Item description for Professor Pitt - The Organic Equation by Phillip King

Award Winning harpist Phillip King was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and spent most of his adult life pursuing a career in television and movie production. While doing a hip hop album with a harpist, Eah Herrin, he sat down to a harp hand built for Eah. Without a history with musical instruments, he discovered he could play instantly. The harpist was so amazed by this miracle that she gave her childhood harp to Phillip that day. Phillip has been blessed with a gift that transcends language, culture as well as time, a gift that benefits all living beings.

Phillip King age 40 born in Milwaukee Wisconsin, spent most of his adult life pursuing a career in television and movie production. A former CEO of Dirty Lenz Films, he spent five years producing a 60min Hip Hop Culture T.V. show that aired in Milwaukee-channel 14, Chicago-channel 19, and overseas in Germany Berlin-channel 8 OK Berlin. He then moved on to 15 years of producing an underground cult classic trilogy- Hip Hop Kung Fu Movie the Movie. While doing a hip hop album with a harpist, Eah Herrin, centered on universal spiritual wisdom, he sat down to a harp hand built for Eah as a child. Without a history with musical instruments, he discovered he was an anointed harpist. _ANOINTED meaning touched by the Most High, and mystically without explanation gifted with extra extraordinary skill, “A gift given with one purpose; to give to the world.”

Phillip King's music is an anomaly of enchanted elegance, bearing the unique cutting edge of beat box harp. His goal is to expand the spectrum of the relevance in today's society of the need for exceptional harp music as a relaxing, healing agent in all of our lives, from the work place, to the health industry, to the commercial music industry." Music like this is essential.” This Goal includes school programs to get harps in the hands of children.

Los Angeles is a city full of characters, and Phillip King is no exception. A tall man who exudes positivity in his seemingly permanent ear-to-ear smile, Phillip has been bringing his distinct style to different corners of the city for the past few years, becoming something of a fixture for locals (during the hour we sat down to talk, two people approached us sheepishly to ask if he was "that harp guy"). I met with him to find out what led him down this very particular path, what he was up to, and where he was planning to bring his unique talents next.

A large portion of LA has come to know me as either, "The Anointed Beatbox Harpist" or simply the "Harp Man." My unique brand of harp music speaks to all generations with excitement and vibrancy, reinventing how this instrument is viewed. I've played venues ranging from celebrity Super Bowl parties and weddings, The Viper room, corporate events, Hollywood and Beverly Hills mansion parties and backyard soirées, all the way to the humble, and sometimes the most gratifying, street performances, like farmers markets, the Santa Monica board walk, the entrance of the Hollywood bowl, and all of my unforgettable experiences in LA Children's Hospital donating my time through HARK (which has inspired me to create my own program for hospitals and hospices). From the deepest part of my heart there is no better feeling than seeing the effect of my music bring people who are sometimes in the deepest of pain to golden moments of joy and elation.

The Bay Area is a mecca of martial arts. As a black man taking part in someone else's culture in such an authentic town, and mixing it with hip hop -- which had become synonymous with disrespect and destruction at this point -- I had to practice ten hours a day, every day, in the places where people who really knew martial arts practiced, to gain the respect to actually be able to get real martial artists in the film, the people who would, no disrespect, not be in a Hollywood movie.

While doing all that, I made a rap song called, "When Your Ancestors Call." The song was written to a piece by Dorothy Ashby, a famous African American harpist who lived in LA. I saw a woman with a harp in San Francisco, and at the time I was listening to the very song, so I ran up to her and asked, "Can you play this?" and she said, "Easy." Any harpist who says, "Easy" to Dorothy Ashby must be a great harpist, so I asked her if she'd come back to my studio and record it. We did so, and we realized from the response of people when they heard it that it was something they'd never heard before. That album was called The Organic Equation, because it was harp, beatbox, and rapping (though I didn't know how to play the harp during that album). So we did that, but in the middle of the album, she had to go back to the Netherlands (where her family was from). She was embarrassed to have to leave halfway, so she brought over this harp that was handmade for her by her teacher. She said, "You're welcome to play with it," but at the time I had my sons for the summer, so I really didn't try too much. But the miracle of the situation was -- I was at this point training into the wee hours of the night, and one day I trained until I just couldn't train anymore. I looked over, and it was literally sitting in the moonlight -- seriously -- and I'm sitting there too tired to do any more martial arts. I walked over to it, sat down, and the first song that came out of me was the first song that's on my first harp album, called The Retune of King David: for the Saul in us All. I still haven't made a song that's more intricate than that. Being able to just sit down and suddenly, miraculously, play, I do believe all the hours of training and opening helped.

