An Evolution in Sound, Community, and Consciousness There are moments in the continuum of Black music when a band is not just a band it is a vessel. A laboratory. A mirror. And sometimes, a teacher This is one of those moments. San Francisco: Conception of a Sound (1971) The group Juju was born in San Francisco in 1971 - not out of industry ambition, but out of necessity. The necessity to create a sound that reflected a deeper cultural and spiritual alignment. This was not si

My journey into African music did not begin in a classroom. It did not begin with ethnomusicology, anthropology, or a university lecture hall filled with neatly outlined histories and assigned listening lists. It began on the bandstand, in 1970. That’s where I met Ndikho Xaba - a Zulu man from South Africa, living in exile, carrying his country in his spirit and his struggle in his sound. I joined his band, Ndikho and the Natives, and stepped into an education that no instit

An essay about gravity, accompanied by a custom video game inside.

These were not conventional clubs; they were spaces created by artists themselves, where musicians could explore ideas outside the commercial constraints of the traditional jazz circuit.

N.A.M.E. Brand Music is now live  with a growing catalog of 16 albums , presented in a clean, intuitive player built for both mobile and desktop. The collection spans decades of Plunky & Oneness recordings, from early classics to recent releases. Listeners can explore albums such as Cold Heat , On Fire , One World One Music , Juju Jazz Funk & Oneness , Love Is Everywhere , I Can't Hold Back , Saxy , Tropical Chill , Got To Move Something , Drive It , Groove Tones , Never Too

Events like this matter because they collapse the false divide between education and experience. To hear Black musical history performed live -by artists who are themselves part of that lineage - is to understand history as something you feel, not just something you read. In this way, the concert at Snidow Chapel becomes a living classroom, one that affirms Black music as both archive and future-facing language.

Before streaming. Before playlists. Before “independent” became a marketing category. There was Black Fire Records . In the mid-1970s, in Washington, DC, Jimmy Gray and I founded Black Fire to create space for music that didn’t fit the industry’s narrow boxes. We weren’t trying to chase trends—we were trying to tell the truth. About our lives. Our communities. Our future. The Black Fire Documentary  is more than a film about a label. It’s a window into a moment when artists,

ONE MAG  was created as an editorial home for living culture, where Black music, creative lineage, and contemporary expression can be held with context, care, and continuity. In a digital landscape built for speed and surface level engagement, this platform exists to slow the moment down long enough to honor story, lineage, and the people carrying culture forward. But meaningful media does not sustain itself by accident. Behind every feature, every long form piece, every visu

The Featured Artist program is an invitation into a living archive of Black music and creative expression. It is for artists who want their work to exist with context, who care about lineage as much as innovation, and who see their creative practice as part of a longer story.

Plunky & the Oneness of Juju have always existed beyond trends. For over five decades, their sound has moved freely across jazz, funk, African rhythms, and spiritual soul - building a language of groove rooted in connection, community, and consciousness. NPR mobile header today Today, that living legacy is being recognized in a special feature from NPR affiliate VPM, as part of JAMinc Presents. The piece highlights the band’s enduring impact, tracing their journey from the 19

Plunky On Demand officially launches in March as a unified platform for culture, plus Plunky's educational and creative work. This is a long term project designed to bring together music, film, writing, and learning into one connected network built to grow over time through a steady release of content, old and new. At launch, Plunky On Demand will roll out with three core services, each serving a different way of engaging with the platform. BLACK MUSIC STUDY (Education) Black

For over forty years, Plunky has carried this work into classrooms, colleges, community centers, and wherever people were willing to sit down and really listen. Not just dates and names - but context. Not just genres - but the conditions that gave them breath. That kind of teaching lives in rooms. It lives in conversation. It lives in the energy between people. Until now, a lot of that work existed in moments.

This section establishes Africa as the first “music conservatory” and introduces the musical systems, instruments, and philosophies that would later travel across the Atlantic and shape the music of the African diaspora.

Most platforms talk about content. Few talk about continuity. Plunky On Demand  was not built to be a content warehouse. It was built as a living system - a place where culture, education, memory, and practice live together. The goal is not just to host media, but to hold context: the stories behind the work, the lineage behind the sound, and the connective tissue between generations of knowledge. At the center of this vision is Plunky - not as a brand mascot, but as a living

This part frames Black music in the Americas not as imitation, but as cultural survival under pressure - a continuation of African systems reshaped by new realities.

“Everything we’re talking about combines both present and past – and future,” he said. “A half century is a momentous occasion for anything.”

James “Plunky” Branch has been an avatar and champion of the Richmond music scene for over half a century. He grew up in Richmond, left in the 1960s, and then returned after a picaresque odyssey through student demonstrations, the San Francisco counterculture, a brief stint in the military and even longer getting away from it.

Strut Records presents the latest release by legendary Afro-jazz group Oneness Of Juju with their new album Made Through Ritual.

This part frames the blues not simply as a genre, but as a cultural technology for survival—an expressive system through which individuals claimed voice in a society still structured by racial inequality.

This part frames jazz as both a continuation of African musical logic and a radical reimagining of musical possibility within modern urban life.