tag:donaldharrison.com,2005:/blogs/news?p=2News2023-09-20T21:57:44-05:00Big Chief Donald Harrisonfalsetag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/72764622023-09-20T21:57:44-05:002024-01-31T01:59:20-06:00The Big Chief Donald Harrison Quartet at The Jazz Forum 10/27 and 10/28<p>THE JAZZ FORUM </p><p>presents:</p><p>The Big Chief Donald Harrison Quartet with Nori Naraoka bass, Brian Richburg drums, and Dan Kaufman piano</p><p>Friday Oct. 27 7:00 PM performance tickets: </p><p><a class="no-pjax" href="https://www.instantseats.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=buy.event&eventID=92822E36-AD4B-A0B2-0C27CD4BCE2716C3">https://www.instantseats.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=buy.event&eventID=92822E36-AD4B-A0B2-0C27CD4BCE2716C3</a></p><p>Friday Oct. 28 9:30 PM performance tickets: </p><p><a class="no-pjax" href="https://www.instantseats.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=buy.event&eventID=92822CB5-966A-7078-550C53A5F75B684E">https://www.instantseats.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=buy.event&eventID=92822CB5-966A-7078-550C53A5F75B684E</a></p><p>Saturday Oct. 28 7:00 PM performance tickets: </p><p><a class="no-pjax" href="https://www.instantseats.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=buy.event&eventID=92822E36-AD4B-A0B2-0C27CD4BCE2716C3">https://www.instantseats.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=buy.event&eventID=92822E36-AD4B-A0B2-0C27CD4BCE2716C3</a></p><p>Saturday Oct. 28 9:30 PM performance tickets: </p><p><a class="no-pjax" href="https://bandzoogle.com/controlpanel/visual_editor#/pages/3126496/features/blog-feature-340343/controlpanel/blog_features/340343/posts/new">https://bandzoogle.com/controlpanel/visual_editor#/pages/3126496/features/blog-feature-340343/controlpanel/blog_features/340343/posts/new</a></p><p> </p>Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/72764472023-09-20T20:24:41-05:002024-01-31T01:59:20-06:00Smooth Jazz Top 100<p>Donald Harrison enters the smoothjazz.net top 100 with the “The Magic Touch,” smooth jazz single. The song features Chuck Loeb, Chris Botti, Michael White, and McKinley Williams. It is the first installment of his multi-genre singles release which feature the same song played in nine different genres. Look for the nouveau swing, post-bop, reggae, tropical-salsa, second-line, bossa nova, blues, and trap jazz hip-hop versions soon. </p><p><a class="no-pjax" href="https://www.smoothjazznetwork.com/top-100-chart">Top 100 | sjnetwork (smoothjazznetwork.com)</a></p>5:18Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688432017-06-10T19:00:00-05:002023-12-10T12:51:39-06:00Liner Notes for Donald Harrison's upcoming recording, "The Eclectic Jazz Revolution of Unity
<p><strong>Meta-Morpheus: Donald Harrison’s Eclectic Jazz Revolution of Unity </strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>By Greg Thomas</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>Donald Harrison’s musical universe is vast, populated with planets called “genres”—orbits of stylistic convention. Jazz is his sun, the blues his moon, with soul and funk the earthy undertone of his universe, yet, as you’ll hear, his planetary reach extends into far regions, musical galaxies.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Imagine a wheel within a wheel centered by a black hub. The straight lines extending from the hub to the edges of the inner wheel become wavy lines swirling to the circumference of the next wheel. Harrison is the hub; the lines multi-generations of masters directly influencing his integral conception and execution. The hub vibrates; the inner wheel begins a slow clockwise spin as the outer turns counter-clockwise. As velocity increases the mystic wheels transform into a single black dot amidst a rotating circle in your forehead, sending rainbow rays of light to the stars. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Such a vision of cultural and spiritual metamorphosis infuses this two-cd set, a sample of Harrison’s musical creativity over the past 12 or so years. So beware, or, rather, <em>be-aware </em>that pre-conceived ideas of style or genre will be violated. Even those familiar with the range of Harrison’s musical interests may be shocked by the end of this eclectic trip.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In the 1980s, he reasoned through intuition that the African-derived music of his birthplace New Orleans had elements of swing, soul, and funk. Adding more parts to the whole, he birthed Nouveau Swing, where New Orleans elements dance with hip hop, reggae, rhumba and rock.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Yet his touring and recordings with masters such as Ron Carter, Eddie Palmieri, Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Art Blakey, Roy Haynes, and Miles Davis grounded his reverence for tradition while pushing him, perpetually, to further dimensions. Harrison engages in an ongoing dialogue with various forms of music, altering what writer Albert Murray calls the “emotional scale” of these styles along the way.</p>
