In the city of Los Angeles, there are countless musical artists writing, singing, and producing music for listeners all around the world. But none are doing it quite like Jason D. Harris. A sound engineer, music producer, composer, and teacher originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Harris does it all. Not only is he putting out his own music (his most recent single “Tango” is out now), but he has engineered sounds for other artists like Kid Cudi, Jennifer Lopez, Why Don’t We, Lupe Fiasco, and Taraji P. Henson.
Harris started his record label, Mind of the Noise Records, during the COVID-19 lockdown to share his experiences in the music industry and help educate others. From here he created Beat School with Mr. J, a program that provides classes to children in the Los Angeles area to encourage and foster creativity for the next generation. In these classes, kids are given the tools to write, produce, and perform their own music. Having always been one to give back to the community, Harris has started “Buy a Hat, Donate a Class,” which is an initiative to help every kid get a shot at learning music.
In a recent interview with Just N Life, Harris tells us his story and what Beat School with Mr. J is all about.
Jason D. Harris’ Story
Just N Life: You are the founder of Beats School with Mr. J. We’d love to hear about that, how it started, and how you started on your journey into sound engineering.
Jason D. Harris: I’m from St. Louis. I started in the church, playing organ and piano at the age of 5. I was listening to a lot of jazz, blues-type of musicians and I would run home and I would listen to my papa’s hip-hop music. I had a passion of creating that vibe, creating hip-hop music.
While doing that, I was helping in the community through the church. I was a tutor, I was a part of giving out free school supplies and stuff like that. And I used to also teach kids music. I’m an artist too, I do paintings and sculptures. I had a passion for just going to school and getting a degree in everything.
In 2005, I went and got my bachelor’s degree in Digital Film New Media [from Kansas City Arts Institute]. In 2009, I went to Mills College in Oakland and got my master’s degree in Electronic Music Recording New Media and [was] taking orchestration, doing creative writing and learning about the business aspect. So it kind of grew from that.
I came home, got married, had kids and I wanted to pursue creating a label. Main Attraction was the first record label that I had created, but it was really just a group of collaborators coming together.
During that time, I was a behavioral therapist so I was working with kids with mental illness and severe neglect and self-harm. I did that for four years, and while doing that, still pursuing music, I was spending time going to the studio at night. From there I decided that I had done as much as I could in St. Louis and I wanted to move to higher ground.
We moved to LA and I landed my first gig with JLo’s music creative director named Kim Burse. Before you knew it, I was working in a Taraji P. Henson Fox 2 show for a Christmas special called The White Hot Holiday and on stage with Fergie, Salt-N-Pepper, Ciara, Chaka Khan.
After that, I ended up getting asked to go on tour with Atlantic and Warner Brothers for a band called Why Don’t We. I toured all around the world and probably did 190 shows internationally.
I started doing things in the summer, I was going to the Village Nation that’s partnered with LAUSD and I would speak to 150 kids about success and careers and scholarships and my business, which is Mind of the Noise.
Instead of signing as an artist, I just did a distribution deal. That way I had creative control and I owned everything. After that passed, I decided to start Beat School.
I was a DJ for all the school events and participated in some of the performances here at CWC Hollywood. From there I was like, these kids are really loving the music, I want to take what I did on the road and my experience as a child and put it into the kids, put it into education. So I started the school program, and that was in October of last year. I went from 15 kids to 20 kids to, at the end of the quarters, 87 kids. These kids took their gifts and they were living. They had a life of their own outside of school. They were bringing stuff back and being like, “hey look what I created” and “look what I recorded.”
JNL: What do you hope Beat School to be in the next 3 to 5 years?
JH: I would like to see Beat School in different schools all around the world. I would like to hire role models and people that are actively into music and place them in those positions where they can inspire a kid that might not understand or build a connection or tell their story through their teaching. I would like to once again partner with different organizations that support the arts and entertainment for kids around the world, kids with disabilities, or C-average students that don’t get the limelight, not because they don’t do the work but because they need a little more support. I would like to go and do clinics and speak to universities. I would like to have every person that’s consciously wearing the Mind of the Noise hat as a reminder that we are on this daily walk and we are showing the youth and showing our people how to do what we’re doing. And that every step we take, we take it a bar at a time, you know what I mean?
