Hypnotic Brass Ensemble

Thu 2nd Jun, 2011 in Features

When Gorillaz toured Australia last December Damon Alburn was joined on stage by a dazzling cast that included Mick Jones and Paul Simonon from the Clash, De La Soul, Bobby Womack, the Syrian National Orchestra of Arabic Music and eight horn wielding brothers from the south side of Chicago.

Those brothers are Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, the sons of Phil Cohran who played with jazz legend Sun Ra in the 1950s and became a vital part of Chicago’s music scene, and in addition to playing on the Gorillaz Plastic Beach album and international tour they’ve performed with Mos Def, Tony Allen, Erykah Badu and on street corners from New York and Chicago to London and Paris.

This week the group will be in Australia again to play two very special shows at Vivid LIVE and appear at the Melbourne Jazz Festival. FasterLouder caught up with one of the ensemble’s trumpeters Gabriel Hubert “Hudah” Cohran to talk about the band’s ‘cosmic’ sound, learning humility by working with Gorillaz and growing up with a Pharaoh headdress wearing dad who blasted Public Enemy in the car.

Hypnotic Brass is often referred to as a hip-hop group, or a hip-hop inspired group, or compared to New Orleans brass acts like Hot 8 and Rebirth Brass Band. How would you define what Hypnotic is?
It’s a continuation of a legacy. It’s cosmic music, or you could call it ‘now’ music, it’s the music of today. Usually the youth carries the music into the generations, a hundred years ago or maybe eighty, ninety years ago you had the Harlem Renaissance and jazz was formed. Years before that you had blues, after that came rock and roll. Every so often there’s a new sound, it’s all music, but there’s a new sound and a new vibe and a new feel that brings on a lot of inspiration and gives people a reason to write and create.

We’re not restricted by genres, we let the spirit write the music and if it feels good then it’s something that the people can love. It’s got elements of jazz and of hip-hop, salsa, merengue, ancient cultures, new cultures. Whatever you want to put on it you can be inspired by it. So we just sum it up, if we can be so bold, to call it ‘hypnotic music’

Coming from a musical family was there a pressure to pick up an instrument?
It was a combination of a lot of things. Music definitely inspires people so growing up around music in a musical family you’re going to want to participate. You’re going to want to have a horn or to have something. So that definitely had a lot to do with us starting. We’re the youngsters of the family. All the children were taught music, not everybody stuck with it but the majority of us still play.

Your father is obviously a big influence on your life and music – are all the members of Hypnotic multi instrumentalists like him?
I don’t study different instruments, but I can pick up a harp and pluck a harp. I can pick up a guitar and do the same thing. I can pick up a bass or a saxophone and it might not be the best but I can get a sound out of it and I can figure out how to get notes and what notes go together. I can remember that pattern and make a song out of it. Once you learn one horn you can always play multiple instruments. The difference is are you studying different instruments, so I’m not studying different instruments, but I can pick up any instrument and play it.

What lead to you all gravitating to brass instrumentation?
We were all inspired by watching our father play the trumpet so automatically we were going to gravitate towards that because that’s your first influence; your first inspiration. Also when we were little our father had it in his mind that he wanted a band comprised of youngsters, whether it was youth from the community or youth from the streets or a combination of then and his children. It ended up just being us in the end, but that was one of his things he loved teaching so we started out that way and grew from there.

How did you each end up with the instruments you play in the group? Tycho must have drawn a short straw to have to lug around the sousaphone…
Why do you feel he drew a short straw? If I can speak on his behalf I feel he felt that was his contribution to the group. When we were children it was something that maybe defined ‘masculinity’ for him – I think I’ve heard him say that.

So there was no rivalry as kids about which instruments you were given?
Our father’s approach wasn’t about that. Obviously everyone couldn’t play trumpet, so he kind of assigned a few brothers their instruments. One brother got his trombone because our father though he’d said ‘trombone’ when he’d said trumpet, or he thought a trumpet was called a trombone. They let us pick our own instruments one brother who plays trumpet now started off on the guitar. Myself, I started on tuba, but I liked the trumpet more than the tuba. Some brothers started out on French horn… I kind of gravitated towards to what defines me, what talks to me the most. Once you can play one instrument and get a vibe for one instrument, can create beauty on one instrument there isn’t an instrument you can pick up and spend time on and get the same result out of it.