Photo caption: Kelan Phil Cohran (credit: tmgifilms.com)
Teamwork Media Group International (TMGI) producers of the documentary Music Maestro Please, The Kelan Phil Cohran Story Bio-Documentary film was screened in December last year before an enthusiastic, standing room only audience on Chicago’s Southside. The story of this influential Chicago native who died in 2017 at the age of 90, and mentored such legends as Maurice White of Earth, Wind and Fire, as well as Chaka Khan, has been in the works for some time. And according to many of those in the audience, the resulting video biography was well worth the wait.
The 75-minute film made its debut in “the city with big shoulders,” Chicago on December 29th of last year. In addition to the screening there were live performances by local Chicago musicians, Malik’s Jazz Arts Ensemble, The Official Remedy, and Mister Taps.
The December event organizers were Brother M of the Cohran Foundation, one of 14 sons of Kelon Phil Cohran, along with Dwight “Bakare” McFarland Bey, and Stephen “Kwesi” Mack. The film’s Producer/Director, Bob Lott was on hand to discuss the documentary’s road to production.
A second major screening will be happening on Friday, February 24th and Saturday the 25th at the Bronzeville Academy Charter School, 4930 S. Cottage Avenue, Chicago, Ill, 60605 at 6 pm. each night. Tickets for the event are $25.00 per person.
Cohran, who was for a time a member of Sun Ra’s Arkestras in the 1960’s was also a founding member of the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Inc. (AACM) “that became the leading influence on musical genre of free jazz,” not only in Chicago, but internationally.
“We wanted to give my father’s untold story the justice it deserves,” says the younger Cohran. “Bob Lott was the right man at the right time.”
TMGI has developed a national reputation with its documentary offerings for “Flipping the Script” and “Changing Minds by Changing Perceptions” with the original programming it creates. TMGI Films, a factual programming production company has programming covering sports, motion pictures, ancient history, archaeology, music, finance, education, and biographies of influential Americans aimed at a global audience.
Music Maestro Please is one of those stories. “It’s a very spiritual story,” says Producer, Bob Lott. “His story and the spiritual perspectives that come through Corhan’s music connects to the larger story of African Americans.
The February Chicago screening is meant to coincide with Black History Month and TMGI has begun shopping the film to local TV outlets as well as regional TV outlets throughout the Midwest.
Kelan Phil Cohran
The honorific title Kelan was bestowed on Philip Cohran by Chinese Muslims on a tour of China in 1992. “He was about his people, dealing with descendants of slaves and what could he do to help them get out of the predicament they’ve been in during the last 400 years.”
Chaka Khan and Earth, Wind & Fire’s Maurice White studied with him.The globally influential Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) was co- founded by him.
And generations of musicians drew inspiration from the pioneering work of Chicago composer and multi-instrumentalist Kelan Phil Cohran. ”He was a
major contributor to the whole structure and the idea” of the AACM, said Muhal Richard Abrams, another co-founder of an organization that changed the course of music starting in 1965. “I think he had a profound influence on many organized groups,” added Abrams. “They more or less cut their teeth in Chicago, and their major influence was Phil Cohran.”
Cohran played and recorded with the groundbreaking Sun Ra Arkestra in the late 1950s; invented an instrument he dubbed the Frankiphone — a version of an African kalimba or “thumb piano,” which White brought to Earth, Wind & Fire; created the Affro-Arts Theater, which in the 1960s was a South Side epicenter of experimental arts; and founded the Artistic Heritage Ensemble, which influenced bands as far- flung as El’Zabar’s avant-garde Ethnic Heritage Ensemble and Earth, Wind & Fire.
PRODUCER / DIRECTOR
Robert “Bob” Lott
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER TMGI FILMS
TMGI has developed a national reputation with its documentary offerings for “Flipping the Script” and “Changing Minds by Changing Perceptions” with the original programming it creates. TMGI Films, a factual programming production company has programming covering sports, motion pictures, ancient history, archaeology, music, finance, education, history and biographies of influential Americans aimed at a global audience.
ASSOCIATE PRODUCERS
Cohran son of Phil Cohran Stephen “Kwesi” Mack Dwight “Bakare” Macfarland Bey,
