Kamasi Washington has shared the astonishing new video for 'Hub-Tones'.
The saxophonist's remarkable new album 'Heaven And Hell' is still giving up its secrets, a leviathan achievement that shatters the borders of composition.
Out now, Kamasi Washington returns to album standout 'Hub-Tone', a track that unites hard bop, Pan-Africanism, and so much more.
Building on the Freddie Hubbard track of the same name, there's a yearning sense of connection at work in the spiralling music.
“Hub-Tones is me trying to connect my ancestors via music,” says Washington. “As an African-American, a lot of us don’t know the country of our origin, that’s why most of us take on the ideology of Pan-Africanism. I was trying to connect to my ancestors by connecting African rhythms with a Freddie Hubbard tune which gave me that connection in a different way.”
Jenn Nkiru constructs the video, a phenomenal achievement that builds a potent visual universe on the same level as Kamasi Washington's complex musicality.
“With the visual for Hub-Tones, I wanted to invoke the immediate ecstatic connection it gave me: There’s a traditional ceremony called Oboni in the Ikwerre tribe, my parents’ tribe — the tribe of my heritage. The idea is through repetition, instrumentation and movement, to channel spirit, going deeper and deeper with the changing of each tone within the music till it becomes hypnotic and transcendent.”
“I felt this level of immediate connection to Hub-Tones plus with this being a Freddie Hubbard cover and him being the king of tones in jazz it all felt so symbiotic and fated. I then went about giving the women featured the choreography, movement and codes to take us deeper into that spirit-space.”
“I was also thinking about what an abstract Pan-African connection could feel like so I included the Pan African Flag For The Relic Travellers' Alliance by artist Larry Achiampong, make-up and crystal adornment in the style of Nina Simone and the lighting seen in the courthouse of the hearings of Anita Hill and of course — the call to Nation Time emblazoned on the sashes of each women. There are other hidden gems too but I’ll allow the audience to uncover them…”
Tune in now.
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