Kevin Harris Talks Jazz Piano, Pan-African Music, and the African-Influenced Method

Jazz pianist Kevin Harris says his greatest desire is to constantly grow, evolve, improve, and advance. This passion and eagerness for learning stems back to his childhood, where he had his first and most influential music education, in a gospel church in Lexington, Kentucky. 

He says that what he learned from that experience is that if we want to excel at a musical instrument, we must enthusiastically, rigorously, and repetitiously immerse ourselves in an environment where that skill is not just taught and understood, but continually experienced. For many people who have grown up in and around the Pan-African influenced culture, this participatory process of learning music is a given, be it groove, ornamenting a melody, or simply expanding notated music to sound more soulful. 

In the Berklee Online course he authored, Advanced Jazz Piano, Harris explores the jazz repertoire through the lens of the African-Influenced Method (AIM). Using African American musical traditions as his backdrop, he guides his students through core elements of jazz music, dissecting harmony, melody, rhythm, and movement. Each week students study a different artist who has contributed to the evolution of jazz piano, learning about their lives and the innovative techniques that made these artists so revolutionary.

Could you talk about your experience growing up, going to church, and experiencing gospel music, and how that influenced you?

A lot of times in academia, we learn that, “oh, you’re going to major in music,” “you’re going to major in dance,” or “you’re going to major in singing.” Often these are viewed as separate things, but I consider myself quite fortunate, not only musically, but culturally, that those are connected. From a Pan-African culture perspective and many African languages, there’s no difference between the word “dance” and the word “singing.” They overlap a lot. 

I was born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky. That’s home for me, and I continued my undergraduate studies in Kentucky. But my upbringing in church was that every choir rehearsal as a kid—every Sunday experience, every Wednesday experience—was about being able to experience [this overlap of music, singing, and dancing]. 

Another thing I would say about the importance of just me being able to prioritize my own upbringing in this particular course is that there’s an overlap in music culture. When we have the sacred, in my case, Black gospel music and more of the secular, whether it be funk, pop, Motown, the list goes on of Pan-African influence music in America, they overlap. If you go back to the great Thomas Dorsey who wrote over 400 blues songs, but at the same time wrote very well-known Black gospel music like “Precious Lord,” so many people sing that in church. Then you have this overlap over and over again. You have Ray Charles, who pioneered a lot of American soul, R&B, but at the same time comes from a Black gospel background. Aretha Franklin, again, coming from a Black gospel background.

The third thing I appreciate about my background is the connection I feel with Pan-African culture, especially through its rhythms and harmonic approaches. For example, when you listen to Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag,” you can hear a very distinct clave rhythm that also appears in Cuban music. This overlap is almost profound.

Describe what you call the African Influenced Method (AIM) and how you approach it in your own music?

So the concept itself, African Influenced Method has been something I’ve been teaching for over 20 years. I’ve been teaching in an array of different settings, sometimes it’s a group lesson, or a private lesson, or it’s a masterclass. So over time, what I’ve come to really prioritize and also appreciate is that students not only enjoy the nuts and bolts, reading the notes on the page, but also understanding the culture and the cultural ways of learning music or anything in that regard. It’s great to have an approach to learning music that goes beyond just the notes on the page.

 It’s great to have an approach to learning music that goes beyond just the notes on the page. 

This method that I work with starts off just by understanding the concept. Say for instance, we’re checking out the music of the great Mary Lou Williams, a jazz pianist that embodies early styles of jazz piano from stride all the way up to boogie woogie, rock ’n’ roll. She just does it all, I mean bad to the bone. She’s the very first pianist we look at in my class. So in incorporating this particular method, we look at one piece every single week. We just take one piece from one different piano player, and we look at different concepts, but we don’t just say, “Well, there it is! Here’s a blues lick, good luck.” We say: “Here’s a blues lick that she played. What’s the context? Now let’s sing it. Don’t touch the piano yet. Let’s sing it. Let’s clap to it. Let’s move our bodies to it, get it in our blood and our bones.” Many cultures say these things because they are important. Otherwise, when we finally sit down at a piano or any instrument, where’s the feeling? Where’s the ability to lock up with other people in the band? How do you lock up with them if there’s no kind of cultural importance there? And that’s what it’s all coming back to. I’m trying to get to that.

When in your life did you first encounter the specific teachings of AIM?

The African influence method I think is something that I would say over time teaching, I’ve noticed some things that have just been a little bit more successful. For example, trying to teach, “feel,” “swing,” a funk groove, even solo piano that just kind of grooves and settles in the pocket and feels good. I’ve noticed that the less I talk about it or just provide sheet music instead, give the students something to play along with but also going back to that whole language cultural thing that they can imitate, works so much easier. So that method is something that’s developed over time. It wasn’t necessarily something that was taught to me as a method by someone else, but just me thinking about culturally how I came up, how other four- or five-year-old drummers and piano players, and a lot of Black gospel churches there are very similar in parallels. Young four- and five-year-old kids can easily learn a language. It’s very similar with music; it’s just another language. 

 Young four- and five-year-old kids can easily learn a language. It’s very similar with music; it’s just another language.

You know what else is interesting about that is, and it’s definitely related to this concept in my opinion, is that usually if you talk to someone, and maybe you’ve been studying Spanish or Italian or Swahili or Mandarin, and you meet someone, you’ve been practicing that language for a while, you can tell where a person is from that grew up in that culture, and you can tell when someone may have an accent or maybe they can tell where this person is from the north and that person is from the south. That’s all very relevant because when we teach and learn music, that’s what we’re doing. What you would do on a C major 7th chord because you’ve been checking out lots of Jerry Allen and what I would do on a C major 7th chord, because I’ve been checking out lots of Herbie Hancock is going to be different, but they’re both C major 7th chords. Again, it becomes very much like an oral tradition, but it’s also in many ways relating to that cultural element of how we learn languages too.

