Still We Rise: Plunky & Oneness Bring Living Black Music History to Snidow Chapel
- Rasul Elder
- Feb 20
- 2 min read
Originally scheduled as the kickoff for Black History Month at the University of Lynchburg, the concert by renowned Richmond saxophonist and bandleader J. Plunky Branch and his band Oneness at Snidow Chapel stands as more than a single night of music. It’s a living demonstration of Black musical continuity - past, present, and future sounding together in the same room.
This year’s Black History Month theme at the University of Lynchburg, “STILL WE RISE: The Dream, The Duty and the Divine Legacy,” frames the evening in deeper terms than performance alone. The phrase “Still We Rise” is not just a slogan; it is a reflection of cultural survival, creative resilience, and the responsibility carried by artists who work within Black musical traditions. Plunky’s work has long operated in this space - where music is not only sound, but statement.
For over five decades, Plunky has been at the vanguard of Afrocentric jazz, funk, house, go-go, and diasporic rhythm, weaving these forms into a forward-looking message of empowerment, positivity, and cultural awareness. His music doesn’t isolate genres; it reveals their shared lineage. The rhythms speak across generations, connecting ancestral patterns to contemporary expression. This is Black music not as museum artifact, but as living practice.
The concert itself is structured as a journey. In the first set, Plunky & Oneness trace historical Black music from early African rhythms through colonial-era spirituals and work songs, into ragtime and the jazz age - highlighting how Black sound evolved under pressure, adaptation, and creative resistance. This is not a lecture dressed up as a performance. It is history embodied through groove, tone, and collective energy.
The second set turns toward the present and future - contemporary funk, forward-moving rhythm, and the expansive sound Plunky and Oneness are known for. This shift mirrors the continuity suggested in the theme: the dream inherited, the duty carried forward, and the divine legacy expressed through living sound. The music does not simply reference history - it extends it.
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.
Plunky’s work continues to model what it looks like to carry tradition without freezing it in time. His career stands as proof that Black music is not a closed chapter but an ongoing continuum - one that rises, adapts, and speaks to each generation in its own voice.
Still we rise - not only in memory, but in motion.
Snidow Chapel is located on the University of Lynchburg campus. The entrance to the Snidow Chapel parking lot is opposite 100 Vernon Street.
Comments