I would like to one day own my own music school too. So saying three years, I would most definitely love the world to know what is going on with Beat School, funding support to expand staffing, and I want it to be all around the world.
Just N Life: That’s especially important now because the arts are often underfunded or pushed aside. A lot of times, kids can really connect and learn about not just academics but the world in general through the arts.
JH: Consciously too. Vocabulary was very big and important to me as a kid. I had a disability in writing and comprehension skills. I stayed in tutoring classes all year long. I was a C-average kid. But my mom never gave up on me and she created a program that supported C-average students. That motivated me like, “hey I want to give back to the kids like that but I want to do it my way,” which would be through music. Like vocabulary, when I didn’t know a word, I would write a song and use a word I didn’t know just to learn it and learn how to say it. And knowing how to build community, knowing how to brand yourself, and learning too that we are in a world where we are the last to know what it feels like not having technology. The new kids are coming up and they are connected in technology so they will always have it. Why not start helping them, supporting them and bettering them now?
JNL: What does a typical day at Beat School look like?
JH: Beat School starts with the kids being in the garden and while they’re all waiting I’m carrying all the equipment on a rack, speakers, sound system equipment, I’m taking into the classroom and preparing to set up. We’re pulling out the laptops, we’re pulling out the keyboards. When the kids come in we have a mindful moment where we just sit and we chat about our day and how things are going. From there we come in with, “what subject do we want to talk about today?” I have two classes: I have an advanced class and I have a beginner’s class. Both classes are a little bit different. My advanced class, when you come in, they’re full of questions, they’re full of excitement. They like the way the beat pad lights up, they like the fact that they’re creating smiley faces out of sounds or hearts out of sounds. And they want to know how this works or why it’s not working. You see the kids like, “oh, this is not working” and then the next kid is like “Oh, I got it. Look, y’all come look over here. Look what I found,” and then everybody is trying to figure out how to get what that kid has. There’s a lot of collaboration. The classroom was built off demonstration, collaboration, and practice for the most part. 30 minutes apiece for each one. We spend that time demonstrating what we know or I might demonstrate something I’ve created, then we have a lesson on it and then the kids would get together and collaborate.
BandLab is the music pro that I’m using and they can invite each other into the same program. One could be moving this, one could be moving that, one can record on the mic. So it’s a very collective environment. We also have electronic drums and kids can come in and they can play drums. They can mess with the record player. I let them scratch and do everything with the record player, and then I bring out the digital form, how we do it today with the laptop and with just a MIDI controller, so they can see the difference. I like taking things apart too, like I take the record player completely apart so they can see what it’s like.
It’s piece by piece, day by day. I don’t throw all of it on them. I kind of let them get familiar with it and then in the advanced class we take it to the next level. Let’s perform; let’s get out there; let’s show people what we’ve been making for the last quarter, you know what I mean? It’s really beautiful. I’ve had parents come up to me and say, “hey my kid’s confidence levels are amazing right now. They wouldn’t do it and now they’re doing it.”
JNL: Arts, and especially music, definitely build the confidence of all those involved. And when you were talking about taking things apart, or seeing how something works, you gain so much knowledge, not just about the passion of music, but all the things behind it.
JH: I have artists that do come, like I have a drummer come in with acoustic drums and play drums over the kids’ music so they can get a sense of the difference between live. I would show them my performances I’ve done, or show them me being on Fox 2 so they can get inspired, “Hey, he’s in our class, we’re doing this and he’s doing that, we can do it too.” That demonstration is so important. We need it now for our kids. This is the time. And I’ve said before, I wish I had this when I was in school. I didn’t have this in school, I didn’t have a mentor. I would run home to do this stuff, but to just be like, “Hey, I’m in a creative space, I’m already learning, you already in it.”
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