• Kamasi Washington – Harmony of Difference

    Hip hop was born from jazz. Powerful drum beats from 70s jazz and jazz funk gave early pioneers Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash an abundance of ingredients to create an entirely new style of music composed of their predecessors’ songs. It’s an influence that stuck through the 80s and 90s, and whether it’s J Dilla ’s sophisticated sampling or Notorious B.I.G’s Cannonball Adderly influenced flow, the fingerprints of jazz are all over hip hop. So what happens when jazz is relegated to “music for goatee scratching elitists”, and hip hop takes up the mantle as the art form for black…