Legendary jazz musician Herbie Hancock has been appointed by Harvard University as the 2014 Norton Professor of Poetry. With that honor, Hancock will deliver six lectures, each with a different subject, but the 73-year-old Oscar-winning composer told BBC they will "be mainly talking about my own experience and give them some stories."
Hancock plans to incorporate the message of Buddhism, which he has practiced over the past four decades. He also has a lecture planned titled "The Wisdom of Miles Davis." He played with Davis in the '60s.
The honorary professorship at Harvard began in 1925, and since then Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot and Leonard Bernstein have taken on the influential role. Even though Hancock clearly has a lot of wisdom to share in the lecture series, he did tell BBC that following Bernstein is "pretty daunting."
"The reason that I was chosen for this position was only partially because of music," Hancock told BBC Radio 5. "They also realized that I'm a goodwill ambassador to [the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture], which is partly to do with cultural diplomacy which I'm addressing in one of my lectures."
Hancock recently received the Kennedy Center Honors Award, and at the ceremony Snoop Dogg performed the rap to Us3's "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)" - a track that sampled Hancock's 1964 track "Cantaloupe Island." Snoop Dogg has clearly been influenced by Hancock as he said the legendary musican had "invented hip-hop."
Hancock has won 15 Grammys and, in 1986, a Best Original Score Oscar for his Round Midnight soundtrack.
