Funk

For other uses, see Funk (disambiguation).

Funk is an African American musical style. It originated in the 1960s with performers such as James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, and George Clinton. Funk de-emphasized melody and harmony, bringing rhythm, which was understood as a defining aspect of African music, to a foreground. Funk recordings, like swathes of African music, often consisted of a complex groove in which every instrument played a different rhythm, and all sounds fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Entire verses and choruses were often written without any chord changes. With "Cold Sweat", James Brown heralded the birth of funk music.

Funk music was a major influence on the development of disco and, later, hip hop music.

Characteristics

Compared to funk's predecessor, the soul music of the 1960s, funk typically uses more complex rhythms, while song structures are usually simpler. Often, the structure of a funk song consists of just one or two riffs. Sometimes the point at which one riff changes to another becomes the highlight of a song. The soul dance music of its day, the basic idea of funk was to create as intense a groove as possible.

One of the most distinctive features of funk music is the role played by bass guitar. Before soul music, bass was rarely prominent in popular music. Players like the legendary Motown bassist James Jamerson brought bass to the forefront, and funk built on that foundation, with melodic basslines often being the centerpiece of songs. Notable funk bassists include George Porter, Jr., Bootsy Collins, Louis Johnson and Larry Graham of Sly & the Family Stone. Graham is often credited with inventing the percussive "slap bass technique," which became a distinctive element of funk.

Some of the best known and most skillful soloists in funk have jazz backgrounds. Trombonist Fred Wesley and saxophonist Maceo Parker are among the most notable musicians in the funk music genre, both having worked with James Brown and George Clinton. Many funk musicians were directly reacting to the increasingly complex structure of Bebop and Modern Jazz. Modern Jazz was becoming so complicated that there could be 4 chord changes per measure, creating a dizzying rapidfire movement through key centers and themes. Funk, while often utilizing the same extended chords as found in jazz, virtually abandoned chord changes, creating static single chord vamps with little harmonic movement, but with a complex and driving rhythmic feel. Jazz was, in turn, strongly influenced by funk in the 1970s, beginning with Miles Davis, the founder of the jazz fusion movement, and his former pianist Herbie Hancock.

In funk bands, guitarists typically play in a percussive style, often using the wah-wah sound effect. "Dead" or muted notes often are used in riffs to strengthen percussive elements. Jimi Hendrix was a pioneer of funk rock. Hendrix's improvised, other-worldly solos influenced Ernie Isley of The Isley Brothers and Eddie Hazel of Funkadelic. Eddie Hazel, who worked with George Clinton, is one of the most notable guitar soloists in funk. Jimmy Nolen and Phelps Collins are famous funk rhythm guitarists who both worked with James Brown.

History

Origin of funk

The word "funk", once defined in dictionaries as body odor or the smell of sexual intercourse, commonly was regarded as coarse or indecent. African-American musicians originally applied "funk" to music with a slow, mellow groove, then later with a hard-driving, insistent rhythm because of the word's association with sexual intercourse. This early form of the music set the pattern for later musicians. The music was slow, sexy, loose, riff-oriented and danceable. Funky typically described these qualities. In jam sessions, musicians would encourage one another to "get down" by telling one another, "Now, put some stank ("stink"/funk) on it!" At least as early as 1907, jazz songs carried titles such as Buddy Bolden's "Funky Butt." As late as the 1950s and early 1960s, when "funk" and "funky" were used increasingly in the context of soul music, the terms still were considered indelicate and inappropriate for use in polite company.

The distinctive characteristics of African-American musical expression are rooted in West African musical traditions, and find their earliest expression in spirituals, work chants/songs, praise shouts, gospel and blues. In more contemporary music, gospel, blues and blues extensions and jazz often flow together seamlessly. Funky music is an amalgam of soul music, soul jazz and R&B.

James Brown and funk as a genre

James Brown, who called Little Richard his idol, had credited Little Richard's saxophone-studded mid-1950's road band, The Upsetters, with first putting the funk in the rock and roll beat. This assertion had been not only made by Brown but others, as well. Little Richard continued to play a role in Brown's rise to the top. In 1957, when Little Richard temporarily left pop music to become a preacher, Brown honored his remaining tour dates, performing in his place. Subsequently, some members of Little Richard's backup band became members of Brown's own band, the Famous Flames. A year later, the group released "Try Me," which would become Brown's first No. 1 hit, and the first in a feverous succession of classic R&B hits, some of which would come to personify funk.

