Fearless Movement (Young)
Kamasi Washington
Released May 3, 2024
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2024
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_ku_hVMiBSyQvMndjOcB6CSgSw1eJ3uQYA
Spotify:
About:
There is a tender proposition behind composer, bandleader, and saxophonist Kamasi Washington’s fifth studio album, Fearless Movement: we’re all born elastic, and if you don’t use it you lose it. Dance was on Washington’s mind while making this record, and it serves as a metaphor for this practice of flexibility. “When people hear that I’m making a dance album, it’s not literal,” Washington says. “Dance is movement and expression, and in a way it’s the same thing as music — expressing your spirit through your body. That’s what this album is pushing.”
Turning his attention to dance, and bringing the audience with him, is a natural progression of Washington’s ongoing study of music as a means of connection. His 2015 album The Epic, as well as 2018’s Heaven and Earth were received by critics and audiences as a kind of intervention, across generations and genres. Both of those records were big offerings, heavy on choir and strings, but Fearless Movement offers something different: it’s still immense, but more rhythmic — and this time he’s brought the rappers into his world.
Collaboration, and a multi-disciplinary perspective, is key to Washington’s process. It’s what keeps him creative. The release of Heaven and Earth was accompanied by a short film, “AS TOLD TO G/D THYSELF,” that was made with the filmmakers Bradford Young, Terence Nance, and Jenn Nkiru, and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. In the years since, he’s been playing in the musical ‘supergroup’ DINNER PARTY with friends Robert Glasper, Terrace Martin, and 9th Wonder. And the original score he wrote for the Michelle Obama documentary Becoming was nominated for Grammy and Primetime Emmy Awards in 2020.
“The world stopped, but I definitely didn’t stop,” Washington says. Fearless Movement began in the days of the global pandemic. “My daughter was born right in the middle of it. Those are two pretty big monumental things happening simultaneously. One that would change anyone, and one that did change everyone.” He’d started working on a ballet, and was mulling over ways to connect dance to his own music.
“The kind of music I make is not necessarily associated with dance, even though I feel like the more expression in the music, the more it can inspire you to move.” Reconciling his music with that natural human desire for movement forced him to get out of a comfort zone — as did fatherhood.
Parenting has renewed Washington with a sense of gratitude. Fearless Movement opens with a prayer in Ge’ez, the language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible. “‘Lesanu’ is a dedication to a friend of mine who passed away, and a moment to give thanks for my path,” he says. “Being a father means the horizon of your life all of a sudden shows up. My mortality became more apparent to me, but also my immortality — realizing that my daughter is going to live on and see things that I’m never going to see. I had to become comfortable with this, and that affected the music that I was making.”
With touring on pause, they spent her early years together listening to Washington’s favorite records by John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Eric Dolphy. “I wanted to show her all of the best music,” he says. And one day, at just shy of two years old, she came up with a melody. “We were playing around on the piano, and she just kept playing it over and over again,” he says. That tune became the song “Asha The First.”
The collaborative instinct that defines his music-making took hold. Washington and his long-time band members recorded the melody, leaving some wide open spaces for a potential guest to fill. “The band was playing with a lot of gusto for someone to play over it. It sounds like an instrumental solo,” says Washington. But he had a different plan. “The Los Angeles underground is very much used to hip-hop over music that is not a loop. In Leimert Park, where I grew up, the intersection between jazz and hip hop is intertwined.” So he called in Taj and Ras Austin, the rap duo Coast Contra, and sons of L.A. rapper Ras Kass, who he’d found while “messing around on YouTube.” Washington’s long-time friend and collaborator Thundercat also appears on “Asha The First.”
