Music review: Kamasi Washington, QMU, Glasgow
Kamasi Washington, QMU, Glasgow ****
“Diversity is not something to be tolerated, it’s something to be celebrated,” Washington said while introducing a song called Truth, which featured five different melodies played all at once as a metaphor for how beautiful diversity can be. It was one of just six numbers performed during a 90-minute set which together surveyed jazz’s centrality to all of American music and proved how it is far from the faded genre many people presume it to be.
Cinematic star-gazing jam The Space Travellers Lullaby and the Curtis Mayfield-esque funk of Fist of Fury – which riffed on the theme to the Bruce Lee’s movie of the same name – trailed what promises to be an epic new album called Heaven and Earth. Voiced by sashaying singer Patrice Quinn, closer The Rhythm Changes was a tones and timbres exploring snaking, quaking, breathtaking carnival for the senses.