Phil Cohran

The Artistic Heritage Ensemble...

He was an innovative cultural institution unto himself.

-Kahil El’Zabar

He was definitely one of my mentors at an early age. I had nothing but respect for him as a musician and a teacher.

-Roscoe Mitchell

When I was a kid in high school in 1977, hits from Earth, Wind & Fire’s album All ‘n All started playing on the radio. Fantasy was probably the one we’d hear the most. I asked for the album for Christmas, and Santa delivered a copy under our tree. I can still remember listening to it later that day. The third song on Side 1, right after Fantasy, is In The Marketplace (Interlude):

This short song touched me - I did not see that coming. It was the first time I’d heard the kalimba.

Earth, Wind & Fire’s Maurice White was introduced to the kalimba by Phil Cohran at the Affro-Arts Theater on South Drexel Boulevard in Chicago’s South Side.

The Affro-Arts Theater was formed by Cohran in 1967 to offer concerts, music classes, and dance lessons. It was a spiritual, non-militant black-power place to inspire black awareness and to fall in love with black culture. Cohran’s Artistic Heritage Ensemble played there. He said the group represented “a model of dedication, social relevance, musical perfection, originality, traditional concepts and most of all, Blackness. This was a Black group that played Black-cultural music for Black people.”

In his autobiography, Maurice White. My Life With Earth, Wind & Fire, White recalls the first time he saw a kalimba at the Affro-Arts Theater:

One day I saw Phil Cohran, who was a kind of the director of the center, playing what he called a frankiphone. It was actually a kalimba, a little wooden box carved hollow, with a sound hole in it like a guitar, and metal strips attached to it that are plucked with the thumbs (it’s sometimes called an African thumb piano). I instantly fell head over heels in love with the sound of the kalimba. Its percussive and melodic tone just spoke to me. Its primitive yet futuristic sound gave different textures to all the rhythms that I heard.

The first recording of White playing the kalimba is Uhuru from The Ramsey Lewis Trio’s Another Voyage, released on the Cadet record label in 1969:

Inspired by Cohran’s frankiphone, White introduced an electrified kalimba in performance with Earth, Wind & Fire. For example, White features the kalimba on Bad Tune, the last track of Earth, Wind & Fire’s debut album Earth, Wind & Fire, released by Warner Bros. Records in 1971.

Cohran’s frankiphone is best heard on The New Frankiphone Blues from his Zulu Records 7” record released in 1967:

Here’s The New Frankiphone Blues:

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Phil Cohran was born in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1927. When he was 10 years old, his family moved to St. Louis. He attended Lincoln University Laboratory High School and later briefly attended Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, before returning to St. Louis.

While in St. Louis, he played trumpet in blues and jazz bands and eventually started his own 12-piece ensemble, the Rajahs of Swing. Before long, he was hired by bandleader Jay McShann. Cohan recalled in a 1984 DownBeat interview, “That is where I really learned to swing. The crowds would be so thick, people would be falling on top of you and drinking and everything; it got so bad you’d have to lean back and play.” He was drafted in 1950 and moved to Chicago after his time in the service.

By the end of 1959, John Gilmore introduced him to Sun Ra and his Arkestra. Fascinated by Sun Ra’s (still Sonny at the time) vibe and musical range (he could play both Tchaikovsky’s and Rachmaninoff’s piano concertos), he joined the band. He appeared on Sun Ra’s albums Fate In A Pleasant Mood, Angels and Demons at Play, and Holiday For A Soul Dance.

Here is Cohran playing on Fate In A Pleasant Mood, a tune Sun Ra wrote for him. It was recorded at Elk’s Hall in Milwaukee around June 14, 1960, but not released on Sun Ra’s Saturn Records label until 1965:

Sun Ra featured Cohran’s composition Dorthy’s Dance on his Holiday for a Soul Dance, the only original song released on that album. It was also recorded at Elks Hall in Milwaukee around June 14, 1960, but not released on Saturn until 1970. Here’s Dorthy’s Dance:

However, when the Arkestra moved to New York City in the Fall of 1961, Cohran decided to stay in Chicago. Although Cohran was only in the Arkestra for a couple of years, Sun Ra helped him find a distinctive voice.

In 1965, Cohran was one of the founding members of the AACM. You can read more about that here. In 2015, on the occasion of the AACM’s 50th Anniversary, Cohran told the Chicago Tribune, “Our problem was we’d been studying instruments of other people. We needed to study our own and create our own.” That’s exactly what he did when, in 1967, he formed the Artistic Heritage Ensemble. He also created his own record label, Zulu Records, to document and record his music. Released in 1967, their first record, if we can follow the record numbers, was No. 0001, a 7", 33 ⅓ rpm record with El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz and Detroit Red:

Their first full-length LP was No. 0004, the self-titled Philip Cohran And The Artistic Heritage Ensemble, sometimes referred to as “On The Beach”:

Cohran’s Artistic Heritage Ensemble was loaded with talent, perhaps no stronger than saxophonist Donald Myrick and trombone/bassist Louis Satterfield (both of Earth, Wind & Fire fame). Here’s an example of Myrick’s playing on Unity:

We will follow Myrick and Satterfield in more detail on next week’s journey…

On August 27, 1967, Gwendolyn Brooks read her commemorative poem for the dedication of a mural that became known as “The Wall of Respect.” Muralist William Walker painted it at 43rd and Langley Streets in the Bronzeville neighborhood.

The poem was called The Wall:

Notice this stanza of the poem:

Women in wool hair chant their poetry.
Phil Cohran gives us messages and music
made of developed bone and polished and honed cult.
It is the Hour of tribe and of vibration,
the day-long Hour.

It memorializes the events that came to be known as the “On the Beach” concerts held by Cohran’s ensemble at the 63rd Street Beach. These concerts ushered in a cultural explosion in Chicago. Here's a picture from one of the concerts:

On February 25, 1968, 56 years ago tomorrow, The Artistic Heritage Ensemble released the masterpiece Malcolm X Memorial (A Tribute In Music), recorded live at the Affro-Arts Theater and also released on the Zulu label:

Here’s the entire album - a must-listen:

The first track, Malcolm Little, is an absolute treasure, with Pete Cosey’s guitar intro along with Louis Satterfield’s bass and Aaron Dobb’s tuba holding it all down for Eugene Easton’s wonderful flute solo. It doesn’t get any better than this - one of my desert island classics.

Later in life, Cohran provided influence and guidance for the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, which included eight of his sons. They are perhaps most famous for the song War, which appeared in the film The Hunger Games:

A year ago, on Friday, February 24th, and Saturday the 25th, at an event meant to coincide with Black History Month, the film Music Maestro Please, The Kelan Phil Cohran Story, was screened in Bronzeville. “It’s a very spiritual story,” says Producer Bob Lott. “His story and the spiritual perspectives that come through Cohran’s music connect to the larger story of African Americans.” Here’s a live-streamed video from the February 24th screening, featuring comments from the production team.

Generations of musicians drew inspiration from the pioneering work of Phil Cohran. Muhal Richard Abrams, another AACM co-founder, said, “I think he had a profound influence on many organized groups. They more or less cut their teeth in Chicago, and their major influence was Phil Cohran.”

Phil Cohran died in Chicago on June 28, 2017. He was 90 years old. With this journey, during Black History Month, we honor him and his important legacy.

Next week, on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in and explore the world of Maurice White.

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Until then, keep on walking….