<p>That’s how nouveau swing morphed into what he calls “quantum jazz,” an idea Brown University physicist Stephon Alexander gravitated to for his 2016 book, <em>The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"My quantum jazz concept came from discovering that I could incorporate how the universe works into a musical landscape,” Harrison says. “I now see, hear and understand how to utilize the way light travels, concepts of three and four dimensional space, and the way neutrons, protons, electrons, photons and atoms interact into jazz and other styles of music."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The first disc begins with this innovation.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Harrison’s group eases us into his new paradigm on the first cut, “Ron Carter.” The rhythmic and time elasticity of Miles Davis’s New Testament quintet in the 1960s is a clear antecedent. The song form employs breaks and mood shifts via dynamics. Harrison’s note flurries employ smooth and hard articulation, and calls upon the spirits of Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter, as he’s backed by a breathing rhythm section that keeps time, but isn’t bound by it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Quantum Leap” is the concept in full force and effect, meta-swing, the song maintaining resilient forward motion yet skipping time at will, hopping and shifting, with Harrison calling upon saxophone ancestors as he makes a definitive statement of his own. “The Amazing Demme” employs this groove-time-shift method in waltz time. Harrison’s challenging saxophone technique is the highlight of “Crest Rider,” octave leaps relaying the melody “in different strata.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The ensemble shifts again for “Dat’s Jazz,” but this time innovates on the ground, via vernacular, bottom up. An extension of nouveau swing, “Dat’s Jazz” features Harrison vocalizing the mind, body and soul message of the music:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Check it:</p>
<p>I hope you hear me cognoscenti</p>
<p>‘Cause I’m talking to you, and here’s the cue</p>
<p>To pass down</p>
<p>The true essence of a higher echelon</p>
<p>Of blues-drenched music</p>
<p>That was born</p>
<p>For a people whose only outlet</p>
<p>Was to look inside, and</p>
<p>Find the beauty</p>
<p>And then their light shine</p>
<p>For the world to see</p>
<p>Jazz music is what that be, jazz music is what that be.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Harrison’s wakeup call to musical integration references Pops, Miles, Bird, and ‘Trane, and responds with funk, R&B, line dancing, scat, and swing, even shades of the vocal harmonies of Take 6. If we can bridge musical divides, Harrison implies, we can bring the people together.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“The Mysterious One” feels transitional, its modal sound evoking Miles Davis’s electric period. “The Bamboula Effect” opens swinging, and transitions to a New Orleans bamboula rhythm mixed with the swing beat. Along with “Hu-Tah-Nay” on disc two and the astounding three-part suite that closes the recording, this cut extends and elaborates his downhome roots, and his inheritance of the role of Big Chief of the Congo Square Nation Afro-New Orleans Cultural Group—a unique status among jazz musicians. His ballad version of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” recorded after Katrina, demonstrates how such a “happy song could show the melancholy” mood of the time. On this cut especially, the bell of Harrison’s alto sax rings with air stream warmth so his feelings would be “more evident</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“The Magic Touch” is an excursion into the instrumental R&B zone. The acoustic version, more intensely jazz in improvisational drive, is on disc one, with the smooth jazz version, featuring Chris Botti and Chuck Loeb, on disc two. Check out how Harrison adapts the formula of what is called smooth jazz “to create a different swagger for modern jazz.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Tippin’ with Roy,” drummer Troy Davis powering in the spirit of elder master Roy Haynes, is a dramatic, no-nonsense tune swingin’ in the bridge. By the end, the ensemble intensity invokes ancestors: Harrison pours sonic libations to John Coltrane’s sheets of sound and late-period force. The ballad “When Mary Sings” is a gentle rhapsody with inflections from soul, jazz, and European chamber music. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Ending disc one with yet another innovation, Harrison’s “The Sand Castle Hunter” is advanced funk/swing (or high-level fusion) with modulations and chromatic chord play. Runs and asymmetric figures go up and down stairs of hard groove; Latin jazz is incorporated via allusions to a famous Dizzy Gillespie song you’ll likely recognize.