Dr. Brian J . de Lima

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Dr. Brian Jude de Lima is a musician who specializes learning musics from its antecedents and genealogy. Dr. de Lima interests are grounded in traditional jazz, classical and early electronic music. Professor de Lima has acquired a deep understanding of historical epistemology that in part have contributed to his theories on musical pedagogy and and traditional "black" jazz vernacular.

Not satisfied with the state of current post -secondary jazz education across Canada, de Lima developed a new jazz curricula to destabilize defunct paradigms currently being offered. The result of this body of work earned him a PhD in Ethnomusicology/ Musicology, and a KMB internship award from York University.

He is currently the course director and professor for Ethnomusicology, Piano Studies, Ensembles and Community Music at Centennial College in Ontario.
Supervisors: Dr. Sundar Viswanathan, Dr. Mark Chambers, Dr. Jeff Packman, Dr. Mary Fogarty, Christina Petrowska Quilico, Dr. Michael Marcuzzi, Michael Coghlan, Robert Witmer, Dr. Jay Rahn, and Ron Westray

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Stephanie Khoury

McGill University

Dylan van der Schyff

University of Melbourne

Kathe Gray

York University

Chris Stover

University of Oslo

James Gutierrez

Northeastern University

WILLIAM ALLISON

Biill Allison

Sara Ramshaw

University of Victoria BC

Mathieu Feryn

University of Avignon

David Borgo

University of California, San Diego

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Papers by Dr. Brian J . de Lima

Interpreting the Antecedents of Barry Harriss Concept of Movement

Known to his peers as the “keeper of the bebop flame,” jazz pianist Barry Harris has cultivated a... more Known to his peers as the “keeper of the bebop flame,” jazz pianist Barry Harris has cultivated and imparted a unique approach to teaching the music of Charlie Parker, Earl “Bud” Powell, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. Harris, an internationally renowned jazz pianist, composer and educator, whose former students include the likes of John Coltrane, Donald Byrd, and Paul Chambers, began playing jazz as a young adult in Detroit in the 1930s, before making a pilgrimage to Harlem, New York (Bicket 2001, 3). He has since gone on to develop a teaching method based on his unrelenting inquiry into the nature of traditional jazz and bebop (Stein 2006).
As a jazz educator, Harris has created a unique harmonic palette that features the oscillation of specific chord structures constructed from what he terms “diminished” scales.1 His theory of moving these chord structures along various scale degrees is almost a reflection of jazz saxophonist Coleman Hawkins’s declaration: “I don’t play chords, I play movements” (Rees 1998, 60). Perhaps inspired by this notion, Harris has developed a framework for moving his chord structures along scales in much the same way that one might think of developing single-note improvisations from scale practice. The diminished scales consist of a combination of two chord types that lend themselves to the facile movement of simple structures up and down the scale.2 The goal is to keep the chord structures moving, as opposed to static, thereby creating tension and resolution. This is what he refers to as “movement.”

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Bud Powell: Dissonance as Brilliance

The career of jazz pianist Earl “Bud” Powell evidenced a near cinematic arc. By the time he was i... more The career of jazz pianist Earl “Bud” Powell evidenced a near cinematic arc. By the time he was in his late teens, he had all of the technical tools necessary to move to the front ranks of musicians in his category. He was one of the first pianists to truly understand the melodic, rhythmic and harmonic implications of the new music that was later termed “bebop.” If he fell short of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in terms of technical ability, he was at least the equal of some of the other players whose mastery of the idiom was complete, such as Fats Navarro, Sonny Stitt, Charles Mingus and Kenny Clarke (Farrell 2011). It can be argued that he was the most compelling player of the aforementioned group, a man compelled to channel his emotions through his improvisations, demonstrating an endlessly creative mind. He managed to fuse early influences of stride, swing and bebop into his musical vocabulary, without sounding contrived or archaic (Groves 2001, 3). In short, Powell may very well be viewed as a consummate artist, who explored and challenged his creative mind to the fullest extent possible. Where other pianists were content to follow the school of Art Tatum, Powell was heading in a different direction, more concerned with the new sound of Charlie Parker and transferring Parker’ s ideas and harmonies to the piano, while preserving the orchestral aspect of the instrument as Tatum did (Pullman 2012, 39-40).Powell’ s harmonic disposition was both esoteric and erratic, as well as arcane and widely misunderstood.

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Trauma of The Brain and Heart affects a Musician's Creative Output

The purpose of the following paper is to investigate whether musicians who have experienced brain... more The purpose of the following paper is to investigate whether musicians who have experienced brain or heart trauma subsequently experienced an altered creative output. Examples discussed include the correlations between species of trauma such as physical, emotional and mental stress, as well as the side effects as a result of taking medications.
The primary source of study will be my compositions derived shortly after a concussion and myocardial infarction. Since these compositions contrast greatly from my previous works, investigations have been taken to see if the various species of trauma have had a profound influence on my creative output. Various medical specialists in the fields of neurology and cardiology have contributed their expertise via interviews. Other notable musicians such as Bud Powell and Louis Armstrong have been investigated for their validity to the subject as a result of paralleling their trauma to my own.

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Erotic Cities: Instrumental Anthropomorphism in Prince’s Compositions

Journal of African American Studies

The aim of this paper is to show how Prince Rogers Nelson’s lewd on stage antics and perverse son... more The aim of this paper is to show how Prince Rogers Nelson’s lewd on stage antics and perverse song lyrics were not the only factors that contributed to his sexually charged compositions. By examining the use of anthropomorphism (the ascription of human characteristics to what is not human), in the analysis of several of Prince’s early works between the years 1980-1984, the researcher makes the argument that his musical arrangements taken from this earlier musical cannon embody the stages of Masters and Johnson’s human sexual response cycle. Ultimately, the researcher views Prince’s musical arrangements and improvisations to be metaphors for his own genitalia having intercourse with his public.

