I share a sacred rhythm with jazz legend Plunky Branch. We were born in 1947. We have parallel journeys from sound to selfhood, from meditation to music. Through his frequencies, I discovered we share a cosmic friendship. Our grooves are still evolving and amplifying the “Sound of the Oneness of JuJu.”
Plunky & Oneness of JuJu: Home Rule Music Festival 2025
On June 21, 2025, Plunky & Oneness of JuJu will take the stage at the Home Rule Musical Festival at Walter Reed Park in Washington, D.C.
According to the event’s website, Plunky & Oneness of Juju blend Afro-funk, jazz, and soul into a powerful sound that moves bodies and minds—music with a message and a groove.
A Rhythm Was Born
1947 wasn’t just a year.
It was a frequency.
A time signature. A cosmic downbeat.
A portal.
The post-World War II era was rebuilding—reshuffling borders, redrawing maps.
But something quieter, deeper, was happening too:
A Black vibration was forming.
Not just political or cultural, but sonic.
The kind you feel in your bones before you ever find the words.
In March 1947, James “Plunky” Branch was born. I was born nine months later.
We didn’t know each other in 1947, obviously.
But we were already rhythmic kin.
Twin Frequencies of Becoming
Plunky found his voice through the saxophone.
I found mine through frameworks—Private Equity State Captialism, Meditativism, and AfricanAmericaism.
But our work has always shared the same purpose:
To sound the soul,
To groove past constraints,
To remember what empire tries to erase.
Plunky helped father Oneness of Ju Ju—a spiritual jazz-funk fusion born in the fire of liberation and Black self-determination.
At the same time, I was cultivating pathways for consciousness, agency, and alignment inside systems designed to mute both.
He created ceremonies through sound.
I mapped resistance through inquiry.
Both of us became instruments of the unwritten liberation chart.
While the Horns Were Sounding (1965–1974)
While Plunky formed groups and channeled African rhythms through saxophone and spirit, I navigated the halls of undergraduate and graduate school.
I was learning the languages of theory, systems, and strategy— but the world outside the classroom was teaching its curriculum:
Civil Rights to Black Power
Watts to Attica
Coltrane to Shepp to Plunky
I now realize: While I was studying liberation through frameworks,
Plunky was sounding it through frequencies.
We were being shaped by the same era, from different vantage points—
Learning to listen.
To unlearn.
To remember.
When Frequencies Met
I didn’t grow up with Plunky’s music.
I didn’t hear him in my youth or stumble across him in some dusty record bin.
I first discovered Plunky & Oneness of JuJu at the 2024 Home Rule Music Festival.
His horn met my breath on that blazing hot summer day in D.C..
I wasn’t just watching a performance—I was witnessing a summoning.
Something about the rhythm felt familiar, though I couldn’t place it.
I hadn’t known his name. But I recognized his frequency.
And in that moment, I wasn’t just discovering a musician—
I was remembering something ancient in myself.
The Aftergroove
After HR 2024, I couldn’t let it go.
I went deeper.
I explored his discography—African Rhythms, Space Jungle Luv, Every Way But Loose.
I read about his life, his independence, and his legacy.
I traced the arc from spiritual jazz to sacred funk to Afrofuturist soundscapes.
Realizing the Return
Nearly a year after first encountering his sound in June 2024, on May 26, 2025, I learned that Plunky would be headlining the 2025 Home Rule Music Festival.
Not just returning.
Presiding.
A full-circle moment.
The groove I met in real time now rises as the ritual leader of this year’s gathering.
It was more than exciting.
It was sacred.
Realization as Revelation
And then, on May 28, 2025, another note struck: Plunky was born in 1947, just like me. He’s been resonating for 78 years, and I for almost that long.
Different instruments.
Same vibration.
Same ancestral pull toward freedom and formation.
The Spirit of ‘76
During my 76th year, I devoted myself to Spiritual Jazz and Meditation—a year-long offering to the ancestral groove that lives in us. I titled it:
Making Liberation and Freedom Happen in Music, Meditation, Movement, and Life.
It was more than just music.
It was about designing sacred life—about living the rhythm, not just listening to it.
On January 30, 2025, I published a blog:
“Music as a Vessel for Spiritual and Cultural Narratives: Spiritual Jazz and the Magic of Juju.”
In my post, I traced ancestral threads carried by spiritual jazz icons—Pharoah Sanders, Gary Bartz, Archie Shepp, Wayne Shorter— and the mystical, rhythmic force of JuJu itself.
Many artists found inspiration in Juju, a spiritual practice deeply rooted in West African traditions. JuJu channels spiritual energy, rituals, and symbols to connect people with unseen forces that guide and protect them. It emphasizes harmony, balance, and the interconnectedness of all life. Through music, JuJu’s rhythmic patterns and mystical qualities create a bridge to ancestral wisdom and spiritual strength. JuJu inspired jazz and other artists to craft works transcending sound, capturing the essence of the human experience.
What I didn’t fully grasp during my Spirit of ‘76 project, but know now:
Plunky is part of that lineage.
At HR2024, Plunky wasn’t just echoing the ancestors.
He was living proof that the groove survives.
AfricanAmericanism: The Groove That Liberates
Through AfricanAmericanism, I experience it completely:
Testify – Plunkey’s sound names what others hide.
Unshackle – He sheds the false frames, the limiting scripts.
Walk in Power – He built his own tunes, his own lineage.
Live Beyond Limits – He dares us to imagine freedom not yet seen.
Plunky didn’t ask for inclusion. He created the soundscape of the excluded.
And I—through frameworks, meditations, and inquiry—built paths back to ourselves.
Together, we compose what others can’t co-opt: the score of Black sovereignty, played in a key only we can hear.
AfricanAmericanism isn’t a theory I apply.
It’s the lived tempo of my people.
The Score of Our Becoming
At 78, Plunky still channels.
At almost 78, so do I.
Guiding connections isn’t behind us.
It’s in us.
It’s breathing through our work, our voices, our remembering.
His horn. My frameworks. Our lives.
Still breathing.
Still grooving.
Still disrupting disconnection
Still promoting reconnection
So to those listening:
Play the note no one else hears.
Refuse to flatten your rhythm.
Stay sacred. Stay sonic. Stay sovereign.
Plunky and I are:
Still vibrating.
Still remembering.
Still writing our score and yours.
Still becoming “The Oneness of JuJu.”