‘That Really Caught Me Off Guard’: Kamasi Washington Talks Metallica, Parenthood & More

There's commotion in the background as famed jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington settles in for an interview with The Music. In his younger years, said commotion might have been Washington trying to get away from the throes of a party or gig, caught between loud conversation and an impromptu jam session. In Washington's current life, however, he's just trying to sneak away from his two-year-old daughter. “I thought I'd made a clean break, but she found me,” he laughs. Although initially intending to focus on the sax virtuoso's return to Australia this month, the conversation takes an unexpected detour into fatherhood thanks to our special guest.

“On one hand, I'm grateful that I've been able to be there for so much of her early life on account of the pandemic – to be present as a parent,” he says. “On the other hand, looking out at the state of the world can present a lot of anxiety. There's always been problems in the world, but these ones feel especially scary – some days, you feel like the sky is falling in. We don't know how to deal with the new problems yet. She's gonna live in a whole other world that is beyond my imagination. Once you understand that, you just have to focus on making sure she finds her own way, and hope that things go well.”

To tie in with his decades of performing – as a solo artist, as an in-demand studio collaborator and a bandleader – it's asked whether a life in music has prepared Washington at all for being a parent. There are so many lessons one has to learn when making their way in this industry; surely, there are at least a couple that translate into this different aspect of life? “I would say that the idea of flow is a key one,” Washington responds. “When you're playing, especially improvising, you learn to not fight against things and to go with your feeling. That's certainly been my experience in interacting with my daughter – we honestly spend so much time just vibing.

“There's really nothing to fully prepare you for parenthood, though. It's really changed my perspective of love. It's almost like you're reliving an entire life again through somebody else's eyes. I'm showing her all the things that I've seen and heard and learned through my own life, and passing that on the same way my father did. We even started watching Schoolhouse Rock together, and now she knows all the songs! I don't know if I would have ever revisited Schoolhouse Rock otherwise, but I'm glad that I did.”

Away from his family life, Washington has also spent 2022 at work on new material that will subsequently form a new studio album sometime in 2023. We've already heard our first taste of it – the expansive, joyful afro-jazz journey that is The Garden Path, which was premiered with a show-stealing performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon earlier this year. “The performance came around quickly, and we didn't want to go on there with something old,” Washington explains. “We'd been in the studio for a little while at that point, and The Garden Path was ready to go. The perfectionist in me was wrestling with it – like, 'I'm not sure if it's finished' – but the artist in me was like, 'Let's go! Let's go!'”

To have a relatively-niche jazz artist performing on such a mainstream platform as The Tonight Show for as mainstream a celebrity as Jimmy Fallon might have been an odd entity even a half-decade ago. Such is Washington's presence, however, he's been widely accepted into the pop-culture zeitgeist – he's headlined at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, he's a frequent collaborator with Kendrick Lamar and even Metallica are out-and-proud fans of his work.

“That really caught me off guard,” says Washington when speaking about Metallica enlisting him as part of their extensive covers project to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the self-titled ‘Black Album’. “I've been into Metallica since high school – my friend Cameron [Graves], who plays piano with me, was really into metal and would play us their albums really loud. I was thinking maybe Metallica were hitting us up because they'd heard Cameron's music, but it turns out they really appreciate my music as well. I gotta say, I did not see that coming.”

Surreal as that is, however, Washington insists that the one he'll never get over is being acknowledged by his hero, the veteran composer and musical pioneer Herbie Hancock. “It's happened many times now, at festivals and the like, but to this day every time Herbie says 'Hi, Kamasi' to me, I genuinely can't believe it,” he says. “That's Herbie Hancock. Herbie Hancock! And he knows my name! I wouldn't expect him to remember me in a million years. To talk to him, and to have him consider me a peer, is a huge honour.”

Kamasi Washington will support Khruangbin at Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne this Saturday, December 3, before performing an exclusive headline show at Sydney Opera House on Sunday. Tickets and more information are available via the Sydney Opera House website.