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From album
The Epic
Kamasi Washington · 2015 · Track 2
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The story behind
There are songs that not only sound, but breathe. Cherokee is one of those pieces: a track that unfolds over more than eight minutes without ever making you feel that a single measure is superfluous. Kamasi Washington's saxophone weaves melodies that come and go like waves, yet always with a clarity that hooks you from the first chord. It's not jazz of the kind that gets lost in empty virtuosity; here, every note seems designed so the listener feels part of something greater, as if the music were inviting you to immerse yourself in it without asking permission.
It was recorded by several engineers — Chris Constable, Julie Everson, Carson Lehman, Conrad Leon, Brian Rosemeyer, and Tyler Shields — and mixed by Benjamin Tierney, but the arrangement and production were handled by Washington himself. It was released in May 2015 as part of The Epic, his first album on a record label, and since then it has never stopped accumulating praise: on Metacritic it received an 83 out of 100, a score that speaks to an almost unanimous recognition among critics. Thom Jurek of AllMusic described it as 21st-century jazz "as accessible as it is virtuosic," a definition that captures well that blend of technique and warmth that makes Cherokee work even for those who don't usually listen to jazz.