Bebop, tradition, and what is wrong with jazz education

Barry called himself an inveterate (habitual) bebopper. He considered bebop the beginning and the end of music so far, so all that is left is to build onto it, because he did not believe music had gone any higher. Some people think music has advanced, he said, but in his heart he knew it hadn’t.

Passing It On0:00

In a 1985 TV profile Barry described himself as still a bebopper who couldn’t play any other way. At the Jazz Cultural Theater, his own room, he told players that if they wanted to play other kinds of music there were plenty of other places to go: his would be a jazz house, bebop, jazz according to tradition.

NBC News profile at the Jazz Cultural Theatre0:000:351:47

Asked to define his piano style, Barry placed himself in the line of Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan and Bud Powell, players who keep up the tradition of Charlie Parker and Monk.

Barry Harris Spanish TV21:50

Asked about the modern jazz scene, Barry joked that he considers himself the most modern player around. He remembered when Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett could barely play, and said he hadn’t heard anything since that he would call a real advance, so for him modern means his own approach.

Interview on Italian television2:132:473:21

Barry’s stated philosophy: he would rather be one of the few than one of the many. If he suddenly became popular, he said, he would suspect something was wrong and change his style.

Small chords, not big ones0:000:33

Speaking on Spanish TV, Barry noted that about 13 musicians had died in the first months of that year. That is why the techniques of bebop piano have to be taught and handed on to young players before his generation disappears, and why he was teaching in Spain.

Barry Harris Spanish TV22:29

Standing outside a club in New York, Barry was told by someone that he didn’t seem to like jazz. All he could do was laugh, because he regards himself as jazz, meaning what he considers real jazz, just as he believes in real classical music. Much of the messy playing heard today, he said, makes no sense to him.

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Now that he is old, Barry says, he will speak his mind. He disagrees with the common view that Miles Davis, Coltrane, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock are what jazz is, says he doesn’t believe in the modal stuff or in Miles as the greatest thing in the world, and thinks they corrupted the music. He believes in real jazz as he believes in real classical music, and openly admits he is prejudiced against certain music.

Jazz schools and the basics0:000:33Believe: a talk to musicians9:4910:52

Barry also criticised tenor players who all try to sound like Coltrane and play the tenor up high, like an alto.

Jazz schools and the basics1:06

Jazz festivals, Barry complained, have turned into rhythm-and-blues and rock festivals. He found it absurd that Herbie Hancock, after making money with rhythm and blues and rock in Hollywood, could headline a jazz festival, and recalled finding Elton John as the star of a jazz festival in Trinidad. There are many would-be jazz musicians, he said, but not many real ones.

Jazz schools and the basics1:39Believe: a talk to musicians11:2711:59

Barry enjoyed festivals but preferred teaching, travelling everywhere as what he called the international teacher, to steer people away from what he felt the music had become. At jam sessions everywhere, he said, people play modal music modelled on Miles Davis, Coltrane, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock and take it for jazz, which he does not. His answer was simply to try to correct it through teaching.

Believe: a talk to musicians0:371:1010:52

Barry had no use for modes. Told that students must learn all the modes, he said he had never known a mode in his life, though he had played jazz all his life (more than seventy years by the time of one talk), and that the insistence on modes made no sense to him. It is one of the main reasons he disagreed with most schools.

The Wonderful World of Barry Harris MOVIE (released Dec 15, 2020 on his 91st birthday)5:24Accepting the Bruce Lundvall Visionary Award1:452:18Artists House Master Class Barry Harris - Student Interviews After Concert11:14

The people writing pattern books, Barry argued, did not learn to play from the books they wrote. They learned by playing with big bands and playing the blues, and had no time for studying modes.

Artists House Master Class Barry Harris - Student Interviews After Concert10:4111:14

Barry says he has travelled the world and finds teachers wrong all over it. What puzzles him most is whom the colleges asked about how to teach: not Hank Jones, John Lewis, Dick Katz or John Bunch, the players his generation learned from. In a session with a longtime associate, he said the two of them were trying to show some of the things that are right.

Jazz theory, part 1, with score0:020:35Jazz theory, part 1: key families a minor third apart0:351:12

Being a jazz musician, Barry says, takes street knowledge. He grew up learning in the street, when there was no such thing as a jazz school; coming from the projects, he and his peers learned from each other and from listening to records. Jazz schools, in his view, appeared once people realised there was money in them, and their founders never went to jazz musicians to ask what should be taught.

Believe: a talk to musicians2:5420:51Jazz schools and the basics0:00

Barry said he has had Berklee graduates come to him, and told of one whose story involved the diminished seventh chord. He also recalled going to the University of Michigan, where he played a chord for the graduating jazz piano class that, he said, they had never played. His point: whatever the diploma says, you really should know something as basic as the diminished chord.

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Barry told one class that the golden age of the music has passed and we are now in a dark age, so a Renaissance is needed, and it should start in schools like theirs. He said he had visited about 30 schools trying to find one to adopt as his school, and a school that is his must know things such as where the ands are.

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Barry felt he should really be teaching the teachers rather than the students, so that the fallacies going around the schools would stop. He noted that schools such as Berklee, North Texas and New England Conservatory never invited him back, which he put down to intimidating the teachers, and he talked of running a paid seminar just for teachers.

Interview: Detroit, Bud Powell and the shuffle11:54The last train to Monk: an interview30:4831:29Interview on Italian television10:45

Barry regretted that US schools cut art whenever they need to save money, which leaves fewer painters and fewer jazz musicians.

Interview on Italian television11:2011:54

Barry chose not to teach at colleges, which mostly serve students whose parents can afford to send them. He would rather teach people who can’t afford college, and he made a promise to keep a class going in New York for as long as he lived.

Interview on Italian television13:0213:35