The West Coast Get Down

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

The West Coast Get Down is an American jazz collective from Los Angeles. The members all grew up in Los Angeles County and first came together in 1993 in the Multi-School Jazz Band of the music teacher Reggie Andrews in Watts. The group includes the saxophonist Kamasi Washington, the bassists Miles Mosley and Stephen Thundercat Bruner, the drummers Ronald Bruner Jr. and Tony Austin, the pianist Cameron Graves, the keyboard player Brandon Coleman, the trombonist Ryan Porter and the multi-instrumentalist Terrace Martin. As schoolchildren they played in Washington's garage, nicknamed the Shack, and later in clubs such as the World Stage in Leimert Park.

Music and breakthrough

In 2008 Mosley began a residency at the Piano Bar in Hollywood, which lasted eight years, and in 2009 the collective was officially founded there. In December 2011 the members recorded for thirty days in a row at Kingsize Soundlabs in Echo Park, the KSL Sessions, from which some 190 tracks came. Many of them later appeared on solo albums, including Washington's The Epic in 2015. That year Martin, Washington, Mosley and Ronald Bruner contributed to Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, the album that made them known to a large audience.

Influence

The collective is called the Wu-Tang Clan of jazz. It is praised for freshening up jazz for younger listeners, with a broad, cinematic sound and a connection to hip hop and soul. The members now mainly go their own ways, often with one another, and a joint album under this name is, according to Washington, an idea for the future.

Listening

Mentioned in other articles

• New jazz from Los Angeles GenreThe bassist Thundercat, the saxophonist Kamasi Washington and other musicians who already knew each other from school played as the collective The West Coast Get Down.

See also

• New jazz from Los Angeles