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The first seven songs of disc two are powered by a rhythm section led by organ master Dr. Lonnie Smith, with mellow funk (“The Doctor is In”), gritty funk (“James Brown”) straight and funky blues (“Blues People” and “November Funk”), a New Orleans chant jazz-style (“Hu-Tah-Nay”) relaying the varieties of organ jazz experience. The first song on side two, however, is something even more.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“TLC,” a sassy uptempo number, features perhaps Harrison’s greatest short improvisation on record. His articulation draws from the three Mount Rushmore alto saxophonists of the first half of jazz history—Johnny Hodges, Benny Carter, and Charlie Parker, with bebop lines divined from his early training with Barry Harris, and blues systems derived from Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson. Riding waves of swang like it ain’t no thang, all these influences transmute through the hub of Harrison’s honed style, quantum jazz flurries interspersed like blues up and down, not missing a beat or change. This song will have your insides dancing, a flying magic carpet ride in a lucid dream. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The New Orleans-native learned the modern Chicago stepping dance, and was inspired to pen the happy, clapping “Stepper’s Paradise,” a laid-back backbeat tune with Harrison and his daughter Victoria on lead vocals. Put this song on to kick off any soulful house or club party and watch heads begin (and continue) to bob.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The recording closes with Harrison’s first orchestral recording, a three-part suite, “Congo Square.” At one minute, part I features a tribal chant derived from the offshoot culture of New Orleans Congo Square. Part two showcases the full orchestra galloping forth, then calming, like a transition from day to night, from the heroism of the formerly enslaved who survived with humanity intact through culture to those to whom equality and freedom for others is a nightmare. Throughout, Harrison placed secret melodies known by a select few other big chiefs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Part III is a revelation, with a small jazz ensemble melding with the orchestra so well that the orchestra members rose in a standing ovation at the recording’s conclusion. Such a reaction is apt for this entire two-cd set, which traces the unfolding of mastery, the stretching of roots to new horizons, and music as infinity in sound. As with the Morpheus character played by Laurence Fishburne in the Matrix movies, Harrison’s music beckons us to choose between the red pill of hard and fast industry genres determined by men in dark suits or the revolutionary blue(s) pill of musical unity and integration. </p>
Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688412014-07-20T19:00:00-05:002023-12-10T13:16:31-06:00New Facebook Page
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Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688402013-03-30T19:00:00-05:002023-05-04T04:20:49-05:00Super Sunday 2013
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGifCcyn648&fb_action_ids=2954039587734&fb_action_types=yt-fb-app%3Aupload&fb_source=timeline_og&action_object_map=%7B%222954039587734%22%3A154001858096147%7D&action_type_map=%7B%222954039587734%22%3A%22yt-fb-app%3Aupload%22%7D&action_ref_map=%5B%5D" data-imported="1">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGifCcyn648&fb_action_ids=2954039587734&fb_action_types=yt-fb-app%3Aupload&fb_source=timeline_og&action_object_map=%7B%222954039587734%22%3A154001858096147%7D&action_type_map=%7B%222954039587734%22%3A%22yt-fb-app%3Aupload%22%7D&action_ref_map=%5B%5D</a></p>
Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688392011-08-25T19:00:00-05:002023-12-10T10:56:49-06:00Donald Harrison - Ron Carter - Billy Cobham
<p class="product-image-zoom product-image"><img src="http://media.spincds.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/265x/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/q/2/q20516upq1i.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="This Is Jazz" id="image" /></p>
<p class="product-image-zoom product-image">On sale September 6</p>
<p class="product-image-zoom product-image">For their second Half Note issue, the power trio of Donald Harrison, Ron Carter, and Billy Cobham declare themselves spokesmen for a kind of exploratory improvisation and interplay known only to seasoned jazz professionals. Staunch individualists all, they come together with a unified voice of alto, bass and drums - at once steeped in jazz's richly variegated traditions yet forward-thinking in the cause of new creative expression. The group play here is all about a stylized call and response, featuring guys with excellent listening skills and the means to keep the conversation compelling. Recorded Live at the Blue Note.</p>
Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688382011-03-27T19:00:00-05:002022-05-19T08:07:01-05:00Big Chief Donald Sr.
