One
of the best ways to learn about my culture has always been music.
From learning about love as a kid via Stevie Wonder and Nina Simone
to understanding oppression by way of some of Hip-Hop’s best MCs,
music is vital to Black culture. For the past couple years, I have
done small write-ups on albums and shared songs of the day for Black
History Month, but this month I wanted to add another layer of
analysis into the mix. Recently, I have gotten into a bit of a
routine when it comes to media that I consume. When I hang out with
friends and watch videos with them, we always have to cycle through
4-5 comedic videos we all love before moving on to new things. You
could say that these videos have become formative experiences, and
represent a bond between us, but among the funny there is one serious
music video that I have made sure to share with as many of my friends
in person as possible: “Truth,”
by Kamasi Washington.
Now
I have already spoken at length about
Kamasi and his work, but for those who may not know, he is a Jazz
saxophonist and composer, with two fantastic albums under his belt
and concrete understanding of how to make music that feels alive.
With this music video, due in no small part to the writing and
direction of AG Rojas, Kamasi’s music takes on a new dimension and
captures the very essence of why I strive to make art. Now, before I
get into my breakdown of why this video is so effective, I’d like
to talk about the state of Jazz in America for a second. Jazz is a
Black musical form once heralded as devil music and fostered in the
night clubs of bustling urban environments. It is a culmination and
celebration of conflict combined with the freedom for artists to
express themselves. The story of Jazz is much more violent and
heartbreaking than the black tie vibes of Jazz taught in modern music
schools would ever show. This isn’t to say I have a disdain for
Jazz being taught formally in majorly White institutions, I am
actually glad that the music is still being kept alive and I have
grown a lot personally due to my white friends who play Jazz, but the
genre’s mainstream shift away from its Black roots plays a huge
role in the context of
“Truth.”
The visuals, composition, and overall narrative of “Truth” all
tie back to Jazz’s acquired multiculturalism.
“Truth,”
in a nutshell, is about the connectivity of everything in existence.
This may seem a bit...far out, but it approaches such a vast and
immersive thesis through its lush visuals. The video opens up with a
shot of the cosmos, which is about as grand as you can get, before
showing us a young Black boy. The video would like you to believe he
is one of the main characters of the story that is starting to
unfold, but I believe every person who shows up on screen has a
similar level of importance, with some getting more screen time to
show different parts of their lives. We are shown the boy’s mother,
in what looks like a comfortably furnished apartment, before shifting
to a young Latina woman in what looks like a coming-of-age
celebration surrounded by religious symbols and loved ones. From here
the video shows us different portraits of people's lives in America,
each shot carefully filled with a specific purpose. Close-ups on
bibles, the mother and her son talking to each other playfully, and
young men posed in front of a screen in what looks like a makeshift
photo studio, draped in a traditional looking garb. The visuals are
dense and packed with too many details to catch on the first watch,
my favorite of which being a bird’s-eye
shot of two young men wrestling in a field, surrounded by pink and
red flower petals that make up the perfect circle of their ring.
Everything is gorgeous and given the same amount of respect and
treatment, connecting entirely different communities and cultures
seamlessly through how scenes are shot.
The
music gives these scenes another bit of life entirely. As I talked
about in my 2017 album wrap-up, Kamasi’s
Harmony
of Difference
is a musical project where every song is made up of the same melodies
and musical ideas, which all culminate in the final track “Truth,”
adding a sense of familiarity by the time you hit the last song. When
that song is the score to a blending of cultural differences, it
achieves a very similar effect. The music serves as a the glue for
every visual idea you see during the course of the video. Each lick,
melody, chord change and musical swell fits perfectly within the
language the video is introducing you to. This is obviously due to
smart editing, but the illusion that every part of this video was
created at the same time for the same purpose is astounding. You
start associating different instruments with certain characters and
filling the blanks in your head of what this puzzle could be about.
The music is an
audio representation of the concept of being connected. At a point it
stops feeling like music and starts to tug on you like it is an
actual force. A big part of Kamasi’s
music is a sense of spirituality. Never coming off as especially
religious himself, he instead composes songs that are larger than the
sum of their parts. The musical cogs of the song go together
perfectly, but they also create something more powerful than just a
number of musicians in sync. You hear struggle and resolutions that
are reflected in the aforementioned visual focus of the music video.
The
narrative of the video is abstract, but not absent. The story focuses
on connecting the dots, a bunch of points across the real world with
seemingly little connection, and reassuring the viewer that they’re
all part of the same cosmos. One shot in particular takes up one
third of the video and may be the strongest case for this connection.
It is a seemingly static shot of two Black men in what looks like the
backstage area of a theater, both reading a newspaper and minding
their own business. Meanwhile the camera is slowly zooming in on the
man on the right side of the screen, moving at a snail's pace.
Musically, at this point in the song, Kamasi starts taking a solo. As
the solo builds and becomes more fierce, the rate the camera is
zooming does not change. So while we are given the audio treatment of
a lifetime visually the shot is mundane as could be. The brilliant
revelation that this gave me upon watching it was that the music we
hear is actually coming from the man on the right as he reads his
newspaper, showing that even when we as POC aren’t in the act of
being creative that we have ties so some of the richest art and
culture imaginable. It's an uplifting message that resonated with me
directly as someone who spends most of my time each day working a
retail job. This is the reaffirmation of the roots of Jazz, showing
the view that our bond with our music and culture isn’t going to
diminish just because non-POC start playing Jazz standards. No one
gets to choose what part of culture applies to them and what doesn’t;
we inherit everything from love to war, and seeing that all reflected
in such a static shot was breathtaking. So many moments of shots
fading perfectly into other shots as the music cues a specific
emotion are the foundation of this video, and the more you watch it
the more you understand how everything is connected.
“Truth”
stands as a monument to the beauty of multiculturalism. It respects
boundaries and allows the viewer to see how various different
different cultures in our society live, love and fit into the grand
scheme of existence. All the while it feels genuine and warm, lacking
the air of pretentiousness one would expect from such a bold artistic
statement. There are so many moments in this video that take me to a
special place, and so many moments I don’t understand because they
illustrate a life I didn’t grow up in, and that is the whole point.
Kamasi believes that we are all connected, and it is the differences
between us that give birth to great art and culture. So as you
reflect on this Black History Month, in addition to raving about
Black Panther with your friends, also remember that culture isn’t
something that you do, it is just you. Regardless of what kind of
life you lead you are connected to a rich tapestry of those who came
before you and those who will come after you, and that truth is
absolute and beautiful.
