James Weldon Johnson
poet, lyricist
African American writer of the Harlem Renaissance who wrote the words of Lift Every Voice and Sing; Barry says his poem The Creation showed him how music began, and he used it to teach where scales and chords come from.
- mentions
- 2
- recordings
- 2
- Barry speaking
- 2
What Barry says
In a master class Barry tells the students about Johnson’s The Creation: God, lonely, made the world, the oceans, trees, birds and insects, sat back, was still lonely, and so made man and woman. Barry then asks: what is the man and woman of music?
His answer works by numbers: twelve is the chromatic scale, and two sixes make twelve, so the man and woman are the two whole-tone scales. Between them they give two chords, the dominant seventh with a flat five and the dominant seventh with a raised five.
Man and woman have babies: three fours make twelve, so the children of the two whole-tone scales are the three diminished seventh chords. Barry calls their DNA perfect, because each diminished chord takes two notes from one whole-tone scale and two from the other.
From there he has the tenor player play a C diminished seventh, then flat one of its notes to find a dominant, since four dominants come from each diminished chord. All this, he says, is logic he is trying to show them.
He tells the same story in a theory class without naming Johnson: the twelve notes of the chromatic scale are the world; God, still lonely, makes man and woman, the whole-tone scales on C and D-flat; and their children are the three diminished seventh chords.
Jazz theory, part 1: key families a minor third apart9:099:4510:19
In his own words
There was a man named James Weldon Johnson. He wrote a thing called The Creation.
And so he made man and woman. Now see, what is the man and woman of music? Do you know?
he wrote a thing called The Creation, and that turned me onto how the music started and how everything does this. Everything is in order, everything is order.
Every mention
2 moments in the recordings, 2 of them Barry speaking. Each says who is talking.
Student performances and coaching
- 26:45
Introduces Johnson’s poem The Creation to show that the whole-tone scales are music’s man and woman.
Jazz theory, part 1: key families a minor third apart
- 9:09
Retells the Creation story without naming Johnson: God, still lonely, makes man and woman, the two whole-tone scales.
In the interviews and notes
Barry says he has secrets about music that earlier composers and theorists never told, and that he can trace where it all comes from, ultimately to religion. He identifies Johnson as the author of Lift Every Voice and Sing, and says The Creation opened his eyes to how music began.
Brian de Lima argues that Barry draws on Johnson’s Harlem Renaissance poem to teach his concept of movement, and that the poem served him as a kind of African American scripture tied to his youth in the Baptist church.
De Lima reads Barry’s use of the poem as poetry shaping music, with the Harlem Renaissance reaching across to the bebop era, and notes that both the poem and Barry’s metaphors for movement start from the opening of Genesis.
Brian Jude de Lima, Reanimating Dissonance: Cultivating the Antecedents of Barry Harris’ Concept of Movement as a Multidimensional Pedagogical Tool for Ontario Post-Secondary Jazz Curricula ¶1350Brian Jude de Lima, Reanimating Dissonance: Cultivating the Antecedents of Barry Harris’ Concept of Movement as a Multidimensional Pedagogical Tool for Ontario Post-Secondary Jazz Curricula ¶1363
Drawing on Howard Rees’s 2001 account of Barry’s teaching, de Lima sets out the mapping: the chromatic scale is the universe God created, the two whole-tone scales are man and woman, and their children are the three diminished seventh chords, each holding one tritone from each parent.
Brian Jude de Lima, Reanimating Dissonance: Cultivating the Antecedents of Barry Harris’ Concept of Movement as a Multidimensional Pedagogical Tool for Ontario Post-Secondary Jazz Curricula ¶1393Brian Jude de Lima, Reanimating Dissonance: Cultivating the Antecedents of Barry Harris’ Concept of Movement as a Multidimensional Pedagogical Tool for Ontario Post-Secondary Jazz Curricula ¶1395Brian Jude de Lima, Reanimating Dissonance: Cultivating the Antecedents of Barry Harris’ Concept of Movement as a Multidimensional Pedagogical Tool for Ontario Post-Secondary Jazz Curricula ¶1396
In his analysis of interviews, de Lima files Barry’s remark about Johnson and The Creation under the theme of Barry as a religious figure, alongside his teaching that diminished sevenths are born of the two whole-tone scales.
Brian Jude de Lima, Reanimating Dissonance: Cultivating the Antecedents of Barry Harris’ Concept of Movement as a Multidimensional Pedagogical Tool for Ontario Post-Secondary Jazz Curricula ¶840Brian Jude de Lima, Reanimating Dissonance: Cultivating the Antecedents of Barry Harris’ Concept of Movement as a Multidimensional Pedagogical Tool for Ontario Post-Secondary Jazz Curricula ¶849Brian Jude de Lima, Reanimating Dissonance: Cultivating the Antecedents of Barry Harris’ Concept of Movement as a Multidimensional Pedagogical Tool for Ontario Post-Secondary Jazz Curricula ¶850
Method ideas nearby
Ideas of the method taught in the classes where they come up, with how many mentions fall in each.
- 2.2The two whole-tone scales (‘man and woman’)2
- 2.3The three diminished seventh chords (‘the children’)2
- 1.1Rhythm comes first1
- 1.4Triplets and thinking in six1
- 14.2Every key, every degree, every way1
- 15.3Music is like math; finding your own voice; the teacher’s job1
- 2.1The chromatic scale is the source of every scale1
- 2.4Minor thirds and key families (brothers and sisters)1