|
Music
Funk
Funk is an American
musical style that originated in the mid- to late-1960s when African
American musicians blended soul music, soul jazz and R&B into a
rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and
harmony, and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums
to the foreground. Unlike R&B and soul songs, which had many chord
changes, funk songs are often based on an extended vamp on a single
chord.
Like much of African
inspired music, funk typically consists of a complex groove with rhythm
instruments such as electric guitar, electric bass, Hammond organ, and
drums playing interlocking rhythms. Funk bands also usually have a horn
section of several saxophones, trumpets, and in some cases, a trombone,
which plays rhythmic "hits".
Influential African
American funk performers include James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone,
George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, Curtis Mayfield, and
Bootsy Collins.
Notable 1970s funk bands
included Rufus feat. Chaka Khan, Earth, Wind & Fire, Eric Burdon
& War, Tower of Power, Average White Band, The Ohio Players, The
Commodores, Kool & the Gang and Cameo, though many of these most
famous bands in the genre also played disco and soul extensively. Funk
music was a major influence on the development of 1970s disco music, and
funk samples were present in most styles of house music and early hip
hop music. It is also the main influence of go-go. Funk also has left
its mark on new wave, and its pulse is evident in post punk as well.
James
Brown and funk as a genre
By mid-1960s, James Brown
had developed his signature groove that emphasized the downbeat – with
heavy emphasis "on the one" (the first beat of every measure)
– to etch his distinctive sound, rather than the backbeat that was
familiar to many R&B and soul musicians. Brown often cued his band
with the command "On the one!," changing the percussion
emphasis/accent from the one-two-three-four backbeat of traditional soul
music to the one-two-three-four downbeat – but with an even-note
syncopated guitar rhythm (on quarter notes two and four) featuring a
hard-driving, repetitive brassy swing. This one-three beat launched the
shift in Brown's signature funk music style, starting with his 1964 hit
single, "Out of Sight" and his 1965 hit, "Papa's Got a
Brand New Bag."
Brown's innovations
pushed the funk music style further to the forefront with releases such
as "Cold Sweat" (1967), "Mother Popcorn" (1969) and
"Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine" (1970), discarding
even the twelve bar blues featured in his earlier music. Instead,
Brown's music was overlaid with "catchy, anthemic vocals"
based on "extensive vamps" in which he also used his voice as
"a percussive instrument with frequent rhythmic grunts and with
rhythm-section patterns ... [resembling] West African polyrhythms."
Throughout his career, Brown's frenzied vocals, frequently punctuated
with screams and grunts, channeled the "ecstatic ambiance of the
black church" in a secular context. Although "Papa's Got a
Brand New Bag" and "Cold Sweat" were widely credited as
the prototype songs that launched the funk genre, "Out of
Sight" was the breakthrough hit that signaled the shift in Brown's
sound to establish funk as a distinct genre.
In a 1990 interview,
Brown offered his reason for switching the rhythm of his music: "I
changed from the upbeat to the downbeat ... Simple as that,
really." According to Maceo Parker, Brown's former saxophonist,
playing on the downbeat was at first hard for him and took some getting
used to. Reflecting back to his early days with Brown's band, Parker
reported that he had difficulty playing "on the one" during
solo performances, since he was used to hearing and playing with the
accent on the second beat.
George
Clinton -Parliament and Funkadelic
Under the guiding hand of
mastermind George Clinton, the affiliated groups Parliament and
Funkadelic established funk as an heir to and outgrowth of soul. If
James Brown is funk’s founding father, Clinton has been its chief
architect and tactician. Over the decades, he’s presided over a
musical empire that’s included Parliament and Funkadelic, plus
numerous offshoots (such as the Brides of Funkenstein and Parlet), solo
careers (Clinton’s and bassist Bootsy Collins’ being the notable)
and aggregates (the P-Funk All-Stars). The pioneering work of Parliament
and Funkadelic in the Seventies—driven by Clinton’s conceptually
inventive mind and the band members’ tight ensemble playing and
stretched-out jamming—prefigured everything from rap and hip-hop to
techno and alternative. Clinton’s latter-day disciples include Prince
and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Between them, Parliament
and Funkadelic virtually defined the melting pot known as funk: a
melding of rhythm & blues, jazz, gospel and psychedelic rock. With
them, Clinton has purveyed larger-than-life characters and concepts from
the stage, culminating in such theatrical milestones as the Mothership,
a mock flying saucer from which the black space “aliens” of Clinton’s
musical entourage alighted onstage. Though his musical productions have
been typified by danceable grooves and driven by a laser-sharp
sociological wit, Clinton’s ultimate goal is serious: “I am intent
on making the word funk as legitimate as jazz and rock and roll.”
George Clinton spent his
teenage years in Plainfield, New Jersey, where he founded a vocal group
called the Parliaments. They recorded as far back as 1956 but didn’t
impact the charts until 1967, when “(I Wanna) Testify"—a
prescient mix of Sixties soul, rock and pop—went #3 R&B and #20
pop. That year, Clinton began listening to the new wave of psychedelic
rock by bands such as Cream, Vanilla Fudge and Sly and the Family Stone.
The dual influence of cutting-edge soul and rock served as inspirations
to Funkadelic. In 1970, Clinton dropped the “s” from his other band,
and Parliament was born.
Each group had a distinct
identity and alternated releases into the late Seventies on a variety of
labels—Invictus, Westbound, Warner Bros.—with Clinton dividing his
time between them. Parliament was essentially a horn-based soul group
and Funkadelic a guitar-based rock group, but both were built on a
foundation of funk. Parliament and Funkadelic were flip sides of the
same coin, and these overlapping entities’ respective outputs were
referred to in stylistic shorthand as “P-Funk.” In Parliament’s
self-referential theme song, “P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up),”
Clinton and entourage referred to themselves as “dealers of funky
music, P-Funk, uncut funk, The Bomb.”
Parliament and Funkadelic
frequently resorted to allegorical concept albums to make larger points
about societal injustices and ways in which a community of like-minded
souls could liberate themselves from its constrictions. Clinton animated
the moral conflict between opposing forces of good (the trippy funkateer
“Starchild") and evil (the uptight, uptight “Sir Nose D’Void
of Funk") over the course of a five-year run of Parliament albums,
from Mothership Connection (1976) to Trombipulation (1981). Meanwhile,
Funkadelic gelled on one of the finest funk albums ever produced, One
Nation Under a Groove, whose title track was a rousing anthem of union
and community.
Parliament and Funkadelic
dominated and revolutionized the music scene in the latter half of the
Seventies—particularly in 1978 and 1979, when they racked up four #1
R&B hits: “Flash Light,” “One Nation Under a Groove,” Aqua
Boogie” and “(Not Just) Knee Deep.” Clinton’s main collaborators
during Parliament-Funkadelic’s heyday included keyboardists Bernie
Worrell and Walter “Junie” Morrison and bassist William “Bootsy”
Collins. Known for his star-shaped sunglasses, glittery “space bass”
and cartoonish demeanor, Collins became a funk icon and solo star in his
own right. Melding soul, funk, jazz and psychedelia, a succession of
P-Funk guitarists—including the late Eddie Hazel, Mike Hampton and
DeWayne “Blackbyrd” McKnight—have carried forward the legacy of
Jimi Hendrix with their adventurous, exploratory soloing.
|