Brown’s signature groove emphasized the downbeat – that is, with heavy emphasis "on the one" (the first beat of every measure) – to etch his distinctive sound, rather than the backbeat, familiar to many R&B musicians, that placed the emphasis on the second beat. According to the New York Times, by the "mid-1960s Brown was producing his own recording sessions. In February 1965, with “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” he decided to shift the beat of his band: from the one-two-three-four backbeat to one-two-three-four. “I changed from the upbeat to the downbeat,” Mr. Brown said in 1990. “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 in playing "on the one" during solo performances, since he was used to hearing and playing with the accent on the second beat.

Other musical groups picked up on the riffs, rhythms, and vocal style developed by James Brown and his band, and the style began to grow. Dyke & the Blazers based in Phoenix, Arizona, released "Funky Broadway" in 1967, perhaps the first record to have "funky" in the title. Meanwhile, on the West Coast, Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band were releasing funk tracks beginning with their first album in 1967, culminating in their classic single "Express Yourself" in 1970. The Meters defined funk in New Orleans, starting with their Top Ten R&B hits "Sophisticated Cissy" and "Cissy Strut" in 1969. Another group who would define funk in the decade to come were The Isley Brothers, whose funky 1969 #1 R&B hit, "It's Your Thing", signaled a breakthrough in African-American music, bridging the gaps of the rock of Jimi Hendrix and the upbeat soul of Sly & the Family Stone and Mother's Finest.

1970s and P-Funk

In the 1970s, a new group of musicians further developed the "funk rock" approach innovated by George Clinton, with his main bands Parliament and, later, Funkadelic. Together, they produced a new kind of funk sound heavily influenced by jazz and psychedelic rock. The two groups had members in common and often are referred to singly as "Parliament-Funkadelic." The breakout popularity of Parliament-Funkadelic gave rise to the term "P-Funk," which referred to the music by George Clinton's bands, and defined a new subgenre.

File:George clinton funk.jpg

George Clinton with rainbow dreads at the VH1 Fashion Awards.

"P-funk" also came to mean something in its quintessence, of superior quality, or sui generis, as in the lyrics from "P-Funk," a hit single from Parliament's album "Mothership Connection":

"I want the bomb. I want the P-Funk. I want my funk uncut."

The 1970s was probably the era of highest mainstream visibility for funk music. Other prominent funk bands of the period included The Brothers Johnson, Earth, Wind & Fire, Bootsy's Rubber Band, The Meters, Tower of Power, Ohio Players, The Commodores, War, Kool & the Gang, Confunkshun, Slave, Cameo, the Bar-Kays, Zapp, and many more. George Clinton also played a masterminding role in Bootsy's Rubber Band and several other bands he put together, including Parlet, the Horny Horns, and the Brides of Funkenstein, all part of the P-Funk conglomerate.

Already, in late 1960s, many jazz musicians — among them Horace Silver, Herbie Hancock (with his Headhunters band), Grover Washington, Jr., and Cannonball Adderley, Les McCann and Eddie Harris — had begun to combine jazz and funk. Sometimes this approach is called "jazz-funk". Additionally, in the late 1960s work of Miles Davis (with girlfriend/wife Betty Davis) and Tony Williams helped to create Jazz fusion and influenced funk.

Funk music was exported to Africa in the late 1960s, and melded with African singing and rhythms to form Afrobeat. Fela Kuti was a Nigerian musician who is credited with creating the music and terming it "Afrobeat".

Disco music owed a great deal to funk. Many early disco songs and performers came directly from funk-oriented backgrounds. Some disco music hits, for example "Le Freak" by Chic, included riffs or rhythms very similar to funk music.

1980s and stripped-down funk

In the 1980s, many of the core elements that formed the foundation of the P-Funk formula began to be usurped by machines. Horns were replaced by synths, effectively phasing out horn sections, and the horns that remained were simplified from the patterns and hooks of the earlier funk sound. Horn solos were out. The classic keyboards of funk, like the Hammond B3 organ and the Fender Rhodes piano began to be replaced by the brash sound of new digital synthesizers like the Yamaha DX7. Drum machines began to replace the "funky drummers" of the past, and the slap and pop style of bass playing began to fall out of favor, often replaced by thinner sounding and rhythmically simpler keyboard bass. The lyrics and hooks of funk began to change from often suggestive and using double entendre to more graphic and sexually explicit.

Rick James was the first funkateer of the 80s to assume the funk mantle dominated by P-Funk in the 70s. His 1981 album Street Songs with the singles "Give It To Me Baby" and "Super Freak" resulted in James becoming a bit of a rock star, and paved the way for the future direction of explicitness in funk. Queen's first funk song, "Another One Bites The Dust", led the band in new direction from its hard rock roots. Prince, using a stripped-down instrumentation similar to Rick James, went on to have as much of an impact on the sound of funk as any one artist since James Brown. Prince combined eroticism, technology, an increasing musical complexity, and an outrageous image and stage show to ultimately create a musical world as ambitious and imaginative as P-Funk or The Beatles. The Time, originally conceived as an opening act for Prince and based on his "Minneapolis sound", went on to define their own style of stripped-down funk based on tight musicianship and sexual themes.