<p>My father, Big Chief Donald always talked about how great jazz musicians were. He never put them down which made me understand to respect them. He would have never talked bad about Louis Armstrong and never would have let me tallk bad about Louis Armstrong. My father also never put down any other Mardi Gras Indians which also taught me to respect other human beings. I think him for the wisdom he imparted that gave me humility and showed me to honor those who are great.</p>
Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688372011-01-09T18:00:00-06:002023-10-18T04:41:58-05:00Composes piece for LPO
<p>Donald Harrison wrote his first piece for the LPO before Katrina. Now Harrison is begining an orchestral piece written from the inside perspectives of being a Big Chief in the culture of New Orleans, playing with modern jazz greats, playing in the brass bands of New Orleans as a youth. Donald Harrison is the only modern jazz musician that has participated in The Mardi Gras Indian culture of New Orleans. He started as the little Chief of the Creole Wild West in 1963 at the age of 2 years-old. Harrison promises the piece will be an inside view of New Orleans culture. </p>
Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688362010-10-10T19:00:00-05:002023-12-13T21:48:47-06:00Donald Harrison transitions Mardi Gras Indian tradtion back to Congo Square with Afro New Orleans culture.
<h2>
<span class="news_title">Donald Harrison transitions Mardi Gras Indian tradtion back to Congo Square with Afro New Orleans culture.</span> <span class="news_dash">- </span><span class="date">October 11, 2010</span>
</h2>
<div class="notes">
<p style="text-align: justify;">Donald Harrison is The Big Chief of The Congo Square Nation and his mission is to keep alive secret aspects of Congo Square not known conciously by most Mardi Gras Indians. Harrison has named his faction Afro New Orleans Culture because now is the time to put the focus on the individuals that keep New Orleans root culture alive. The truth is there are many factions of Mardi Gras Indian culture and all are great components to the whole. For instance the faction that Chief Tootie Montana nurtured is the antithesis of Afro New Orleans culture and not part of the faction that Harrison is keeping alive. Harrison has put his focus on the secret elements Congo Square to insure well meaning and profit seeking outsiders won't destroy what is pristine and to keep alive a strong but hidden elements that many Mardi gras Indians are not privy to. Harrison says, "For New Orleans culture to surivive the most important parts of the culture must stay in exile until the world is ready to embrace them with respect." </p>
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Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688352010-06-01T19:00:00-05:002023-12-10T10:53:39-06:00Treme
<p><strong>Donald Harrison</strong> wears many hats on David Simon's new HBO series Treme. Harrison was contacted early on before production began and asked to be a consultant. He helped in developing characters based on his life in modern jazz music and New Orleans culture. The show developed 2 characters based on Harrison being a jazz musician with a father that is a Big Chief in the culture of New Orleans. The father, Altert Lambreaux is played by Clark Peters. The son, Delmond Lambreaux is played by Rob Brown. Harrison gets to interact with both characters in episodes 1, 6, and 10. His interaction takes place as a musician playing his own compositions, as an actor delivering lines in scenes with them, or as a Big Chief leading his Congo Nation Mardi Gras Indian group. Check Harrison out on HBO and make sure you tell HBO you like Harrison on their website.</p>
Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688342010-01-04T18:00:00-06:002023-12-10T10:54:14-06:00New Recording, "Quantum Leap," coming soon.