At the time I was just like, "Wow." It just felt natural. When I say that it came out of me, a lot of people think I sat down and tinkered around, and was like, "Oh, that sounds good," or they say I taught myself. But how can you teach yourself when your eyes are closed, you don't know what's going on, and the same intricate song keeps happening? Sometimes I just look at my fingers and don't know what's going on. And that for me is the Holy Spirit.

When she came back, I told her, "Look, I can play!" I played for her, she looked at me in awe, and was like, "Your harp's coming back to you. I can't take it from you. That's your harp." She's been a harpist since she was a little girl, she's a professional harpist who's seen many harps and styles of harp playing, and what she said is what every other harpist has said: "I have no idea what that is, but obviously it's something special and ancient." It's all a loving-living experience in learning.

When she gave me the harp, I didn't accept that I was a harpist; I was still holding onto the idea that I made hip hop kung fu movies; that'd be the cool thing I did to change the world. When I got to the City of Angels, that all changed. There's not one person who walks this Earth who doesn't have hard times, who doesn't hit a breaking point in there life where they're like, "Epiphany now?" That's when it's time to change and go with the flow of what life is showing you rather than what you've been planning. After 15 years and 3 movies, I got picked up by a company in New York to do my film, and it was like, "I did it, I finally did it!" Three days later, they called back and said, "The plug got yanked. Sorry, we can't do it." That destroyed me. I was lost at that point. I'd come to LA; I was separated from my wife, not for love, we loved each other through the whole separation, but financially. She got in touch with somebody who I'd done a video for, explained what was going on, and he said I could sleep on his couch. To help pay the rent, I was like, "All I can do right now is play the harp," so I started going to the train stations to play, but that was illegal, and after I got some tickets, I went to Venice Beach. And here's where it all happened.

The story is that, the day I went there, there was a woman on drugs, who was mixed, black and white, and she was spewing racial remarks to both black and white people. And it was destroying business for these Jamaican cats who she was in front of, and they were like, "Hey dude, come over here and play a song for us." And she immediately said, "That's beautiful." She sat down, was quiet for a second, and then she fainted, came to, and said, "Where am I?" To me, that goes within the idea that the purpose of the harp is to dispel darkness, and of course when you're on heavy drugs you're susceptible to deep darkness. So the next day they invited me back to that spot, and we started talking, formed a little circle of elders. A younger guy came up and said he'd heard around about my story, and he wanted to sit down to my harp and try himself, to see if it was in him. I was a little apprehensive at first, but then he said that he was considering buying a harp, and I thought, "Man, we could get another harpist out here?" The elders were like "No, don't let him do it, do not let him sit down." They were really being forward about it. I said, "Look, somebody let me sit down to this harp, and if I can create another harpist by doing the same thing, that's my job." He sat down and couldn't play, and they were trying to rush him off, and then one guy said, "Okay, I get what you're saying." He was in back of me, so I turned around to shake his hand, and the moment I turned my back on the harp, I heard a big smash, and that's these cracks [gestures at deep cracks on the harp]. They go all the way down on both sides. My harp was smashed open. My back was turned, so I couldn't know if it was evil intentions in his heart or just an accident; you need to know how to get up from a harp, you can't just get up. When I saw my harp split open, everybody got blurry -- probably because my eyes were starting to water -- and, as a man thing, I'm like, "Let me get out of here before any tears fall, or before I get mad, because this will be an anger that's not gonna be too cool." I picked it up from them, doing my best to smile, saying, "It's all good, I just need to get it fixed."

