Big Chief Donald Harrison
2022 NEA Jazz Master Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr. is a musician/composer who dedicated his life to mastering every era of jazz, soul, funk and composing orchestral classical music. According to geniuses Eddie Palmieri and Mike Clark, he is a genius who has mastered many styles of music. He received an Honorary Doctorate from Berklee College of Music in 2021. He appeared as an actor in nine episodes of “Treme,” where director David Simon created two characters to portray how Harrison innovated music, director Johnathon Demme’s film “Rachel Getting Married,” Spike Lee’s “When The Levees Broke,” and Marvel’s “Luke Cage.”
Harrison is the recognized Big Chief of Congo Square in Afro-New Orleans culture and a Chief in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa.
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