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Tonight octogenarian Phil Cohran, a fixture in Chicago’s creative-music community for decades, presents a musical homage to Sun Ra at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. Cohran has accomplished enough to be worthy of homage himself; he played with the earliest version of Sun Ra’s Arkestra back in the 50s, cofounded the AACM, started the Affro-Arts Theater, and in the late 60s, with his Artistic Heritage Ensemble, he created a distinctive and influential strain of African-flavored jazz-funk, distinguished by the cascading, lyric lines he played on an electrified kalimba of his own design he called the Frankiphone. He’s also spent many years as an educator.
Hypnotic’s music pushes the jazz approach of Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy into funk and soul territory, but like much of Cohran’s work it also carries a sense of history. According to the liner notes, the song “War” uses tones “based on an ancient Chinese weather tactic whereby an emperor, having assembled his troops for battle, would call on a priest or a shaman to send rainstorms over a rival’s army.” Hypnotic has also toured in Europe and collaborated with hip-hop artists like Mos Def (you can hear a couple live tracks with him here).
