‘Just Play’: The African-Influenced Method Helps Students Learn Music Through Movement

For many people who have grown up in and around Pan-African–influenced culture—especially the Black gospel experience in the U.S.—it's not uncommon to see and hear churchgoers playing and singing with the vocal ability of Aretha Franklin or Sam Cooke, or possessing the groove prowess of Robert Glasper. 

In many of these congregational settings, the music often flows so naturally that church members sing, sway, dance, shout, and move because it is simply part of the cultural experience—to participate. It’s as if you’re witnessing the inspiration for the musical styles born here in America and exported across the globe, such as blues, R&B, jazz, and the pop-rock that gave rise to J-pop, C-pop, and K-pop. So what happens when educational institutions begin to implement the tenets of this cultural phenomenon? My advanced piano course, in which I teach the African-Influenced Method (AIM), seeks to answer this question.

AIM doesn’t abandon the Pythagorean-influenced understanding of music (i.e., analysis/writing), but it prioritizes a more humanistic foundation based on a Pan-African perspective. The method facilitates an understanding of music through soulfully syncopated movement (dancing, singing, clapping, snapping, or using vocal sounds), creating a symbiosis between traditional ways of learning music and the informal methods of learning found in Pan-African–influenced culture.

Interestingly enough, millions of 5-year-old children master the seemingly impossible every year: verbal communication. This isn’t accomplished because they are given the best books or expensive tutors, or because they have high IQ levels. They (and many adults) are simply immersed in the language and thus rise to the expectations of those around them. Why shouldn’t the same unquestionably successful method be applied to playing music, and be taught at music education institutions where Pan-African music is championed?

Three steps help internalize AIM: Grammar (dissecting the musical vocabulary), movement (moving to a musical idea before touching the instrument), and immersion (playing ideas in a nonstop structured setting emulating and expanding the first learned concepts). 

Applying AIM, we abandon academic assessment and instead prioritize the cultural mode of learning that has been present in the Pan-African musical tradition since time immemorial. While this method has been second class to many institutional modes of learning, it continues to be a wellspring that inspires many of the most recognized musical styles around the globe. Instead of teaching our minds to acquire and regurgitate information according to traditional academic standards and assessment, this method endeavors to unite mind and body to symbiotically improve the individual as a musician and as an artistic thinker. 

In July I traveled to Morocco and was invited to sit in with a group of Amazigh drummers. Before we played, I compulsively inquired about the name and history of the syncopated pattern the drummers were playing. Yassin, a drummer to my left, looked at me, smiled, and said, “Just play.” Him saying this was an eye-opening reminder of how I first internalized music as a child, when music was joyfully experienced first, and the labels, analysis, and judgment of that music came much later.

An essential component of internalizing musical ideas in the African-Influenced Method is to physically participate in that music. In many Pan-African–influenced cultures, dance and music are symbiotic. The overlapping of sound and movement is foundational and a way to connect deeply with music. At the heart of this priority is a profound pedagogical paradigm shift that will augment existing systems of learning and more holistically shape musicians. Preparing students to navigate the real-world demands of performance is no easy task. AIM might be the catalyst that encourages musicians to “just play.” 

Kevin Harris, an associate professor in Berklee's Piano Department, is authoring the Berklee Online course Advanced Jazz Piano, which is part of Berklee Online's Bachelor of Arts in Piano/Keyboard program.

This article appeared in the fall/winter 2022 issue of Berklee Today.