Hear Kamasi Washington’s Expansive, Winding ‘Truth’ From New EP
Jazz voyager Kamasi Washington released an expansive, winding new song “Truth.” The 14-minute track is the sixth and final movement from his upcoming EP, Harmony of Difference, due out this summer via Young Turks.
“Truth” unfurls with breezy piano chords, soulful electric guitar counter-melodies, wordless choral chants and washes of the bandleader’s smoldering saxophone. In his short film accompanying the track, director A.G. Rojas weaves together disparate shots, including a man engulfed in a stream, a young boy washing his face and men wrestling on a lawn surrounded by rose petals.
Harmony of Difference premiered in March, alongside a film by Rojas that also included artwork by Washington’s sister Amani Washington as part of the Biennial at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.
Throughout the EP, Washington explores the musical technique of counterpoint, which the avant-garde jazz player defines as “the art of balancing similarity and difference to create harmony between separate melodies.”
Washington, also known for his sax contributions to albums by Flying Lotus (2014’s You’re Dead!) Kendrick Lamar (the following year’s To Pimp a Butterfly), released his official debut LP, triple-record set The Epic, in 2015.