<p>Donald Harrison's just finished recording, "Quantum Leap," his most innovative classic jazz recording to date. The CD features a revolutionary update of the swing beat in addition to new composition installments to his signature, "Nouveau Swing," style of jazz. If you want to keep up with today's newest jazz sounds then, "Quantum Time," is a must have.</p>
Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688332009-01-18T18:00:00-06:002024-01-19T01:06:23-06:00Congo Square
<p>"Congo Square" Jazz Saxophonist Donald Harrison is the Big Chief of The Congo Nation Afro-New Orleans Cultural group which represents Congo Square in New Orleans culture. His father, Donald Harrison, Sr. was the Big Chief of four tribes and passed down the secret rituals and drum patterns of Congo Square to him. Harrison says, "That our culture is different than African culture but it has direct links to it. You have to start in New Orleans to understand it, not in Africa." His CD's, "Spirits of Congo Square," recorded in 2002 and, "Indian Blues," recorded in 1991 incorporate his concept of the swing beat merged with the Afro-New Orleans rhythms of Congo Square have influenced many jazz musicians.</p>
Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688322008-03-21T19:00:00-05:002023-12-10T10:57:24-06:00My young daughter is a producer-singer.
<p>My 17 year-old daughter produced and sang this song all by herself. I new she could write some great radio friendly tracks because she produces tracks for me. When I need today's sound she is first call. Check her out here: http://www.myspace.com/vickcansing</p>
Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688312008-03-14T19:00:00-05:002023-12-10T11:41:34-06:00I'm The Big Chief Congo Square
<p>Harrison begins Classical piece that chronicles his personal journey as the Big Chief of The Congo Nation, Afro-New Orleans Cultural Group. He say's This piece will put into sound my feeling of learning from my father Big Chief Donald Harrison, Sr. to the transition of becoming a Big Chief and everything I have to do each year."</p>
Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688302007-11-22T18:00:00-06:002022-03-09T01:34:45-06:00Sacrilegus New Orleans Cultural Chants
<p>My father taught me that I had to go through the ranks to earn the right to sing New Orleans cultural chants. I was taught that if you have not paid the dues and earned your respect from masking you should not chant prayers like Oh-Nah-Nay and Tu-Way-Pockey-Way. Musicians and others that chant without knowing what they are talking about show the deepest disrespect to our culture. They can sing songs that are not part of our ritual like Hey Pockey-Way, but they should not chant our traditional songs. When they do chant is a form of sacrilege.</p>
Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688292007-09-15T19:00:00-05:002022-02-08T20:44:44-06:00Donald Harrison is, "The Soul of New Orleans."
<p>It is no secret that Donald Harrison likes to twist phrases. He coined the phrase, "The Soul of New Orleans," as well as, "Party Gras," which are currently in wide use around the world. He recently revealed to us he has a come up with a new way to describe his insiders take on New Orleans music. You know after he tells us what it is all the rest of the musicians will keep it alive for him.</p>
Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688282007-08-13T19:00:00-05:002023-12-10T11:13:00-06:00Harrison completes 3D Vol. II
<p>Donald just completed 3D Vol II which is the second instalment of the his 3D trilogy. The recording is in the classic jazz genre and showcases his Nouveau Swing stlyle. Nouveau Swing merges swing music with the contemporary music that Harrison grew up dancing to. The first CD in the trilogy, "3D Vol. I," was in the smooth jazz genre and features Chris Botti, Chuck Loeb, and Eddie Palmieri. This latest CD features a host of New Orleans classic jazz musicians. They include drummers Troy Davis, 16 year-old Joe Dyson, bassists Mark Brooks, Roland Guerin, 16 year-old Max Moran, 15 year-old , pianist Jessie McBride, 19 year-old Victor Gould from Los Angeles, and 17 year-old Conun Papas.</p>
Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688272007-05-27T19:00:00-05:002023-05-30T08:22:32-05:00New Recordings
<p>Harrison completes trio recording that features, drummer Herman Jackson, and Bassist Chris Severin.
