Born in Memphis, reared in Detroit, and formally educated in Boston, Salim is now based in Harlem. He came of age, however, during the Black Arts Movement of the 1960’s and ’70’s. He credits this environment as the one that largely shaped his view of the world, along with the home environment provided by his parents, both of whom were children of sharecroppers. Washington also recognizes that he became highly politicized while attending prep school. It was there that the “power of knowledge was demystified,” and he began to understand how the world works.

In Detroit, Salim learned to play in the church and in school, and with rhythm and blues and jazz bands. But he notes that the Pentecostal church taught him how music can function. It can be a “vehicle through which spirit travels,” Salim asserts. “It animates the soul [and] allows for a transformation into a sacred time and space where the boundaries and concerns of the world are pushed down and love is brought up higher.”

Relocating to Boston to attend college, he deepened his commitment to and his experience with jazz as a member of Billy Skinner’s Double Jazz Quartet for eight years. After the dissolution of the group, Washington formed the Roxbury Blues Aesthetic (RBA), a nine-piece jazz band that featured his compositions in conjunction with works by Charles Mingus, Thelonius Monk, and Stevie Wonder.

Salim Washington is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Studies in American Music and Professor of Music at Brooklyn College. He is a member of Robert O’Meally’s Jazz Study Group at Columbia University. Washington is a widely respected scholar of music and African American culture and has written articles and coauthored, with Farah Jasmine Griffin, Clawing at the Limits of Cool: The Collaboration of John Coltrane and Miles Davis, 1955–1961 (St. Martin’s Press).

Highly sought after as a lecturer, Washington has given numerous presentations about jazz and led workshops in the United States, Lebanon, and Ireland, and in Paris at the Bill Evans Conservatory, Ecole Musical Nationale du Moçambique, the Sorbonne, and many other esteemed institutions. Additionally, Washington’s research has led him to live in Brazil and South Africa, where he studied the people’s music and culture, especially their expressions of jazz.

Salim’s status as a respected scholar has yielded many honors and fellowships, including the prestigious Fulbright Scholars Fellowship, the Ann Plato Fellowship at Trinity College, the W.E.B. DuBois Fellowship at Harvard University, and the Wolfe Institute Fellowship at Brooklyn College.

Washington’s work has taken him around the world, but he understands the importance of working locally, ensuring that his artistry and scholarship is accessible to people from all walks of life. From prisons to universities, Salim’s musical and intellectual seminars are known to be transformative for those who attend. “When you play, if the people are with you, you can feel it…a transformation occurs that casts away all boundaries,” Washington recalls as he describes a moving seminar at a Nebraska prison.

Salim carries a deep-rooted resolve to learn from and extend the traditions of African-American musical giants such as Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, John Coltrane, Sarah Vaughn, Mahalia Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Curtis Mayfield. But when it comes to the music commonly known as jazz, Washington is grounded by an important and, some may argue, uncommon view: Jazz is “not just a disembodied art form, but it’s something that exists for people in specific places and times for specific reasons. This is a spiritual music because its birth comes from times when the social, political, and economic realities [for Black people] were full of terror and oppression. Yet in the face of this, there was a certain kind of nation-building, [there was the] establishment of culture and institutions” that aided in our survival of that terror. That spiritual essence is what I’m intimately involved with as a musician.”

Washington can be heard as a leader on Love in Exile (Accurate Records), Harlem Homecoming (Ujam Records), Live at St. Nick’s (CimpOL), and Strings (Cadence). And he has recorded as a sideman with such artists as Billy Skinner, Carl Grubbs, Oliver Lake, Katy Roberts, Henry Cook, Ahmed Abdullah, Fred Ho, Brian McCree, Jabbo Ware, Reggie Nicholson, Onaje Allan Gumbs, Victor Lewis, Joe Bonner, Anthony Braxton. He currently holds chairs in the dynamic ensembles of Fred Ho’s Green Monster Big Band and Afro Asian Music Ensemble, Donald Smith’s Six Bashiri, Kuumba Frank Lacy’s Vibe Tribe, James “Jabbo” Ware’s Me We and Them Orchestra, and Ahmed Abdullah’s Diaspora, among others.

Salim’s latest CDs are Uptown in Motown, Salim Washington and the Harlem Arts Ensemble (Live at the Detroit International Jazz Festival) and eThekwini Hip! Salim Washington and Friends in Durban, South Africa [“eThekwini” is the Zulu name for Durban].

“Mbaqanga: The Social Valences of Jazz in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. (2009)

“A More Perfect Union: Arts, Activism, and Conversation,” University of Pennsylvania. (2008)

“Race and Academia in Jazz,” a roundtable at the Rose Room, Lincoln Center, New York. (2007)

“Coleman Hawkins’ Musical Legacy, Body, and Soul: A Symposium and Exhibit Honoring the 100th Birthday of Coleman Hawkins,” Columbia University. (2004)

“Changing Role of the Academy in the United States,” at La Casa de las Americas, Havana, Cuba.

“The Concept of ‘Flow’ in Rap Music,” at the April in Paris Conference, sponsored by the Centre d’Etudes Afro-Américaines, Universitè de la Sorbonne. (1996)

Salim Washington’s Live at St. Nick’s offers a hearty sampling of the artist’s lengthy stint at New York City’s St. Nick’s music club…. One thing is for certain: This is live jazz at its very finest.

—Glenn Astarita, Jazz Review

“Salim Washington’s Harlem Homecoming is a celebration of what this music ought to be all about. It’s also some kind of antidote to all the technically proficient but ultimately clinical modern mainstream stuff, and its uninhibited joyfulness brings a smile to the face and a fire to the heart…. Anyone eager to have their faith in this music restored—and those who suffer from jaded ear syndrome—will be doing themselves a favor by hearing this one.”

—Nic Jones, All About Jazz

“If a person had to choose only one adjective to describe Love In Exile, it would be lush. Exuberant, inspired, and optimistic also apply, but the lush nature of Salim Washington's melodies and arrangements is the thing that stands out the most about Love In Exile, the tenor saxman/flutist’s first album as a leader.... Like Duke Ellington’s bands, Washington and the RBA prove that one can be lush and gritty at the same time.... This fine CD demonstrated that Washington’s nonet was quite deserving of national exposure.”

—Alex Henderson, All Music Guide

“Love in Exile was a powerful statement of jazz in the post-Coltrane tradition, steeped in the legacy of the Black Arts movement while wearing its agenda lightly. The same bittersweet brew of urban exhilaration and melancholy pervades the work of Washington’s new venture, the Harlem Arts Ensemble.”

—Siddhartha Mitter, Boston Globe

“Most magical on Saturday were the meetings between Africa and Africa in America .... The evening was packed with musical challenges...it was a vigorous intellectual debate, conducted entirely without words.”

—Gwen Ansell, Business Day