Chris Berry: Mastering Improvisation in the Land of Fire and Water
By Sara Stover
For Grammy award winner, singer, songwriter, and drum master Chris Berry, the most important lesson in school wasn’t even part of the curriculum—improvisation. Born and raised in Sebastopol, California, Chris was just 12 years old, learning to read music and playing the trumpet in the school’s band, when his teacher pulled him aside.
“One day, Mr. Marmelzat pulled me out of band and challenged me to improvise. To play what I felt and not just what was on the sheet music,” Chris recalls. “It was my first lesson in jazz. In that moment, that teacher changed the trajectory of my entire life.” Mastering improvisation would prove to not only shape his career, but transcend music, enabling Chris to thrive in the face of life’s biggest challenges.
A Journey to Africa
At 14 years old, Chris’s fascination with music led him to study the djembe with Titos Sompa, a founder of the African drum and dance scene on the West Coast. By the time he graduated from high school, Chris was ready to join the drum master on a journey to Africa.
While staying in a village on the Congo River, the mbira found him. Chris’s focus shifted to playing the African thumb piano, launching him into a study under mbira master Monderek Muchena during the Mugabe Regime.
During this turbulent political period, Chris lived in Zimbabwe, learned to speak Shona fluently, mastered the mbira, and began to create the issue-driven music that he is known for today.
For the Shona people, mbira is a traditional musical instrument made of a wooden board with attached metal tines, as well as a mystical music which has been played for more than a thousand years. While engaged in the polyrhythmic harmonies of mbira ceremonies, Chris found his voice.
His teachers took notice, nudging him out of the role of student and into a new chapter as a musical composer and multi-instrumentalist. Not long after that, Chris formed Panjea, a band fusing funk with Afro-pop, classic African music, and hip-hop.
Once Panjea’s songs hit the airwaves, they shot to number one on the charts, and tours across Africa followed. Around the time Panjea’s popularity was reaching an all-time high, Chris was instructed to take his music out to the world.
“A gift is waiting for you in the land of fire and water,” a nganga (shaman) told him. So, when his lyrical opposition to the government resulted in attempts on his life, Chris knew it was time to improvise once more.
The Land of Fire and Water
After nearly a decade in Zimbabwe, Chris left to share his uplifting, Afro-infused content with the world. His travels brought him from Taiwan to New York, and to Sydney, Australia, where he performed at the 2000 Olympics.
When he wasn’t touring the globe, Chris taught music and culture as a guest faculty member at Berklee College of Music, Stanford University, and a few other schools. Although Chris was taking his music to the world, it wasn’t until he traveled to Hawai‘i for a show that he discovered the gift of which the nganga spoke.
As he boarded the plane for O‘ahu, Chris shared a post on Facebook about looking for land for a music retreat center. He didn’t specify where, nor did he have a specific location in mind.
“Then, on the flight over, I saw a video of lava flowing into the ocean,” he recalls of his first sense that Hawai‘i Island was a spiritual and special place. “By the time I landed, I had a reply on Facebook from the couple that was picking me up at the airport. They wanted to gift me 18 acres on the Big Island!”
Driven by a vision to return to the roots of music, Chris established his Music Retreat Center in Pāhoa in 2009, and has called the Puna district home ever since.
“Before music was entertainment, music was therapy. In other cultures, it is still healing. That’s the model I bring to my retreat center and now my master classes,” says Chris of a mission nurtured by his years living in Africa after the apartheid.
“I wanted to be part of healing the broken relationship between the indigenous people of Africa and the rest of the world by embracing their music, since music is a vehicle for decolonization. Now I’m doing that on Hawai‘i Island. And it all goes back to Mr. M!”
Chris’s commitment to embracing Hawaiian music has resulted in a cherished friendship and a festival to enhance harmony in the community.
“At Uncle Robert’s Awa Bar, I became best friends with a Hawaiian named Puna. We collaborated to create art and music. Flow Fest grew out of this shared respect and learning!” Chris exclaims.
A conscious music, cultural, and sustainability festival, the event has been held nearly every year since 2014. After the pandemic and volcanic activity that defined the past few years, this year’s festival is further proof of what Chris has known all along: “Music can help us process our feelings in a healthy way if we have an open ear and open heart. This is what I hope to instill in the Bana Kuma kids,” Chris says of his current role teaching the Bana Kuma Orchestra which shows its students how music can help anyone, whether they want to shift out of unhealthy states of being or heal from the devastation of all that was lost in the 2018 Kīlauea eruption.
Evacuating Hawai‘i
Lava splatters light up the sky and an active ‘a‘ā flow spreads into Chris’s backyard while he sings “As the smoke rises from our burning home, I understand this land I never owned.”
The song “Pele’s Way” was written during the 2018 eruption, when Fissure 17 opened up and a river of fire took the Berry family’s home, burning it to the ground. Throughout the song’s video, Chris allows his fans to walk with him while he processes losing the land and the retreat center, his promised gift, to the lava. When evacuations became necessary, Chris retreated to his Albuquerque, New Mexico studio, where he let go. In turn, the music began to flow.
In December 2019, Chris returned to his home on Hawai‘i Island, bringing some of the most meaningful music he’s ever composed back to a community striving to start over.
“We returned to find the landscape stripped bare and transformed. Miraculously, our original house survived,” Chris shares. “We lost our main home, retreat center, meditation space, Hawaiian Hale, and all of our farm animals, but our original spirit house is still standing, and we feel deep gratitude for all that we still have.”
With honest, moving lyrics, Chris alchemized grief into positivity, finding beauty as “the new is born while the old is burnt down,” and celebrating the chance to start anew. Within a few months of his return, however, the pandemic shut down Chris’s touring schedule.
“When that happened, I went inward, reanalyzed, and improvised,” says Chris of his decision to give back the encouragement that had flowed from his own teachers and masters over the years. “I developed a curriculum and started Bana Kuma University. And it changed my life!”
Bringing a Legend to Life
“The phrase Bana Kuma refers to the process of turning thoughts into reality. Bana Kuma is a university of creative thought,” says Chris, whose goal is to give back by helping youth develop a passion for music. “I want them to have FUN and experience music as unifying. They are learning to create, not regurgitate. I’m just giving them the tools to be creative.”
The university makes music accessible to children from kindergarten through 12th grade, using instruments like the marimba and ‘ukulele, as well as singing and dancing.
“To play together, the kids have to listen to each other. It’s a potent exercise in balancing expressing themselves and listening to others in the orchestra, and it translates to life beyond music,” Chris explains. “They’re better communicators on the playground and at school.”
The young members of the Bana Kuma Orchestra are also learning to bring the legend of Yauna to life. “Yauna is a man who goes on a quest to reunite with his family. It’s a story full of lessons about forgiveness, and choosing love over war,” says Chris of the fable that came to him while he was in Zimbabwe. “The kids are working very hard to write the music and lyrics over 12 Monday night sessions and even performed four pieces at this year’s Flow Festival.”
Living in the Land of Creativity
While many refer to Chris as a master drummer, he insists that he is still a student. “I may be a teacher, but I’m still learning. Learning has no end!” says the father of three, who intends to continue encouraging youth by hosting a music camp and recording an album with the Bana Kuma keiki.
As for the gift that brought him to the island in the first place, Chris is no longer lamenting its loss. “The land for the center was taken back by Pele, but a new gift takes its place. The new land is the gift,” Chris points out. “I look at that new land every day. I’m teaching in it. I’m living it, here in the land of creativity.” ❖
All photos courtesy of Chris Berry
For more information: chrisberrymusic.org
