Butcher Brown feat. J Plunky Branch - "Richmond Folk Festival - All Together Now 2020"

The Richmond Folk Festival proudly presents All Together Now, a two-part television program celebrating Virginia artists.
This television program, created specifically for the 2020 festival, features new performances from some of Virginia’s most talented artists, along with several of our favorite past performances from the Festival’s Virginia Folklife Stage.
Filmed at Richmond’s Spacebomb Studios in partnership with VPM, viewers will enjoy brand new, 30-minute sets from Butcher Brown feat. J. Plunky Branch, Cora Harvey Armstrong, Jared Pool & Friends, and Kadencia.

BUTCHER BROWN FEAT. J. PLUNKY BRANCH
SOUL FUSION
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
Meet Butcher Brown: five groove merchants delivering a heady home-brew of jams and jazz, rhymes and beats—a funky, musical mix that makes one question why great music needs to be labeled as this category or that. The hybrid moniker “jazz/hip-hop” only begins to cover it. Their balance of raw energy and smooth sophistication, edgy improvisation with a generous dose of Southern roots (South coast hip-hop to Southern rock) reveals how equal opportunity they are in employing a wide range of musical styles, and how authentically they’ve absorbed it all.

For over 50 years, Richmond saxophonist and bandleader J. Plunky Branch has been at the vanguard of Afro-centric jazz, funk, house music, and go-go, weaving these interrelated musical forms into a forward-looking message of empowerment, positivity, and cultural awareness.

Plunky was born and raised in Richmond, where he was mentored as a teenager by local R&B musicians and music educators, including jazz violinist Joe Kennedy Jr. Acceptance to Columbia University found him leading a popular New York City soul band. “I took my Richmond R&B roots to New York, and I’ve since then brought back to Richmond what I’ve learned in New York, San Francisco, Europe, and West Africa,” he says.