Kamasi Washington has confirmed the upcoming release of his latest album, Fearless Movement, due out on May 3rd via Young. The announcement arrived alongside the track’s eight-minute overture, “Prologue”, an ambitious composition that Washington has paired with an equally ambitious dance video directed by longtime collaborator AG Rojas and choreographed by Samantha Blake Goodman.
In a statement, the torch-bearing jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer, and bandleader called Fearless Movement his “dance” album. “It’s not literal,” Washington explained. “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.”
Examining dance as a physical embodiment of spirit marks something of a thematic shift for Washington, whose previous works—including 2015’s The Epic, 2018’s Heaven and Earth, and his 2017 concept EP Harmony of Difference—have largely dealt with abstract, cosmic ideas and existential concepts. With Fearless Movement, Kamasi Washington brings his pensive musical perspective to an exploration of everyday life on Earth.
Washington attributes this change in scope to the birth of his first child a few years ago. “Being a father means the horizon of your life all of a sudden shows up,” he said “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.”
In addition to featuring Washington’s young daughter, who wrote the melody to album track “Asha The First” during some of her first experimentations on the piano, Fearless Movement features a number of guests both familiar and novel in the Kamasi universe including André 3000 (on flutes, of course), George Clinton (vocals), BJ The Chicago Kid (vocals), Thundercat (bass), Terrace Martin (saxophone), and more. Pre-order or pre-save Fearless Movement, the new album from Kamasi Washington, here. Click below to view the full tracklist.
While listeners will have to wait until May to dive into Fearless Movement in its entirety, the first single from the album, “Prologue”—which notably appears as the last track on the album—is out today. The eight-minute track is propelled into motion by nimble drums and a clear-cut Washington saxophone melody before launching into an enveloping, tension-building crescendo. As the music intensifies, so does the movement of the many engaging interpretive dancers showcased in the video, their writhing and twisting providing a human mirror to Kamasi and company’s instrumental introspection. Watch the video for “Prologue” below.
Kamasi Washington – “Prologue” (Official Video)
In addition to announcing the new album and beginning its rollout with “Prologue”, Kamasi Washington has announced an extensive 2024 North American tour. After opening the run with a performance at New York, NY’s Beacon Theatre on May 4th, Kamasi and his band will travel the Northeast and Midwest in early May and head to Texas for a four-city stint in mid-May. Following a brief pause, the tour will resume in Vancouver on May 30th and work its way down the West Coast with shows in Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona before arriving in Washington’s native Los Angeles, where he and Herbie Hancock will once again co-curate the Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival on June 16th. On July 31st, Kamasi Washington will round out the tour with a one-off performance in Alexandria, VA.
Related: Saxophornication: Red Hot Chili Peppers Jam With Kamasi Washington In California [Videos]
Pre-sale tickets for the newly announced 2024 Kamasi Washington tour dates are now on sale here (Code: FEARLESS). Click below for a complete list of upcoming dates or head here for ticketing information.
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The post Kamasi Washington Shares “Prologue” For New LP ‘Fearless Movement’, Plots 2024 Tour [Watch/Listen] appeared first on L4LM.
