Everybody Is a Star: Realizing the Gravity of a Life
- J Plunky Branch
- Mar 19
- 3 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
When Sly Stone said, “Everybody is a star,” he wasn’t just talking about fame. He was talking about center.
A star is a heavenly body. It glows. It generates warmth. It creates gravity. Other bodies move in relation to it. And in human terms, in musical terms, in spiritual terms - everybody is a center of activity. Every mother is the star of her family. Every person has people who revolve around them.
And I have gotten to be this many years old before I realized - I have been a star.
In 1969, I left Columbia University, was drafted, became a fugitive from the army, and migrated to San Francisco. Looking back, I see something I didn’t see then: people followed. Not just symbolically. Physically.
These were friends who would go on to shape literature, theater, journalism, and music. And for a moment in time, we were moving together. That is gravity.
In San Francisco, we took on African names. I became Splunky Nkabinde. That was not style - it was transformation.
When I returned to New York, my group Juju followed me again.
We became part of the loft jazz scene. Ornette Coleman gave us space, and I ran his gallery. We played at Sam Rivers’ Studio Rivbea. I worked with Marzette Watts, Frank Lowe, Rashied Ali, Harold Smith, and Gary Bartz.
I intersected with David Murray and Hamiet Bluiett, who would join Julius Hemphill and Oliver Lake - to become the World Saxophone Quartet. John Gilmore, saxophonist with Sun Ra, looked at me with favor.
I met Ahmed Abdullah and Olu Dara - powerful trumpet voices. Years later, Olu who was the father of world renown hip-hop star Nas, and I would reconnect and perform together at the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta.
During the early seventies, Juju played in the New York Musicians Festival, a counter to the Newport Jazz Festival system.
One night, my saxophones were stolen from my car. The musician community came together and bought me a Selmer Mark VI tenor saxophone from John Stubberfield, which I still own today.
Juju later performed at Avery Fisher Hall and received a rave New York Times review calling us a “blinding light of energy.”
I recorded with Pharaoh Sanders and became involved with Strata East Records, understanding the importance of ownership and distribution.
At NYU, I organized New Black Music Seminars and documented our work on video —archives that still exist today.
When I moved to Richmond, Virginia, once again my band followed me.
I brought with me the lessons of space and structure. Inspired by Ornette Coleman’s Artist House, We created the Juju Raga Artist House at 3310 East Broad Street. We lived upstairs. Downstairs was the Kahero Gallery - “conceived at home.”
We held rehearsals, performances, poetry readings, and open gatherings. We never locked the door. It became the first Black commercial art gallery in Virginia.
Our first major exhibit featured Murry DePillars, who later became Dean of the School of the Arts at VCU.
I co-founded the Richmond Jazz Society to promote jazz through performance and education. It still exists over 40 years later.
We also founded Branches of the Arts, a nonprofit umbrella to support Black arts organizations and secure funding. We challenged inequities in arts funding and helped redirect resources to community-based organizations.
Looking back, I see the pattern.
People moved with me.
Communities formed around me.
Structures were built.
Art was sustained.
Everybody is a star.
A star creates space, builds systems, attracts people, and leaves something lasting behind.
And now I understand - I was generating a universe.
A star is not only something seen. It gathers. It holds. It gives shape to motion around it.
Hexsis Star Gather is a rotating pattern game
where triangle-based pieces move toward the center and lock into larger geometric forms, turning pressure, mistakes, and recovery into stars. Set to Plunky’s “Free Spirit,” the game becomes a visual response to the music itself - improvisational, cyclical, and rooted in the same feeling of motion, freedom, and transformation that drives the piece.
Hexsis Star Gather was made as a digital poem to accompany this reflection on star power, center, and human gravity. Here, motion bends inward. Pieces seek relation. Form emerges through attraction, balance, and placement. What is built can collapse, cohere, or become radiant. In that sense, the game is not separate from the essay. It is another way of saying the same thing: that a life can generate force, gather people, build structures, and leave a universe behind.
Created in response to
“Everybody Is a Star: Realizing the Gravity of a Life”
by J. Plunky Branch
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