Bands that began during the 1970s P-Funk era incorporated some of the uninhibited sexuality of Prince and state-of-the-art technological developments to continue to craft funk hits. Cameo, Zapp, The Gap Band, The Bar-Kays, and The Dazz Band all found their biggest hits in the 80s, but by the latter half of the 80s, funk had lost its commercial impact.

Afrika Bambaataa, influenced by Kraftwerk, created "Electro Funk", a minimalist machine-driven style of funk with his single "Planet Rock" in 1982. Also known simply as Electro, this style of funk was driven by synthesizers and the electronic rhythm of the TR-808 drum machine. The single "Renegades of Funk" followed in 1983.

Recent developments

While funk was all but driven from the radio by slick commercial R&B and New Jack Swing, its influence continued to spread. Rock bands began adding elements of Funk to their sound, creating new combinations of "funk rock" and funk metal. Red Hot Chili Peppers, Living Colour, Jane's Addiction, Prince, Primus, Fishbone, Faith No More and Rage Against the Machine spread the approach and styles garnered from funk pioneers to new audiences in the mid-to-late 1980s and the 1990s. These bands later inspired the underground mid-1990s funkcore movement and current funk-inspired artists like Outkast, The Black Eyed Peas, and Van Hunt.

In the 1990s, artists like Me'shell Ndegeocello and the (predominantly UK-based) Acid jazz movement including artists and bands such The Brand New Heavies, Incognito, Omar and Jamiroquai carried on with strong elements of funk. However, they never came close to reaching the commercial success of funk in its heyday, with the possible exception of Jamiroquai, whose rise to chart ubiquity arguably correlated to their shift of emphasis away from funk to pop.

Today, hip hop artists regularly sample old funk tunes. James Brown is said to be the most sampled artist in the history of hip hop. P-Funk also is sampled frequently — samples of old Parliament and Funkadelic songs formed the basis of West Coast G Funk. Original beats that feature funk-styled bass or rhythm guitar riffs are also not uncommon. Dr. Dre (considered the progenitor of the G-Funk genre) has freely acknowledged to being heavily influenced by George Clinton's psychedelic funk: "Back in the 70s that's all people were doing: getting high, wearing Afros, bell-bottoms and listening to Parliament-Funkadelic. That's why I called my album The Chronic and based my music and the concepts like I did: because his shit was a big influence on my music. Very big".[1]

Funk is a major element of certain artists identified with the Jam band scene of the late 1990s and 2000s. Medeski Martin & Wood, Robert Randolph & The Family Band, Galactic, Soulive, and Karl Denson's Tiny Universe all drawing heavily from the funk tradition. Karl Denson's Tiny Universe members have also pioneered a modernized version of the Funk sound with their "Funktronica" group BLUSIRKUT that maintains the syncopated rhythms, thick bass line, rhythm-oriented horn sections, prominent percussion, danceability of strong jazz influences - blending it with current technology to add electronic based elements and soundscapes (the instruments have become interchangeable - i.e. bass lines and percussion can now be performed by the trumpet and effects processing). On an added note, Vermont-based Phish went through a period of funky jams which fans refer to as their "cow funk" stage.

Since the mid 1990s the New Funk scene, centered around the Deep Funk collectors scene, is producing new material influenced by the sounds of rare funk 45's. Labels include Desco, Soul Fire, Daptone, Timmion, Neapolitan, Kay-Dee, and Tramp. Bands include Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, The Soul Destroyers, Speedometer, The Poets of Rhythm, The Neapolitans, Quantic Soul Orchestra, The New Mastersounds and Lefties Soul Connection. These labels often release on 45 rpm records. Although specializing in music for rare funk DJ's, there has been some crossover into the mainstream music industry, such as Sharon Jones' 2005 appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

In the early 2000s, some so-called punk funk bands have achieved popularity in the indie music scene, such as !!! and Out Hud.

See also

• List of funk musicians
• African American music
• Brazilian Funk (Baile Funk)

Further reading

• Vincent, Rickey (1996). Funk: The Music, The People, and The Rhythm of The One. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-13499-1.
• Thompson, Dave (2001). Funk. Backbeat Books. ISBN 0-87930-629-7.

External links

• Craig Charles Funk Show Latest funk music show
• WEFUNK WEFUNK radio show on CKUT in Montreal, Canada, which showcases roots funk and recent funk-inspired music. Website contains shows available for streaming along with set lists.