Harrison begins recording Indian Blues II.
Harrison almost finished recording 3D Vol II.
Harrison begins working on 3D Vol III.</p>
Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688262007-02-05T18:00:00-06:002023-12-10T11:01:53-06:00Person of The Year
<p>“Have you ever seen people build a home?†Donald Harrison asked a roomful of teenagers one Monday night in September at The Music Shed studio in the Garden District of New Orleans. “Well, you start with the foundation. And then you’ve got the support beams. If all that’s not intact, it won’t matter what you do — the whole thing will come crashing down.â€
Harrison was instructing local high-school and junior-high students, interns in an education program sponsored by the Tipitina’s Foundation, a nonprofit organization developed by one of the city’s iconic clubs. His point was the importance of mastering fundamentals before moving on to the inventive improvisation that makes jazz — like most New Orleans music — special.
Harrison knows a great deal about constructing a solo and, these days, whether he likes it or not, a thing or two about building a house. Like so many of his New Orleans neighbors, the first floor of his home in the Broadmoor section is stripped to its beams. By now, Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, the failure of the levees and the subsequent floods, seem nearly a distant memory: the nights spent sleeping in the ballroom of the Hyatt Regency; the difficulty of relocating to Baton Rouge; the first trip back to find his own home seriously damaged and his childhood house, where his mother still lived, mostly torn apart.
Stick to the “Sliver by the River,†the high-ground neighborhoods along the Mississippi’s banks, and you might think New Orleans is healing. Take a taxi from Louis Armstrong Airport to the French Quarter, and you’ll find scant evidence of Katrina’s wrath. But New Orleans is two cities now — one inching toward renewal, the other waiting for funding or any clear direction to the future. Favorite clubs still host favorite bands, but many of the musicians now travel from Atlanta or Baton Rouge for gigs. The culture that inspired and still shapes the sound of American music — in the form of jazz musicians, Mardi Gras Indians, Social Aid and Pleasure Club second-liners, and neighborhood brass bands — remains stuck in some painful limbo.
On a corner across the street from Harrison’s home, the elegant front façade is all that remains of another home, leaning precariously against three support beams. That’s what this city is like now — a shell of its former, historically significant self in need of preservation, teetering on the brink of utter collapse, yet still flashing beautiful details. Musicians like Harrison are back in New Orleans, working to rebuild their personal lives as well as the cultural landscape from which they sprang.
At 46, Harrison is in a position to grasp and address this crisis more completely than most musicians because his life and career embrace so much of what defines New Orleans culture. In his early teens, he began playing saxophone with Ernest “Doc†Paulin’s brass band, a seminal group for generations of players. He studied at New Orleans Center for Cultural Arts (NOCCA), the finishing school for a long list of jazz stars. He played in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, co-led a band with another hometown hero, trumpeter Terence Blanchard, and, later, became an important voice in Eddie Palmieri’s blend of salsa and jazz. An established jazz star who spent much of the 1980s and ’90s in New York City, Harrison is nonetheless best-known to some in his hometown as a Mardi Gras Indian chief and the son of Donald Harrison Sr., who was himself a Big Chief of four different Mardi Gras Indian tribes.
“The Mardi Gras Indian rhythms and chants were really the very first music that entered my consciousness,†Harrison said while sitting on the front stoop of his gutted home, squinting in the midday sun. “My mom remembers me tapping out the beats on the side of my crib.†But Harrison didn’t see the link between that formative influence and his modern-jazz career until the late ’80s, when he began participating with his father in those Mardi Gras Indian events he’d experienced as a child.
“I didn’t get the connection until I started coming out with the Indians again and my dad was singing [the traditional song] ‘Shallow Water.’ In the back of my head, I started hearing Art Blakey’s drums. And I thought ‘Wow, this is all starting to make sense.’†In 1991, Harrison recorded Indian Blues (Candid) — still the most intriguing combination of jazz and Mardi Gras Indian music I’ve heard — with musicians ranging from Cyrus Chestnut to Dr. John to Donald Harrison, Sr.