Washington isn’t the only one breaking with convention on Fearless Movement. Andre 3000, perhaps rap’s finest stylist, whose guest verses are coveted by all, offers up his very first flute feature on “Dream State.” A song about moving on from struggle is an apt contribution from an artist searching for freedom. “Andre is connected to music in a way that’s inexplicable, and he still has that same magic on the flutes,” says Washington.“That honesty, and that trueness to his spirit is there.” When he showed up to the studio with a bag of flutes, Washington and his bandmate and fellow Fearless Movement composer Brandon Coleman invited him to jam. Together, they found the song on the first pass. “We’re not easy musicians to swim around with. We moved kind of fast and free, and he was just with us,” says Washington.
There’s a tight-knit feeling to Fearless Movement, which continues to connect Washington’s work to Black music in L.A. across time — from past to present to future. On the laid back and funky “Get Lit,” which is about using the light within each of us to build up our communities, Washington brings together the legendary bandleader George Clinton and rapper D Smoke for “one of the coolest tracks on the album.”
This ethos of elasticity and possibility extended to members of Washington’s band, some of whom have writing credits on the album. It also features regular collaborators like vocalist Patrice Quinn, fellow saxophonist Terrace Martin, bass player Thundercat, and drummer Ronald Bruner Jr. DJ Battlecat and BJ The Chicago Kid.
Being orbited by so much change lends a suppleness to these new songs, thematically and musically. “I know people are kind of used to me doing the big orchestras, but that just wasn’t what this music was calling for,” says Washington. “There’s a degree of insecurity that you feel, but I always have to ask myself, ‘Is this what you’re hearing?’ If you try to do something that isn’t what you’re hearing or feeling, will you be happy?”
Track Listing:
1. Lesanu (Kamasi Washington) 09:22
2. Asha the First (Ras Austin / Taj Austin / Akili Asha Washington / Kamasi Washington) 07:46
3. Computer Love (Shirley Murdock / Larry Troutman / Roger Troutman) 09:26
4. The Visionary (Brandon Coleman / Cameron Graves / Terrace Martin / (Kamasi Washington) 01:10
5. Get Lit (George Clinton / Daniel Farris / Ronald Bruner, Jr. / Kamasi Washington) 03:26
6. Dream State (André 3000 / Tony Austin / Brandon Coleman / Kamasi Washington) 08:39
7. Together (BJ the Chicago Kid / Ryan Porter / Kamasi Washington) 05:34
8. The Garden Path (Kamasi Washington) 06:40
9. Interstellar Peace (The Last Stance) (Brandon Coleman) 05:04
10. The Garden Path (Kamasi Washington) 13:25
11. Lines in the Sand (Kamasi Washington) 07:25
12. Prologue (Astor Piazzolla) 08:19
Personnel:
Kamasi Washington: tenor saxophone, alto saxophone (track 6)
Brandon Coleman: keyboards, organ; key bass (3, 6, 10), vocoder (5)
Cameron Graves: piano (1–3, 5, 7–12)
Dontae Winslow: trumpet (1, 2, 4, 5, 7–12)
Ronald Bruner Jr.: drums (1, 2, 4, 7–12)
Ryan Porter: trombone (1, 2, 4, 5, 7–12)
Tony Austin: drums (1, 2, 5–12)
Allakoi Peete: percussion (1, 2, 5, 7–12)
Kahlil Cummings: percussion (1, 2, 5, 7–12)
Miles Mosley: double bass (1, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12)
Patrice Quinn: vocals (1, 2, 5, 8, 11)
Woody Aplanalp: guitar (1, 5, 9)
Carlos Niño: percussion (1)
Banchamlak Abegase: vocals (1)
Henok Elias: vocals (1)
Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner: electric bass (2, 4)
DJ Battlecat: turntables (2), talk box (5)
Taj Austin: vocals (2)
Ras Austin: vocals (2)
Terrace Martin: alto saxophone (3)
Rickey Washington: flute (4, 8, 11)
George Clinton: vocals (4)
D Smoke: vocals (4)
Joel Whitley: guitar (4)
Robert Miller: drums (5)
André 3000: flutes (6)
Mono/Poly: synthesizer (6)
Ben Williams: upright bass (7)
Dwight Trible: vocals (8, 11)
BJ the Chicago Kid: vocals (10)
