Kamasi Washington
When you're making music, you're creeping up on your heart and pouring it out into something.
As musicians, we have one of the greatest tools of bringing people together in music.
We've now got a whole generation of jazz musicians who have been brought up with hip-hop. We've grown up alongside rappers and DJs; we've heard this music all our life. We are as fluent in J Dilla and Dr Dre as we are in Mingus and Coltrane.
I never had a problem moving between jazz and hip-hop.
People like to compartmentalise music, especially African-American music, but it's really one thing. One very wide thing. I mean, it's like all those great records by Marvin Gaye and James Brown back in the day - there are tonnes of jazz musicians playing on them.
I started playing drums at three, then piano at five, then clarinet. But it wasn't till I picked up a saxophone aged 13 that I really got serious about music.
My dad was a professional musician; my mom played, too, but just for fun. All my siblings played. The house was full of music books, videos, albums. I guess it's not surprising that I ended up becoming a musician.
When I was younger, I'd be walking down the street and suddenly panic because I had a cool idea and no way of getting it down - I'd have to sing it all the way home. Now I can hum it into my phone.
I went to a music academy in Los Angeles, and some friends started playing me Ravel and Prokofiev, who I liked, but what really blew me away was 'The Rite of Spring.' That's what made me get interested in classical music for real and want to study it.
People have been starving for intellectual fodder, but the best way to get people to close their eyes and not say anything is to tell them that they're not smart enough to comprehend.Collection: Smart
If you asked people, "Do you like jazz?" they would be like, "not at all." But I think that if you're really putting yourself out there and really communicating, music can put you beyond people's preconceptions, beyond their playlist.Collection: Thinking
I've had experiences where people say, 'I hated jazz before I heard you guys!' I'm like, 'You didn't hate jazz before you heard us, you hated the idea of jazz.'Collection: Hate
I used to play until 4 o'clock in the morning.My dad would go nuts - he'd scream and say the cops are gonna come and break our instruments.Collection: Morning
This notion that I was somehow special and deserving of a more involved education was wrong.I was smart at taking tests, but I knew how smart some of my friends were; they were just smart in different ways.Collection: Smart