After his father’s death in 1988, Harrison became a Mardi Gras Indian chief and named his tribe Congo Nation in reference to New Orleans’ Congo Square, the one place in the United States where, during slave days, displaced Africans were allowed to play their native drums. The legacy of black New Orleans residents dressing up like Native Americans and parading on Mardi Gras Day dates back more than a century. It perpetuates not just an African consciousness, but, through costumes and other vestiges of American Indian culture, a bond with another oppressed and unappreciated people.
Harrison’s childhood in the 9th Ward was something out of a Norman Rockwell painting — that is, if you’re talking about “The Problem We All Live With,†Rockwell’s 1964 rendering of a 6-year-old black girl being led into the all-white William Frantz Elementary School, the first such integration in Louisiana. Harrison, who was born in 1960, attended Frantz. He understands the music he was born into as a primary statement of African-American pride. “In America people of African descent are taught that where we came from is nothing. We have a day to celebrate Irish-American pride, St. Patrick’s Day, and a great parade in New York to celebrate Italian-American heritage. We have to come to grips that people of African descent are important, too. The pageantry of the Mardi Gras Indians means something.â€
When Harrison hears people speak today about why New Orleans should not be rebuilt, he hears the comment as another negation he just can’t accept. “That’s like someone saying ‘Your home and your culture don’t matter.’ But we do, and people need to recognize and honor that. Every time I wear the feathers and beads as a Mardi Gras chief, every time I pick up my saxophone and play, every hour I spend with a student, is my response.â€
“Donald embodies what it means to be a New Orleans musician in terms of historical roots, traditional and modern jazz, and all of the other styles,†said Tipitina’s Foundation Executive Director Bill Taylor. “When we were looking for someone to work with students, we wanted a musician who knew what it meant to grow up here and to succeed on the national stage but who also spoke the language of a New Orleans kid — someone who was proud of all of that, and who could share that pride.â€
Harrison’s nephew, trumpeter Christian Scott, remembers the giddy excitement he felt as a boy each time his Uncle Donald came to visit. But when Scott approached Harrison about playing trumpet, the games were over. “He was hard on me,†said Scott. “He set the bar high and expected a lot right away. Without saying so, it was as if he was telling me, ‘We come from a place where there’s a standard and a code that you must uphold.’ I got the message: If I wanted to be a part of this important chain, I could not be a weak link.â€
Harrison likes to return to the moment he first heard Blakey’s drums in his head when his father sang. “I stopped thinking of music in boxes,†he says. He’s held on to that sense as a defining characteristic of his inherited New Orleans legacy, not to mention his musical future. After the hurricane, he raised money to complete a new album leading an electric band, 3D: Volume 1 (FOMP Records), which includes among its guest artists both Eddie Palmieri and Chris Botti. “People will call this smooth jazz,†Harrison said, “but I don’t care.†His recent disc, The Survivor (Nagel Heyer), with Scott among the cast, features a wildly unorthodox version of the standard “Caravan†that employs LP scratching and looped rhythms.
The last time I saw Harrison, in October, he was in the front yard of his childhood home. The house is uninhabitable. Harrison’s mother, Herreast, lives in a trailer, temporarily stationed next to the house until repairs are complete. The filmmaker Jonathan Demme and a small crew were there, filming the Harrisons for a documentary that centers in part on the hardships they’ve endured since Katrina, and the family’s centrality in New Orleans culture. Harrison’s mother stood on the step of her trailer and recalled the day, decades ago, that Donald Harrison Sr. came home from Werlein’s Music Store, where, on a whim, he bought a saxophone for his son. Donald picked up his current alto horn and played some of “Amazing Grace†— and swung it hard, as he might have played it in a brass band, while in his teens.
A few minutes later, Harrison grabbed a tambourine and, with his sister, Cara, and a nephew, Kiel, by his side singing along, underscored the Mardi Gras Indian traditional “Two-Way-Pocky-Way†with that same rhythm. His mother stood proudly, watching the scene unfold on a block lined with empty houses of undetermined fate. When he finished singing, Harrison put down his tambourine and looked into Demme’s camera.
