Video of the Day: Kamasi Washington unveils new track ‘Prologue’ taken from new album Fearless Movement to be released 3 May
Mike Flynn
Friday, March 8, 2024
The LA sax star returns with barnstorming new album fuelled by danceable grooves, high-octane solos and guests including Thundercat, George Clinton, Terrace Martin and André 3000
Kamasi Washington has announced his new album, Fearless Movement, is set for release 3 May via Young (FKA Young Turks). A new song, ‘Prologue’, debuts alongside a video directed by longtime collaborator AG Rojas and choreographed by Samantha Blake Goodman – see the video below.
Additionally, Washington has unveiled an extensive North American tour kicking off on 4 May at New York’s Beacon Theatre with further dates including Chicago, Houston, San Francisco and the Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival, which he will co-curate with Herbie Hancock for the second year in a row, on 16 June.
Washington calls Fearless Movement his dance album. “It’s not literal,” he 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.”
Where previous albums dealt with cosmic ideas and existential concepts, Fearless Movement focuses in on the everyday, an exploration of life on earth. This change in scope is due in large part to the birth of Washington’s first child a few years ago.
“Being a father means the horizon of your life all of a sudden shows up,” says Washington. “My mortality became more apparent to me, but also my immortality – realising 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.”
The album features Washington’s daughter – who wrote the melody to ‘Asha The First’ during some of her first experimentations on the piano – as well as a host of collaborators new and old. André 3000 appears on flute, George Clinton lends his voice, as do BJ The Chicago Kid, Inglewood rapper D-Smoke and Taj and Ras Austin of Coast Contra, the twin sons of West Coast legend Ras Kass. Washington further enlisted lifelong friends and collaborators Thundercat, Terrace Martin, Patrice Quinn, Brandon Coleman, DJ Battlecat and more.
See the video for ‘Prologue’ below and for more info visit www.kamasiwashington.com/tour