Recorded at Digital-T Studios, Los Angeles, CA; Electric Garden, Brooklyn, NY; Gold Diggers; Henson Studios; King Size Sound Labs; Larrabee Studios; Sunset sound; Woody Aplanalp Studios
Lead engineering (all tracks): Tony Austin
Additional engineering: Tony Shepherd
Engineering assistance: Clint Welander, Zack Zajdel, Nate Haessly, Chris Pegram, Brad Ritchie, Ryan Molder, Jacob Johnston, Anderson Kendig
Mixing: Russell Elevado
Mixing assistance: Abbey Lewis
Mastering: Alex DeTurk
Album photography: B+
Photo editing: Sol Washington
Album painting: Amani Washington
Album fashion design: Kerynn Washington, Ramiro Perez
Graphic design: Jake Simmonds
Review:
Kamasi Washington’s maximalist musical statements use jazz as a touchstone before spinning off in multiple directions while remaining inseparable from the massive whole, as evidenced by 2015’s The Epic and 2018’s Heaven and Earth (both triple albums). Fearless Movement, his first long-player in six years, leaves out the choirs and orchestras but spans nearly 90 minutes over 12 tracks. He used his road band and a host of collaborators to execute this project. Washington began composing Fearless Movement during the pandemic while thinking about dance in a larger context, not only as art but as a prime engine for human movement. He also became a father; his daughter Asha (the blur on the cover) was born during the pandemic. The saxophonist became poignantly aware of his own mortality, understanding Asha would witness much after his passing.
“Lesanu” is the opening invocation, in which a cymbal wash finds Patrice Quinn and others chanting “Sing unto the Lord, a new song,” in Geʽez (the language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible) and English. The band — trombonist Ryan Porter, trumpeter Dontae Winslow, organist/keyboardist Brandon Coleman, pianist Cameron Graves, bassist Miles Mosely, and drummers Tony Austin and Ronald Bruner, Jr. — along with an army of percussionists set a collision of post-bop and syncopated modalism guided by handclaps. “Asha the First” is based around a piano figure by his daughter. A funky wah-wah guitar, rolling drums, and chanted vocals by Quinn and brothers Taj and Ras Austin offer a chorale before Thundercat rains a harmolodic bass solo, answered by Washington’s blistering tenor solo above cascading jazz-funk. The Austins claim the track’s second half, rapping in tandem. Washington, a student of Herbie Hancock, threads complex jazz charts through massively funky R&B and bumping hip-hop. Elegiac brass introduces “Computer Love,” a spacey, soulful ballad sung by Quinn with Coleman on vocoder, DJ Battlecat’s turntables, and Woody Aplanalp’s warm guitar. On the clavinet-and-horn-fueled funk of “Get Lit,” P-Funk’s George Clinton and rapper D Smoke share vocals. “Dream State” begins in abstraction with organ, sequenced synth, and Washington’s alto suggesting the influence of Steve Reich’s contrapuntal minimalism. Andre 3000’s flute joins the dialog, as keys, rubbery bass, and breaking snares evoke something like Grover Washington, Jr.’s “Mister Magic.” “Together,” an Afrofuturist ballad, features vocal soulman BJ the Chicago Kid; it segues into the transcendent post-bop-R&B fusion of “The Garden Path,” featuring vocalist Dwight Trible. “Road to Self” is a 13-minute composition that moves fluidly across electronica, progressive jazz, spiritual post-bop, contemporary jazz, and funky fusion. Astor Piazzolla’s “Prologue” closes the album, employing Latin percussion under jazz-rock fusion and post-bop in a buoyant celebration of this band’s creative power. Track by track, Fearless Movement is relentless in exploring new sonic terrains and paying homage to musical forbears. It is Washington’s most cohesive statement. He doesn’t merely juxtapose instruments and sounds, he painstakingly combines them, bringing joy, intensity, political, social, and spiritual poignancy in a vision at once focused, restless, and playful.
Thom Jurek (AllMusic)