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Reanimating Dissonance: Cultivating the Antecedents of Barry Harris' Concept of Movement as a Multidimensional Pedagogical Tool for Ontario Post-Secondary Jazz Curricula

One of the challenges faced in post-secondary jazz education across the GTA is finding qualified ... more One of the challenges faced in post-secondary jazz education across the GTA is finding qualified instructors who are familiar with dialogical methods for teaching African American jazz histories. More specifically, finding and hiring African American instructors whose musical genealogy can be delineated from “black” oral/aural histories and can draw from these historicities. Unless the narratives of this music are unpacked, analyzed and taught from its internal elements, which embodies the symbiosis and synthesis of African American dance, theatrics, poetics and American black English that encapsulates the “African American-ness” in jazz, then there remains a risk that this folk music will become more and more diluted. Consequently, it is my belief that current music educators across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) should consider alternative methods of pedagogy if students are to understand the historicity— the historical authenticity of this African American folk music. The idea for this study originated from my observation of a lack of “African American-ness”—African American narratives not being used as a pedagogical tool in post-secondary jazz curricula across the GTA. Therefore, this multi-case study will lead to the creation of an alternative curriculum that incorporates new teaching methods based on African American narratives. Dr. Barry Harris is one such educator who incorporates new teaching methods based on African American narratives. Therefore, I seek to unpack and analyze the musical and social upbringing that contributed to African American jazz pianist and educator Dr. Barry Harris’ primary contribution to jazz education, which is his concept of movement, while also expanding upon it. When these antecedents of Harris’ concept of movement have been analyzed, they will use them as a compliance for the cultivation and filling in of gaps in post-secondary jazz curricula across the GTA.

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Book Reviews by Dr. Brian J . de Lima

Improvisation and Music Education: Beyond the Classroom

Reviewed by Brian J. de Lima When I consider the zeitgeist of contemporary music education in Nor... more Reviewed by Brian J. de Lima When I consider the zeitgeist of contemporary music education in North America, I can't help but feel that the tendency to prioritize the creative object over the creative act remains the approach of most music teachers. This leads all too often to discussions that seldom take into account the collaborative and social practices, the belief systems, and the historical contexts that shape music making. Music teachers teaching improvisation can often lean heavily on stagnant pedagogies that suffer from their failure to incorporate consideration of music's social dimensions. Improvisation, when it appears in academic environments, appears too often as part of a compartmentalized curricula emerging from a government-delegated neoliberal compliance that often overlooks the crucial and historical socio- political turmoil and socio-cultural norms that originally gave rise to many improvisational practices. Students get funnelled into programs constructed exclusively to fill ready-made niches—curricula and pedagogy created by upper management bureaucracy that promotes the sustainability of the university's best interests. Ultimately, the result is an educational gap that destabilizes students' critical engagement with social issues and epistemologies. Pedagogies that fail to encourage critical engagement contribute to students who may never find the passion necessary to succeed in attaining improvisational fluency, to retention rates for schools that remain low, and to teachers at the mercy of government cutbacks as a result of their program's stagnant performance. Thankfully, the editors of Improvisation and Music Education: Beyond the Classroom (2016), Ajay Heble and Mark Laver, along with a host of other contributors, have not overlooked these issues. In this publication, various authors, scholars, and musicians have laid out their vision for what it means to teach improvisation, and how those skills, once acquired, may enable musicians to engage in real-time creative decision-making, risk-taking, interaction, adaptation, surprise, and responsiveness. Heble and Laver's offering is replete with suggestions and methodologies that go 'beyond the classroom,' elucidating the multidimensional aspect of improvisation, not just an act of musical expression, but also a means of community-building. By offering non-conventional approaches that can be used in academia to demystify improvisation, and by offering new perspectives on improvisation's potential within the classroom, Heble and Laver's work offers freedom from the constraints of typical improvisation curricula found within neoliberal paradigms. Improvisation and Music Education strays from conventional improvisation pedagogy—offering its readers access to effective teaching paradigms along a variety of trajectories. In chapter three, "Improvisation Pedagogy in Theory and Practice," percussionist and educator Jesse Stewart examines musical improvisation's capacity to foster a sense of community both inside and outside of the classroom by describing his facilitation of a university music ensemble that is inclusive of non-musicians, and his offering of courses that have no pressures of written assignments (32-45). Stewart reports that the end result of these practices was higher student engagement and overall interest than would be likely with a more conventional pedagogy (42). In the fifth chapter, " Analysis, Improvisation, and Openness, " Chris Stover supports an " open, no wrong answers, interactive environment " that he feels (and I agree) contributes to the creation of trust, acceptance, attentive listening, spontaneity, storytelling, and nonverbal communication between musicians. At the same time, Stover emphasises that in such an environment it is important for musicians to have confidence that their own contributions are valid. Stover reiterates a point originally made by Hans-Georg Gadamer, stating that we cannot discount " our understanding from our own experience, including the ways in which our experiences are historically and culturally situated " (61). Stover asserts that instructors must help students recognize that when they improvise in styles associated with previous eras and canonized creators that the frame of reference they bring to the music is just as valid as those of the individuals who were the original creators. Stover insists, for example, that when students attempt to solo over a piece of New Orleans style jazz, they should not be discouraged if their improvisations do not follow the kinds of structures likely to have been chosen by the players who originated the genre.

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