To say that jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington is a fan of Los Angeles is an understatement. “I love how big L.A. is and how it’s like 10 different cities in one,” said the Grammy-nominated Washington, who released his third full-length album, “Fearless Movement,” earlier this year. “I love how you can kind of go and immerse yourself into almost any culture you can think of.”
A native Angeleno, Washington grew up in South L.A., attended Hamilton High School on the Westside, and earned a degree in ethnomusicology from UCLA. As an undergraduate, he toured with rap superstar Snoop Dogg, a reflection of Washington’s immense musical talent and a harbinger of good things to come. Only in L.A.
After college, Washington and several of his closest friends, including bassist Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner, drummer Ronald Bruner Jr., pianist Cameron Graves, trombonist Ryan Porter, and multi-instrumentalist Terrace Martin, among others, began performing weekly at the Piano Bar in Hollywood, an engagement that lasted several years. The collective, known as the West Coast Get Down, helped revive the formerly moribund L.A. jazz scene and created a pipeline of young talent. Some group members, including Washington, went on to play on rapper Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 classic “To Pimp a Butterfly.” To this day, the friends often tour together and appear on one another’s albums.
The rare jazz artist with crossover appeal, Washington has played Coachella and Bonnaroo, averaging about 100 shows a year. But even when he’s thousands of miles away, his city, wife, Fatima, and their 4-year-old daughter, Akili, are never far from his thoughts. In a Zoom interview from his Inglewood home, Washington talked about how he’d spend a blissful Sunday with his family.
8:30 a.m.: Wake-up time
I’ll give the disclaimer that in my life every day is kind of different, but Sunday is the most consistent for me. I wake up around 8:30 and then have a light breakfast with my wife and daughter.
11 a.m.: Church bells ringing
My mother likes to take my daughter to church, Saints Tabernacle Cogic on Jefferson. We’ll pick her up at about 10. My aunt runs and sings in the choir, and my daughter loves, loves singing with them.
I grew up going to church. As I got older, busy and gone a lot, it kind of became a less of a constant thing for me. And so when my mom brought up that she wanted to take my daughter to church, it felt good to me to kind of reconnect on that level. I remember hearing my aunt sing when I was a kid, and so going there and hearing her singing, and seeing how much my daughter enjoys it, and having a sense of community there feels so familiar to me. It’s a real small, little, itty-bitty church, and there’s a lot of love among the people.
1:30 p.m.: New restaurants — and old standbys
We kind of do this thing where we’ll pick a new area. I recently discovered a huge Japanese community in Gardena that I didn’t know about. And so I’ve been finding all these really great restaurants and shops. I love Japanese culture, and I’ve been enjoying just finding this new space.
We recently found this really cool Yemeni restaurant in Westwood called House of Mandi. We had two different lamb dishes. They were both great. One of them was cooked underground. It’s my first time having Yemeni food, and it was so good. Sometimes we’ll go closer to church to Harold & Belle’s, which is New Orleans-style food.
3 p.m.: Akili’s big adventure
After we eat, we try to find something that my daughter, Akili, likes. She likes a lot of different stuff, but hearing music is her favorite thing. There’s a ton of outdoor music events in Los Angeles, especially around the summer months, but really all year round. And we can always just listen to music in a park.
Akili also likes going to the beach, so sometimes we’ll head to Bruce’s Beach in Manhattan Beach. Or we’ll visit the Natural History Museum. Akili loves dinosaurs and animals. And since she now wants to be an astronaut, she likes space and looking at the space shuttle.
All this is fun for me. I mean I’m still pretty childish myself. I like to look at the dinosaur bones too.
5:30 p.m.: Chill out
If we were out somewhere and walking around a bit, maybe we’ll just go out to dinner. There’s a great Italian restaurant called Rossoblu in downtown that we like to go to. There’s a restaurant called Verse. It’s one of our favorites. There’s another place called Holbox, which is kind of near USC. Or maybe we’ll go to a movie.
A lot of the time we go home to kind of round off the day. If we went to the museum, what we like to do is listen to vinyl. I’ll let Akili pick a few records out. She’s pretty wide open and into jazz artists like Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane. She really likes Michael Jackson right now. Her favorite is “Bad.”
7:30 p.m.: ‘Homemade’ red sauce
Both my wife and I are good cooks, and we’ll determine during the day who’s going to cook. My specialty is pasta. I make a really good one with red or white sauce, but my red sauce is the No. 1 thing on the menu.
I’m not going to tell you all my secrets, but for a meat sauce it’s usually a mixture of different meats like ground beef and maybe with some type of sausage. I use a lot of different peppers like serrano and bell peppers and maybe some jalapenos. I’ll chop all those up, add them to some tomato paste and some tomatoes. I usually make a hybrid: homemade sauce with a pre-made sauce. It feels like it’s all the way homemade, but it’s not.
8:30 p.m.: A daughter’s tale
At about 8:30, it’s Akili’s bedtime. We’ll read her story or make up a story together and kind of hand it off. The stories could be about anything. Sometimes they’re about her. Sometimes they’re about some imaginary creatures. Akili’s pretty avant-garde, and usually she kind of gives them a weird twist, like “then the soldier turned into a cloud.”
She’s asleep by 9. Sometimes, Fatima falls asleep with her. Otherwise, we’ll hang out for a while.
10 p.m.: Kamasi creating
This is when I get to write, practice, work on music. I go to the other side of the house and stay there until 1 or 2 in the morning. This is just the time I can do it.
