Like most of us, Alex Harris’s life underwent some severe changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. He had to reevaluate his process for making music and hone in on the message he wanted to share through his work. His latest EP titled Frequency is his gift to humanity, an attempt at bringing positive vibrations and good feelings to a dark world. Read Hip Hop Scriptures’ interview with this week’s Fresh Artist Friday Alex Harris below.
conducted by Willow Rose, transcribed by Priscilla Guadarrama
My name is Willow Rose and I’m an intern at Hip Hop Scriptures. I’m focusing on PR and social media management. I know our audience may or may not be familiar with your work so I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your background. When did you become interested in music and realize you wanted to perform and create new music?
Willow thank you so much for having me on the show. Yeah so basically I started music when I was 7 years old. In my family, we are a big family - five boys three girls eight of us, and I'm in the middle. I've been singing and doing my thing with entertainment since I've known pretty much I could communicate with people. But I started in my parents' church. My father is a pastor of a small congregation in rural Georgia, in the city of Manchester. Over the years my brothers and I, and my sisters initially (the sisters were a part of the group, the family group), and then it evolved to just only being the brothers. And we were known as A7, we called ourselves Inspiration Urban. We travelled all over and then as time progressed, each brother got called to do something very specific, whether it was in the law or authoring books. {two of his brothers continued in the music industry as well}. My roots run deep into music, all the way back to Manchester.
That’s brilliant. You started to touch on my next question. I read that you graduated from Boston University with a masters in Theology and Social Work. I wondered how your background in Theology influenced your music?
What I do - I call it new age soul music. And I think my background, both in social work and I have a minor in psychology undergraduate and a theology degree, which was focused on ethics - that eclectic exposure in learning beyond the roots of Georgia and Manchester, all that experience pours into how I interpreted the power of music. How I use its power and how I allow it to also speak to me and through me to the world. That is the reason why I call what I do new age soul because it is embedded into more of a spiritual element of music itself. I think that we are all spiritual beings, every human experience, and so I think that music is one of the three powerful elements of the universe. Fire and water being two, music being the other because that is how our life begins - with the beat of the heart.
I love that philosophy on the three powerful elements. Listening to your EP, Frequency that just came out, I really felt there was universality in your lyrics and a lot of passion. It is so clear in how you are forming your lyrics and the beat. Would you say that your religious influence and growing up in Georgia - is what drew you to the soul genre?
I think so. I think that was my initial introduction to soul because soul music as a genre, as we have known it, was developed as a combination of gospel, R&B, and some rock and roll too because it comes out of the African American experience as well. But as I grew, because all we listened to was gospel and quartet and gospel choirs and then later people like Al Green and his gospel music and Pastor Shirley Caesar and Caravans and all the groups that our parents loved. But as I became a teenager I started to explore other genres of music: jazz and country music. Georgia has a lot of country stations. And once being introduced to Ray Charles’ story, his country album - music has no boundaries. Regardless of your faith, you don’t have to have a particular sound to do a style. You could bring yourself and your own experience to that particular genre and allow it to evolve to whatever it evolves to. And so it really started to open my thought around how can I bring my whole self, my personal experience - African American, growing up in Georgia, in the rural South, from a big family, from a Gospel background, singing with my brothers, academic experience - what is it that I can bring beyond just saying, “Oh I can sing, oh you can sing” and sing a song or write a song because I’ve been entrusted with a gift to do so? But how can I utilize this gift for the better good of the human experience? So that's where I really come from. And what you hear on the Frequency EP is with intentions to raise our frequency - and not just my own in creating it with the great producers I worked with and writers - but also to those who listen and to be invited to this experience together. So it is not just me sending out waves through the frequency or the vibration of the music itself but also it’s an invitation to the hearer to participate in this rising of positive vibrations that are exhumed from us. That’s what the record is all about.
That’s brilliant. I love the idea of raising vibrations. I feel like this is a tumultuous time for a lot of reasons and having positivity out into the world is something that we need right now. I was reading about the background of the EP, that it was born out of personal experiences. Would you say there was a particular experience that kind of started the creation of the EP as a whole?
I had been writing with several writers (LA, NY, Nashville) over the last couple of years, with them developing a body of work. However, the personal experience, as we all have experienced, but each had a different take on it, was the national lockdown/pandemic. This is when I really start to hunker down. I started to hunker down, the team did. But at the same time, before hunkering down and really honing in on what was created and the opportunity I had to create, there was this enormous wave of, ‘Ahhh!’, of fear come over me, and I was sitting in my living room and all kinds of thoughts - what’s gonna happen, afraid to leave the house - I mean we didn’t know what was going on, no one knew. We only knew what was being fed through the frequencies of popular media and social media. It started to control my environment, my own climate, and I had to settle down and say ‘be still my soul, be still everything my mind and everything about me’ and really say ok - what is it that I can do? Where can I draw from? How can I draw from what I have to create something positive? I reset my own thought process and start to re-engage my team and start to write new music. And really look at the different experiences I had personally participated in or personally observed. It’s really about finding love, being in love, social justice. The song “Humanity” was written and released on Juneteenth and re released on the Frequency, as it relates to the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the many senseless -isms: racism, sexism, ageism - that exist and how I felt that at some point in time I had to play by the rules in order to be accepted, especially growing up in Georgia, in the rural South, and I start to say this is what I have to do and start reflect on other people’s stories, friends and of my family as well. It kind of drove the narrative for that piece, “Feel Some Kind Of Way”, the senseless killings in schools and it’s just so much that we’ve seen all the time and we’re saying that there is peace. Peace can be with us. Peace can be in our environment. Unless we start to allow that exude from us and reverberate in some way or another then I don’t think we will ever experience it in a person. But we can’t wait on some external force to do it. We have to bring it to the environment, the universe, to ourselves.
