazz Saxophone Icon, Composer, Interview
Saxophonist. Composer. Bandleader. Visionary. Kamasi Washington has spent his career doing something rare: making jazz feel urgent, alive, and undeniably connected to everything happening in music and culture right now. In this episode, Elmo sits down with Kamasi for a conversation that goes as deep as the music itself.
They cover Kamasi's upbringing in Los Angeles surrounded by a generation of future legends, the formation of the West Coast Get Down collective with Thundercat, Flying Lotus, Terrace Martin, and others, and how that tight-knit creative community gave rise to one of the most celebrated jazz albums in decades: The Epic. Kamasi opens up about the call that brought him into Kendrick Lamar's sessions for To Pimp a Butterfly, what those recording sessions were like, and what it meant for jazz to be at the center of one of the most important hip-hop albums ever made.
The conversation goes deep on the full arc of his catalog: Harmony of Difference, Heaven and Earth, scoring the Becoming documentary for Michelle Obama, and the immersive installation work Lazarus. Kamasi also talks about fatherhood and how having a child reshaped his artistic perspective, his unique performance approach using multiple drummers and bassists simultaneously, and his unshakeable belief that music transcends every genre boundary we put on it.
"Music is bigger than genre. It's a language that connects everything: jazz, hip-hop, soul. It's all the same conversation."
How Kamasi came up surrounded by future legends in the LA jazz scene, the teachers and mentors who shaped his ear, and the city's role in forming his identity as a musician.
The formation of the collective with Thundercat, Flying Lotus, Terrace Martin, Miles Mosley, and others: how they built something intentional, and what that brotherhood means to Kamasi.
His landmark triple album debut, plus how Terrace Martin brought him into To Pimp a Butterfly, and what it meant for jazz to be at the center of that album.
The full arc of his catalog, with each record a different chapter of his spiritual and artistic journey, including his immersive installation work Lazarus.
Scoring Michelle Obama's Becoming documentary, and how fatherhood completely reshuffled his perspective on what music is for and who he's making it for.
Why he performs with multiple drummers and bassists simultaneously, his belief that music is bigger than genre, and what he's still chasing as a composer and bandleader.
Kamasi tells the full story of how Terrace Martin called him into the Kendrick Lamar sessions for To Pimp a Butterfly: what the vibe in the studio was like, how the arrangements came together, and what it meant for jazz to be front and center on that album.
The origin story of the West Coast Get Down: how a group of childhood friends and fellow musicians turned a shared house and a shared vision into one of the most creatively fertile collectives in modern music history.
Kamasi breaks down the making of The Epic, a three-hour debut that almost no one thought would get released as-is, and what it felt like to put something that ambitious into a world that had largely written jazz off.
Being name-dropped by Kendrick on GNX ("keep a horn on me, that Kamasi") and what that moment of public recognition meant to him as an artist who has spent his career building a bridge between jazz and contemporary music culture.
Kamasi's unfiltered philosophy on music as a universal language: why he rejects the idea that jazz is a niche genre, and how he sees the saxophone as a vehicle for something much larger than notes on a page.
Kamasi on fatherhood: how having a child fundamentally changed what he believes music is for, who he's making it for, and the kind of artist he wants to be going forward.
The story behind scoring Becoming, the Michelle Obama documentary: how that commission came together and what it felt like to bring jazz into one of the most-watched documentary projects of its time.