You have also studied music from the Western classical perspective. Are there aspects of that education that you choose to keep in your lessons, and are there aspects you try to get away from?

With most music, especially at great institutions like Berklee, a majority of the music is notated when you teach a concept, although I would argue it is just as relevant if you learn it by the oral tradition too. As a matter of fact, I can think of situations where it’s much better to teach it by the oral tradition, but because things are notated, some students just soak up the information a little bit better when it’s notated. 

That’s how we communicate with each other, so it’s important. So in that sense, yes, obviously I expect them to be able to read. It’s technically an advanced jazz piano course, so we don’t discuss a lot of “what is a Dorian scale?” or “how can I read this passage?” It’s just kind of up to them to be able to do that. So I would say that a lot of those basics that a person would learn in fundamental piano playing doesn’t necessarily have to be classical music. If you think about it, there’s advanced jazz piano playing that’s not classical, where you can still learn pretty good technique. A majority of it tends to be classical, because that’s just kind of the fundamentals for a lot of cultures around the world. When I say classical, I’m talking about Western classical. Obviously there’s Indian classical music, there’s Asian classical music. … So even that being the case, yes, I do bring a lot of those elements that I learned Western classical music to the classes as well. 

Throughout all of history we’ve been borrowing stuff from each other, but do you think there is a line where it turns into cultural appropriation?

Yeah. I’m glad you asked this question because people need to be asking it. It’s very important. My answer is going to be simplified. I think that type of question deserves a lot of discussion because there’s a lot of nuances to it. I’m basically looking for—and I’m not just talking about Black music, I’m not just talking about Pan-African influence music—a form of respect toward the culture. If someone says, “here’s this type of music, I’m going to sing like this. I’m going to dance like this and do everything else, but it is not influenced by Pan-African-influenced music at all. It’s not African. It doesn’t come from the States. This is totally my own.” Then I disagree. I just completely disagree, and I think a lot of people would argue that it’s some pretty dangerous territory, but the majority of the people I know who have done their homework and know where it comes from in a respectful way, say, “yeah, it comes from here.” 

STUDY JAZZ PIANO WITH KEVIN HARRIS

And the same thing goes for if there’s a food that you eat that’s been influenced by a phenomenal dish that you discovered in Mexico City, then you need to say that out loud. I mean, you can’t just call it your own. You can’t just tweak it a little bit and then call it your own. To me, to answer your question, is to say out loud where it comes from. Respect that culture when you’re passing it on, talk about it, put it in your history books or put it in your academic books or whatever. As you’re passing it on, just say something about it and it becomes much more acceptable to me. Maybe “acceptable” is the wrong word, because there are so many layers to it, of course, but it’s very important hearing, knowing, feeling that respect of the culture, no matter who it is, no matter what the culture or the tradition is.

Have you had students coming from more classical backgrounds having more difficulty engaging with jazz piano, or some of them maybe even being like “You totally changed my perspectives on this!”?

Yeah. I do have more students in my class that come from a Western classical background who are just coming up. Maybe they’ve already experienced music, primarily learning by ear. And to answer your question, a majority of those students—after practicing and with this method specifically of just moving and talking and singing along with the phrases before they start playing them—they do tell me how much of a benefit that is. Not that they’re not used to dancing and singing. Almost all of us do that when we’re kids. We grow up singing whatever. But the continuation of that, especially those who kind of grew up with the Western classical background, they grow up somehow being convinced that what they do is “serious music” and everything else is not, which is a big problem. I’m just going to say that you would think one, music being Western classical music is serious and the others aren’t. At a school like Berklee, we’re not really using a lot of that terminology at all, which I can appreciate. But those students, as they kind of experience the music, and dance, and sing, they realize how much of a reawakening of what they already have in them is there. And I think the beautiful thing about Pan-African culture is as you continue to play, even when you become elementary, junior high, high school, professional musicians, that never really goes away. That connectedness of this music is to move to, it’s to dance to, it’s to cry to. Again, several cultures have this all over the world, but because that’s the way I grew up, and that’s again, a cultural foundation for so much of the music that is studied at Berklee, it’s just very important that I talk about that. That’s why I’m proud of just being able to share that method for me.  

What have you learned from the experience of teaching Advanced Jazz Piano?

Now that I’ve been teaching the course for a few semesters, I noticed that first of all, there’s students from all parts of the world, and many times they are just learning how to groove, and how to find this groove. They can read the notes on the page just fine, but just being able to groove and feel like, “oh, wow, that funk groove or even that odd meter groove, I now have a better idea of what that’s supposed to feel like.” And to me, that’s very important, but you can’t put into words what something is supposed to really feel like until you just do it. So that has been a very good feeling when students write me during the third, fourth, or fifth week and go, “oh, this is really settling in. I had no idea that that’s what you were trying to convey, but now I get it,” and then in week six, week seven, week eight, and week nine, going on, it just kind of locks in. 

There’s an importance to, “wow beyond the notes on the page, this is what this is supposed to feel like.” Probably more importantly though, is knowing that once the class is over, they’ll be able to go on and record, perform, do sessions, rehearse with other people, just having the most important priority of locking in rhythm, knowing that that’s important. Instead of thinking, “oh, I got the notes. I understand the harmony, I’ll be fine.” No, no, no. They now understand the priority of locking in and all the notes and harmonies go on top of that. So yeah, it’s been a truly great experience doing this online.