Featured at SXSW; Brothers Hypnotic was a feature-length documentary about a coming of age story, for eight brothers, and for an ideal.
For the eight young men in the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, “brotherhood” is literal: they’re all sons of anti-establishment jazz legend, Phil Cohran. Cohran performed with Sun Ra and mentored future members of Earth, Wind & Fire, abstained fame to found Chicago’s Affro-Arts Theatre and Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Cohran and their mothers raised them together on Chicago’s South Side on a strict diet of jazz, funk and Black Consciousness. Family band practice began at 6 AM.
Now grown, as they raise eight brass horns to the sky, they make music that is at once indescribably joyful, unremittingly exciting, and undeniably together. But as the brothers try to make their own way in the world—they find the values their father bred into them constantly tested. They must decide whether his principles, like raising consciousness and improving lives through music, are also really their own.
Brothers Hypnotic was discovered busking in Times Square, playing their unique jazz-funk-hip-hop hybrid for an ecstatic crowd. They’ve since worked with Prince, Maxwell, Maceo Parker, Damon Albarn and Mos Def, trying to forge their future while determining what it might be. The documentary captures their journey — and conflicts — across four countries, at their family home, in recording studios and wherever they’ve carried their family ideals and joyful sound.
Photo Credit: hypnoticbrassfilm.com
