“The Epic” by Kamasi Washington

Celebrating one of modern jazz's most ambitious and impressive artistic feats.

This album review celebrates the 10th anniversary of an album that’s been credited as saving modern jazz … whatever that means.

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Genre: Jazz Fusion, Post-Bop

Label: Brainfeeder

Release Date: May 5, 2015

Vibe: 🤯

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When The Epic landed in 2015, it was touted as a “new era” in jazz music. It reignited mainstream discourse around a genre that, in some ways, had become overreliant on its well-worn stable of classics to stay relevant and, from a business perspective, generate sales through both physical and digital media. But Kamasi Washington turned that tide with this monster of a release, one that spans three LPs and clocks in at 173 minutes. Despite those seemingly insurmountable hurdles, he pulled off something that few music pundits and historians thought possible: he made jazz palatable to the supposedly “brain-dead” younger generations. As Ammar Kalia said in his piece for the Guardian, “It would spark the beginning of a mainstream jazz resurgence across the US and in the UK, and the radical, politicized reclamation of a genre that had become deeply unfashionable. It was unshackled from the confines of the hotel lobby and thrust back into the clubs.”

It’s worth noting that Washington has consistently rejected the idea that twenty- and thirtysomethings are intellectually incapable of appreciating music that wasn’t a basic, blown-out pop or rap tune. During an interview with CBC, he talks about touring this album in rock and hip-hop venues in Los Angeles and beyond, in addition to hallowed jazz halls like Blue Note in New York, and everyone got it on an instinctual level. Everyone was on the same emotional wavelength. “My music, and anyone’s music that doesn’t have lyrics, what we’re communicating is what my experience has been. An experience is more than just a recap of events. It’s what that event did to you.” For a record that’s as packed with ideas and information as it is, it’s never so academic that it feels out of reach. For the depth and breadth of its material, it’s incredibly accessible and satisfying. These compositions are all about feeling, both the ones it transmits to you and those it invites you to bring to the listening experience.

It’s worth stopping and acknowledging that The Epic probably doesn’t hit the way it did commercially and critically if Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly hadn’t dropped two months prior. Initially called in to soundtrack a single skit, K. Dot and his collaborators, among them longtime friends Terrace Martin, Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner, and Flying Lotus (this album dropped on the latter’s label, Brainfeeder), kept finding bits and pieces for the jazz virtuoso to add or expand upon. TPAB would go on to become one of hip-hop’s most respected and emulated 21st-century touchstones, paving the way for Washington to accomplish a similar feat while operating in another genre at a decisive crossroads. That influence can’t be overstated, not even by Washington himself. “[TPAB] changed music, and we're still seeing the effects of it,” he told Highsnobiety. “[The album] meant that intellectually stimulating music doesn't have to be underground. It just didn't change the music. It changed the audience.”

Prior to this album and TPAB, Washington wasn’t an unknown, at least not in his own backyard. A fixture of LA’s underground jazz scene, he’d fine-tuned a deeply musical upbringing (his father also played the saxophone professionally), steeped in jazz fusion and funk with formal training at UCLA’s Department of Ethnomusicology. There, under the mentorship of legends such as Kenny Burrell, Gerald Wilson, and Billy Higgins, he gained recognition for his relentless energy and experimentation-driven approach. That reputation grew as he began gigging with artists as varied as Stanley Clarke, Chaka Khan, Snoop Dogg, and Run the Jewels. His star was on the rise, but his vision for what jazz could be and the cosmic heights it could still reach remained unfulfilled until he ended up at the Brainfeeder label.

At that time, the label was more of a sonic chemistry lab, mixing and matching all kinds of formulas in search of the perfect combinations that could fully unlock one’s imagination. Flying Lotus and others who had a hand in nurturing Washington’s career gave him what so many artists lack: the latitude to try different approaches. In 2011, Washington and his band, The Next Step—a group that featured Thundercat on bass, his brother, Ronald Bruner Jr., on drums, Cameron Graves on piano, and Ryan Porter on trombone—kicked of a now-legendary 45-day recording spree, an asthonishing run of creative output that resulted in nearly 200 tracks that stemmed from a simple ethos: "go big." They weren’t mere backing players—they were architects. Add a 32-piece orchestra and a 20-voice choir to the mix, and you’ve got more than several recording sessions. It’s gargantuan, world-building work.

