Kamasi Washington's new album 'Fearless Movement' out now

Fearless Movement, the new album from Kamasi Washington [featuring "Together" with BJ The Chicago Kid], is out today via Young, featuring collaborations with André 3000, George Clinton, Thundercat, Terrace Martin and more—get it here. Additionally, watch the trailer for the music video for album track “Get Lit,” directed by Jenn Nkiru and coming next week, here.

 

Fearless Movement is receiving widespread critical praise:

 

“Kamasi Washington could never be accused of fearful stasis. As one of the premier jazz crossover stars of the past decade, the LA saxophonist’s fiercely exuberant output has spread far outside the genre’s confines. Virtuoso musicianship is, naturally, baked in; Washington’s modus operandi also embodies political anger and transcendent joy.”—The Guardian

 

“Based in Los Angeles, Kamasi Washington makes blockbusters. They aren’t the musical equivalent of the CGI-saturated superhero franchises that Hollywood pumps out. Instead, his albums are sprawling affairs with bravura storytelling, connoisseurial knowledge and a disregard for divisions between genres. They’re the work of an auteur who operates on a grand scale yet manages to do so without letting his ego run riot.”—Financial Times

 

“On his fifth studio album, saxophonist, composer, and overall jazz giant Kamasi Washington sculpts sound with the specific intention of inspiring the titular ‘fearless movement.’ Supplemented by bursts of individualism from collaborators like Thundercat, George Clinton, and André 3000, Washington folds his own kind of dance record into his newest galaxy of mesmeric jazz.”—The Boston Globe

 

“In short, it’s another excellent Kamasi Washington record, one sure to sate fans of his well-honed 21st-century spiritual jazz… Fearless Movement bolsters Washington’s prowess as a jazz bandleader engaged in cultural and musical curation.”—SPIN

 

Washington’s extensive North American tour kicks off tomorrow, May 4 at New York’s Beacon Theatre with further dates including Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, the Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival—which he will co-curate with Herbie Hancock for the second year in a row, and Newport Jazz Festival. A European tour will follow in the fall—see below for full tour routing.

 

Washington calls Fearless Movement his 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.”

 

Dance as an embodied form of expression signals a shift in focus for Washington. 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—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.”

 

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, funk icon 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.

 

The album features previously shared singles “Get Lit” with George Clinton and D Smoke,  “Prologue” and “Dream State” with André 3000, as well as “The Garden Path,” a song Washington performed for the first time ever, making his late-night television debut, on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”

 

Kamasi Washington is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and bandleader born and raised in Los Angeles. His three bodies of work to date—The Epic; Harmony of Difference, an EP originally commissioned for the 2017 Whitney Biennial; and Heaven and Earth—are among the most acclaimed of this century. As Told To G/D Thyself, his short film companion to Heaven and Earth, debuted at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival to widespread acclaim. In 2020, Washington scored the Michelle Obama documentary Becoming, earning Emmy and Grammy nominations for his work. Also in 2020, Washington co-founded the supergroup Dinner Party with longtime friends and collaborators Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper and 9th Wonder—their EP Dinner Party (Dessert) was subsequently nominated for a Grammy for Best Progressive R&B Album. In 2021, he contributed a cover of Metallica’s “My Friend of Misery” to the band’s Metallica Blacklist covers project. Washington has toured the world over and collaborated and shared stages with Kendrick Lamar, Florence + the Machine, Herbie Hancock and many more.