“I’m going to continue to be a Mardi Gras Indian,†he said. “I’m going to play my saxophone. If enough people do their part, everything will endure. But that’s the question: Will people be allowed to do their part?â€</p>
Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688252007-01-04T18:00:00-06:002023-10-02T02:03:08-05:00Carrer Highlights
<p>Donald Harrison Highlights
1960 - Born and raised in New Orleans, LA
1976 - 1978 Saxophone studies with Edward Kidd Jordan
1976 - 1978 Doc Paulin New Orleans Brass Band
1978 - 1979 Saxophone studies with Alvin Batiste
1978 - 1979 Formed Baton Rouge funk band
1979 - 1982 Attended The Berklee College of Music
1979 - 1982 Saxophone studies with Bill Pierce, Andy McGhee, and Joe Viola
1979 - 1995 Played and recorded with Roy Haynes
1980 - Played with Jack Mcduff
1982 - 1999 Moved to New York from New Orleans
1982 - 1986 Played and recorded with Art Blakey
1986 - Recorded with Tony Williams, and Ron Carter
1986 - Recorded with Don Pullen
1986 - 1989 Co-led group with Terence Blanchard group won 2 French Grammy’s
1986 - 1988 Mentored Chris Wallace on music and life. Wallace later gained fame
as Notorious BIG and is considered the King of East Coast Rap
1987 - Played with Miles Davis
1988 - Recorded with Digable Planets (jazz hip-hop group)
1989 Won Sony Innovators Award
1989 - Started Jazz Quartet
1989 - Began working with director Spike Lee
1990 - Began to help jazz artist like Carl Allen, Mark Whitfield, and Cyrus Chestnut get their first recording deals.
1990 - recorded ground-breaking jazz recording Indian Blues
1990 - Joined Eddie palmieri
1990 - Joined Bill Lee’s Mo Betta Blues Quartet
1990 - Joined Larry Coryell recorded Live in Bahia, Brazil
1990 - 1994 Freelanced around New York and toured with many jazz greats and
worked in the jingle industry
1994 - Recorded The Power of Cool smooth jazz CD that became a classic
1994 - 1996 Played with Lena Horne
1995 - 1997 Meet The Composers Residency where he developed Noveau Swing
style of jazz and began composing and performing classical music
for symphonic orchestra.
1996 - Recorded ground-breaking CD Noveau Swing for Impulse records
1997 - Organized quintet comprised of 16 to 25 year-olds to expose new
ideas to the jazz world.
1999 - Started record company and cut Paradise Found which introduced
his nephew 16 year-old New Orleans high school student Christian Scott
1999 - Started The Congo Nation Mardi Gras Indians to honor his father Big
Chief Donald Harrison, Sr. and further New Orleans African roots culture
1999 - Recorded The New Sounds of Mardi Gras which merges New Orleans
traditional music with hip-hop
2003 - Recorded Freestyle hip-hop inspired jazz recording
2003 - Recorded Heroes with Billy Cobham and Ron Carter
2003 - Along with Bill Taylor started the Tipitina’s internship program to
help New Orleans area high school students become professionals
at an early age
2003 - Recorded The New Sounds of Mardi Gras II
2004 - Recorded New York Cool with Ron Carter and Billy Cobham
2005 - Began hiring New Orleans area high school students for his live
performances to give them experience of being in professional
settings at an early age.
2006 - Recorded his second smooth jazz CD, 3D vol. I
2006 - Began recordings which will feature New Orleans area high school
and professional musicians .</p>
Big Chief Donald Harrisontag:donaldharrison.com,2005:Post/61688242006-12-20T18:00:00-06:002023-12-15T03:14:38-06:00Donald Harrison to record December 27.
<p>New trio with Donald Harrison, Chris Severin, Herman Jackson, and introduces 16 year-old drummer Joe Dyson</p>
Big Chief Donald Harrison