The enslaved Africans who first arrived in the British colony of Virginia in 1619 after being forcefully removed from their natural environments left much behind, but their rhythms associated with ...

Growing up in segregated Richmond, Virginia, the first creative love of James Branch's life was chemistry. Which seems fitting enough given all the musical compounds he would later contrive. As a ...

A landmark anthology originally released in 2001 documents how James “Plunky Nkabinde” Branch and his groups connected jazz, R&B, and funk through Afrocentric rhythms and spirituality. The early ...

In time, versions of these rhythms were attached to work songs, field hollers and street cries, many of which were accompanied by dance. The creators of these forms drew from an African cultural ...