As impressive a feat as those raw recordings were, whittling those down to an even semi-digestible package was a tall order. In interviews since, Washington talks about sincerely trying to condense The Epic into a one-LP experience but always resisting some of those final cuts. He wanted this album to function like an oratorio or a manifesto. His primary concern was that, by leaving certain songs out, the full heft of the narrative arc wouldn’t hit the listener in the same way. He envisioned the listening experience as a comprehensive spiritual journey, one that clearly expresses a distinct emotional hue with every recurring motif. There is a lot of reverence built into this text, but it is balanced with plenty of anger and regret. It’s celebratory but also a cautionary tale, underscoring that, when it comes to human nature, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The album opens with “Change of the Guard,” a track that sounds like the dawn of a new age. Harps shimmer. Strings hover like an ominous fog stretching over a barren landscape. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the rhythm section ignites, kickstarting a roiling, tumbling groove that doesn’t just set the stage. It demands you sit up and pay attention. It’s a call to listen closely. Something important is happening. When Kamasi’s saxophone enters the fray, it’s hair-raising without being overly showy. His goal isn’t to rub your face in his technical acrobatics, but to move you with his molten, piercing presence, much like a preacher delivering a fiery sermon. Behind him, a choir swells, almost as if it’s handing down some holy proclamation, while horns ring out like bolts of lightning in the night sky. It’s jaw-dropping.

Side note (and this applies to the rest of this record): If you’ve never listened to jazz in a more dedicated sense than passive coffee shop absorption, the length of these tracks may test your patience in the beginning. This first one is a little over 12 minutes, the album’s longest is north of 14. But that’s the point. You’re being asked to immerse yourself in its wonder, not shy away from the commitment that comes with it. If you’re willing to make that leap and accept transcendence on Washington’s terms, you’ll be rewarded.

The first LP remains my favorite of the bunch, following up “Change of the Guard” with the equally operatic “Askim,” followed by the slinky, sumptuous ballad, “Isabelle.” Closing out the first disc is “The Rhythm Changes,” an example of how this “jazz” release has more than a little soul and R&B in its bones. Patrice Quinn’s vocals sway and swoon with graceful clarity, adding a grounded dimension to what is a love letter to the self. To the human spirit, perhaps. "My life has had its ups and downs," she sings, and the band echoes that truth in its playing. Under her, Washington’s top-notch band melds swing-era warmth with modern West Coast cool. No one’s in any hurry, especially Thundercat on bass, who employs restraint to devastating effect. This composition invites you in, offers tea, and speaks truths in hushed tones.

Elsewhere, “Re Run Home” is the track I’d classify as the eye of The Epic’s hurricane. A rhythmic beast that’s full of angular polyrhythms, each snare hit and cymbal crash from Ronald Brunery Jr. and Tony Austin is the gravitational center around which the rest of the band orbits. Their electrified playing is some of the best I’ve ever heard on a jazz record—any era, any subgenre, doesn’t matter. It’s so locked in and free-flowing, I can’t help but move my hands and arms like a madman every time I listen to it. Framed by that indefatigable groove, Kamasi emerges less as a saxophone soloist and more as a co-conspirator, becoming one with the drumming. Other players also get the chance to shine. Cameron Graves' piano solo, in particular, lives somewhere between classical precision and cosmic mischief. You’d be hard-pressed to find a band that sounds more in sync with each other than Washington’s does here.

The penultimate track delivers its most hauntingly political moment. “Malcolm’s Theme” was written by Terence Blanchard (a terrific player in his own right who I had the pleasure of seeing perform with Herbie Hancock), the man who composed the score for Spike Lee’s incredible Malcolm X biopic. The lyrics, however, aren’t Blanchard’s. Instead, they’re taken from Ossie Davis’s 1965 eulogy for the famed Civil Rights leader, and the instrumental swirls around those words in a mournful state.

There’s an audio recording inserted into the track’s second half from one of Malcolm X’s final speeches that only adds to its ghost-like quality, showing a man who was desperate to make his position clear:

I am not a racist in any form whatsoever. I don't believe in any form of racism. I don't believe in any form of discrimination or segregation. I believe in Islam. I am a Muslim. And there's nothing wrong with being a Muslim, nothing wrong with the religion of Islam. It just teaches us to believe in Allah as God.

What makes The Epic unlike anything else in modern jazz isn’t just its scope. It’s the urgency with which it reimagines the genre’s purpose. It argues, track by track and moment after moment, that jazz is far from dead or, at best, a cultural relic. If nothing else, this album proves that it still carries the power to turn music into a ritual. A means of catharsis. A technology that’s indispensable to Black futurism as we know it. By releasing this project when he did, Washington expanded jazz’s grammar and, in so doing, recalibrated its mainstream potential. He made music you could dance to, grieve with, and pray to, with each movement its own entity within the context of the album. It’s the rare epic that you almost wish would go on for longer because, if you asked him, he’d surely tell you there’s even more where that came from. More history and nuance to unpack.

Systemic discriminations and attempts to write it out of pop culture history aside, one thing jazz has never apologized for is its ambition. The personal intermingles with the political and spiritual, simultaneously reinforcing and deconstructing norms and audience expectations. Every new listen to The Epic nudges it up my shortlist of the most progressive, pioneering works the genre has ever produced. Scored for a world that’s been teetering between collapse and rebirth for a minute now, its resonance lies not just in its nods to tradition, but in how defiantly it writes new ones into the lexicon.

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What’s your favorite modern jazz record? Sound off in the comments.