Funk

• 1. Origins And Etymology

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  The word funk initially referred to a strong odor. It is originally derived from Latin via Old French, and in this sense it was first documented in English in 1620. In 1784, the term funky meaning musty appeared for the first time. This usage led to a sense of earthy that was taken up around 1900 in early jazz slang for something deeply or strongly felt. Even though white culture often associated funk with negative connotations of odor or being in a bad mood, African communities linked the term to physical exertion. A musician's hard-working effort led to sweat, which came to mean an exquisite and superlative performance. At least as early as 1907, jazz songs carried titles such as Funky. The first example is an unrecorded number by Buddy Bolden, remembered as either Funky Butt or Buddy Bolden's Blues. Improvised lyrics were comical and light or crude and downright obscene, referring to the sweaty atmosphere at dances where Bolden's band played. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, when funk and funky were used increasingly in the context of jazz music, the terms still were considered indelicate and inappropriate for use in polite company. New Orleans-born drummer Earl Palmer was the first to use the word funky to explain to other musicians that their music should be made more syncopated and danceable.

• 2. Rhythmic Foundations

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  Funk creates an intense groove by using strong guitar riffs and basslines played on electric bass. The sound of funk is as much based on the spaces between the notes as the notes that are played. Rests between notes are important. Before funk, most pop music was based on sequences of eighth notes because fast tempos made further subdivisions of the beat infeasible. The innovation of funk was that by using slower tempos it created space for further rhythmic subdivision. A bar could now accommodate possible sixteenth note placements. Specifically, by having the guitar and drums play motoring sixteenth-note rhythms, it created the opportunity for other instruments to play more syncopated broken-up style. This facilitated a move to more liberated basslines. Together these interlocking parts created a hypnotic and danceable feel. A great deal of funk is rhythmically based on a two-celled onbeat/offbeat structure which originated in sub-Saharan African music traditions. New Orleans appropriated the bifurcated structure from the Afro-Cuban mambo and conga in the late 1940s and made it its own. Funk gained international acclaim largely because James Brown's rhythm section used it to great effect. The distinctive characteristics of African-American musical expression are rooted in sub-Saharan African music traditions and find their earliest expression in spirituals work chants praise shouts gospel blues and body rhythms.

• 3. Instrumental Innovations

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  By the mid-1960s James Brown had developed his signature groove that emphasized the downbeat with heavy emphasis on the first beat of every measure to etch his distinctive sound rather than the backbeat that typified African-American music. 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 featuring a hard-driving repetitive brassy swing. This one-three beat launched the shift in Brown's signature music style starting with his 1964 hit single Out of Sight and his 1965 hits Papa's Got a Brand New Bag and I Got You I Feel Good. Brown's style of funk was based on interlocking contrapuntal parts: syncopated basslines sixteenth beat drum patterns and syncopated guitar riffs. The main guitar ostinatos for Ain't it Funky are an example of Brown's refinement of New Orleans funk. An irresistibly danceable riff stripped down to its rhythmic essence. On Ain't it Funky the tonal structure is barebones. Brown's innovations led to him and his band becoming the seminal funk act. They also pushed the funk music style further to the forefront with releases such as Cold Sweat Mother Popcorn and Get Up I Feel Like Being A Sex Machine 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.

  A new group of musicians began to further develop the funk rock approach.

• 4. James Brown Era

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  Innovations were prominently made by George Clinton with his bands Parliament and Funkadelic. Together they produced a new kind of funk sound heavily influenced by jazz and psychedelic rock. The two groups shared members and are often referred to collectively 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. Clinton played a principal role in several other bands including Parlet the Horny Horns and the Brides of Funkenstein all part of the P-Funk conglomerate. Following the work of Jimi Hendrix in the late 1960s artists such as Sly and the Family Stone combined the psychedelic rock of Hendrix with funk borrowing wah pedals fuzz boxes echo chambers and vocal distorters from the former as well as blues rock and jazz. In the following years groups such as Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic continued this sensibility employing synthesizers and rock-oriented guitar work. Late 1960s to early 1970s saw other musical groups pick up on the rhythms and vocal style developed by James Brown and his band. Dyke and the Blazers based in Phoenix Arizona released Funky Broadway in 1967 perhaps the first record of the soul music era to have the word funky in the title. Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band was releasing funk tracks beginning with its first album in 1967 culminating in the classic single Express Yourself in 1971. Tower of Power formed in 1968 and their debut album East Bay Grease released 1970 is considered a milestone in funk.

  In the 1980s largely as a reaction against what was seen as the over-indulgence of disco many of the core elements that formed the

• 5. P Funk And Psychedelia

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  foundation of the P-Funk formula began to be usurped by electronic instruments drum machines and synthesizers. Horn sections of saxophones and trumpets were replaced by synth keyboards and the horns that remained were given simplified lines and few horn solos were given to soloists. The classic electric keyboards of funk like the Hammond B3 organ the Hohner Clavinet and/or the Fender Rhodes piano began to be replaced by new digital synthesizers such as the Yamaha DX7 and microprocessor-controlled analog synthesizers like the Prophet-5 and Oberheim OB-X. Electronic drum machines such as the Roland TR-808 Linn LM-1 and Oberheim DMX began to replace the funky drummers of the past and the slap and pop style of bass playing were often replaced by synth keyboard basslines. Lyrics of funk songs began to change from suggestive double entendres to more graphic and sexually explicit content. Influenced by Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra American hip-hop DJ Afrika Bambaataa developed 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. Rick James was the first funk musician of the 1980s to assume the funk mantle dominated by P-Funk in the 1970s. His 1981 album Street Songs with the singles Give It to Me Baby and Super Freak resulted in James becoming a star and paved the way for the future direction of explicitness in funk.

  The lyrics in funk music addressed issues faced by the African American community in the United States during the

• 6. Electronic Evolution

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  1970s which arose due to the move away from an industrial working-class economy to an information economy which harmed the Black working class. Funk songs by The Ohio Players Earth Wind & Fire and James Brown raised issues faced by lower-income Blacks in their song lyrics such as poor economic conditions and themes of poor inner-city life in the black communities. The Funkadelic song One Nation Under A Groove 1978 is about the challenges that Blacks overcame during the 1960s civil rights movement and it includes an exhortation for Blacks in the 1970s to capitalize on the new social and political opportunities that had become available in the 1970s. The Isley Brothers song Fight the Power 1975 has a political message. Parliament's song Chocolate City 1975 metaphorically refers to Washington D.C. and other US cities that have a mainly Black population and it draws attention to the potential power that Black voters wield and suggests that a Black President be considered in the future. The political themes of funk songs and the aiming of the messages to a Black audience echoed the new image of Blacks that was created in Blaxploitation films which depicted African-American men and women standing their ground and fighting for what was right. Both funk and Blaxploitation films addressed issues faced by Blacks and told stories from a Black perspective. Another link between 1970s funk and Blaxploitation films is that many of these films used funk soundtracks such as Curtis Mayfield for Superfly James Brown and Fred Wesley for Black Caesar and War for Youngblood.