Listening to the EP, my favorite track was “Humanity”. I love that you were going in depth on you reasons for writing it. How has the pandemic shaped the creation and production of your new music? I think the universal condition of all of us being in this situation together is a unique opportunity.
It’s a very unique experience for us to really reflect and to value the humanness of humanity. Just look at all the losses. It was an awakening to say, you can be this way, feel this way, or be in this place and then in the next moment, the next day, the next 24 hour period, everything is taken away, or everything is paused. And it was really an awakening moment. “Falling For You” comes from that space where we can be vulnerable and fall in love again and again and everyday allow and discover something because all we have is this moment. Allow time to stand still and it really helps to encourage to love who you love and love hard. Don’t be afraid to do it because we never know what the next moment will bring. This was very awakening. It’s a very emotional record around everything that was going on and everything that is going on.
Do you have a favorite track on your EP?
That's very hard because I think it just depends on a lot of things — because I think when we chose the body of work it was like out of all the writing I’ve done over the last couple of years, I was trying to develop something to create this body and not really creating it until the lockdown. Ordering equipment and having it sit on the porch for a while and the patio and then come back and get it cause we weren’t sure if we were supposed to touch it or let it sit out there. So all those things but also, each represent me in so many different ways, and my thought process around the human experience. It’s a very hard question but if I absolutely had to I think it probably would be “Humanity”. I think because of where we are. Second to that would be “Falling For You”. I love love.
I can relate. I think with “Humanity”, obviously it is presently relevant but I feel like it’s timeless in the sense that we all need to have strength within us to then stand up and speak out for things that are important to us. What has been your most impactful moment in your music career thus far? Have you had any moments where you were starstruck of just surprised at everything going on?
I don’t think I’ve been starstruck but I have met some stars- cause we grew up in the industry around since we were younger so it became a part of our way of life, my brothers and I and sisters. However, I think certain opportunities are amazing, I’m so grateful. I’m always grateful but sometimes the gratitude is in a different category. When I think about that I came from a small town, I was born in a trailer that my dad bought when he first started teaching, and then he got married, and then that trailer burned, and we moved in with our great aunt for a short while until he was finally able to build a house. So just the struggles and challenges of the path that we’ve taken. And then to ride with our parents really promoting education and faith and music in our family. It led to all of us graduating from high school, all of us going to college, two or three times. I think among the family there are over 20 college degrees. I know that it is not the path for everyone. It doesn’t have to be but it is special to me because it’s a testament to my parents who were the first to be educated, to receive post-secondary education in my family. It really is important to me that I share that and I value that experience and it speaks to where I am today.
I can definitely relate to the idea of just getting an education. I’m in school at the moment and I’ve read recently that just for undergraduate degrees only about 30% of Americans even finish their bachelors, let alone going into higher education. I think that’s really amazing that so many people in your family have been able to get an education.
My family and I have been very blessed and with lots of gratitude and humility. We are a testament because I share often how my parents, my father and mother, were the first to go to college, receive a post-secondary education. For them, education, faith, and of course the arts (music), were the elements of our development. I know the impact of the arts and music first hand on not just my life but on my siblings. I’ve seen it also on my foundation which I think my background certainly is the foundation of my thought process, so I try to share that experience not just through my recordings but also with the foundation that I have in helping a lot of underprivileged, underserved young people and teenagers in our community.
How long has the foundation been around?
The foundation has been around for more than two years. I started that in the interim of the brothers to figure out my own rhythm and sound and the direction I felt very passionate about.
Do you have any final message to tell our audience regarding your work or a cause that you’re passionate about?
I thank you first, again. Let me just say thank you again in my last words to you for having me on. I want one of those who are listening to of course check out the record Frequency. It’s a 6 song EP and I’m really super excited about it. It’s got a vibe and the vibe has all to do with raising the vibrations and love, romantic life. Also a raise in vibrations around social justice, raising vibrations around just loving family, whoever and however you view family and close friends, biological connection. It comes from those three angles. The intention is that we all find another place or space to love ourselves and those around us. A space and place for healing and a space or place of hope. This kind of soul revival or renewal of the human spirit is what the Frequency EP is about. So far, it’s getting great reviews. I’m really super excited about it. We were just number 1 on one of the largest stations. Also we are doing well in Europe. We went number 2 last week on the largest soul/R&B station out of Italy. So we are super excited about the response we are getting and we just want to keep raising the frequencies and the vibrations through the music. Please follow me on social media. You can go to my website and find all my social media handles there at alexharrisofficial.com. I’d love to connect and be a part of a global community making things happen through positive work.
ABOUT ALEX HARRIS:
Alex Harris is a modern soul singer with Gospel roots and is revered as one of the leading creative architects and performers of ‘New Age Soul’ music. ‘New Age Soul’ music offers a spiritual revival to uplift humanity ensconced in healing, hope, renewal, freedom, and love. “I believe that music is one of the three most powerful elements of the universe because it has the power to raise the frequency of humans
through rhythm, melody, and sound.”
Alex runs A.C.T. (Arts Conservatory for Teens) and lectures worldwide. He has shared the stage as a performer with Al Green, Aretha Franklin, John Legend, H.E.R., Brandy, and Lionel Richie. Label Cross The Line Music, Ltd is a joint venture between 2 producers -Richard Gottehrer (Blondie, The Go Go’s, Raveonettes) and GRAMMY Award winning producer and songwriter Swagg R’Celious (H.E.R.). His “Frequency” EP is available now on all streaming platforms, and is a unique sonic blend of southern soul, alternative grooves, and Gospel grit.
STAY CONNECTED WITH ALEX HARRIS ON SOCIAL MEDIA:
Instagram - Facebook - Twitter - SoundCloud- Spotify - YouTube - Amazon