I went to a bench and started talking to God, wondering if I'd done the wrong thing. A European woman walked by, she was older, looked like she'd had a hard life. She said her name was Mama G. She said she could hear my harp crying. She asked where I lived, I said Hollywood, and she said, "You're in luck, I live in Hollywood. How'd you get here?" I said I took the bus -- it had been a 3-hour bus ride with the harp to get there -- and I didn't get to make any money before it was broken. She said, "You're in luck, I didn't do my wash last night, and I have a van, so the whole back of my van is padded with clothes. Why don't I give you a ride home, and save you the walk home with the dead-dog effect." Which is what it would've been. It was going to be torture.

On the way home, I told her what happened, I was still kind of welling up, just wondering what I did wrong. She said, "I heard your story, you didn't do anything wrong; you moved with your heart. What you need to understand is you're on a ride right now. You need to sit back and relax. The person who picked you up has been fixing instruments for twenty years. I already looked at it, and it's an easy fix." She was on welfare, though, and said it would cost about 60-70 dollars. Here's where the city comes alive: I had a gig called "Unlit" with a gentleman from London who's become a great friend named Jont Openheart, who just traveled the world and got people with nice houses, mansions, whatever, to open their house for a party where people can listen to acoustic music. I had to call and cancel, and he said, "Why don't you do some spoken word and we'll pass a hat around and see if we can't get your harp fixed?" We did that, and that totally paid for my harp getting fixed.

People kept asking what my name was, and at that time I went by my rap name, Professor Pitt. People said, that doesn't sound like a harpist's name. And I would tell them I made kung fu movies, too. And they were like, "Why do you make kung fu movies? You're a harpist." Everywhere I went, every one in the city kept pointing in the direction of the harp, from the rich to the poor, and I kept hearing the story of King David. I was destroyed from the movie, spiritually and emotionally, and then suddenly all these sovereign things started happening where everybody was on the same page telling me to go one direction. Jont asked me, "Why are you picking such a complicated download to help the world, as far as movies, where you have to raise millions of dollars, get all these things, and somebody has to take the time out of their busy day to sit down and concentrate on what you want to relay to them, whereas you could go anywhere in the world, sit down, and pluck some strings? People don't have to speak your language, they can take a deep breath and feel good. I think maybe that's your purpose." The very next day I met my mentor at that time, Dean Clark, he's the person who first told me I was an anointed harpist. He had a design company, he did the Oscar campaign design for Titanic, and all this stuff, he was a top player -- he said, "Listening to your story, I just want you to know that, that's called 'anointed,' that you just put your fingers on a harp and could play and then a woman just gives you her handmaid harp. You're at a crossroads right now. I'm looking at this movie and I'm seeing anger and violence, but I look at you and your harp, and I see a smile. People are walking up and saying they feel good and God bless you. I have a feeling you haven't chosen your path yet. If you just walk the path of the harp, all of your success has already been written for you." It took me two days, giving up a dream that I put so much in for fifteen years. It's a hard thing to give up. For those two days I had a thumping headache, and on the other side, I finally decided I was going to pursue the harp.

Love Equation, which was the beginning of the Unconditional Love Frequency campaign, started because the President of PRG's global concert touring group, Mickey Curbishley, hired me to play for his wife Jo's birthday/aneurysm-beating party, which was a pure miracle -- she wasn't supposed to be able to walk, talk, or eat again -- that gave birth to another miracle. Mickey has worked with Elton John, Frank Sinatra, and Prince, and Jo helped organize and produce Al Gore's Live Earth concert in South Africa; when I found out people of this caliber saw something in me, I was really honored. Anyway, at this party, a music producer/songwriter by the name of Nikko Gibler -- now he's a member of RICOSHËI -- he just came up and started playing on the grand piano in the backyard. The music was so beautiful. In the first song on the album, "Love in L.A.," you'll hear people laughing, kids, all that; that was that party. I asked if I could record it on my iPhone because I was like, "This is too beautiful and unique. Harp, piano, and beatbox, and the pianist sounds like Liberace!"