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Funk
The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One
By Rickey Vincent St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 1996 Rickey Vincent
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-8452-6
CHAPTER 1
Introduction to Funk: The Bomb
"If you got funk, you got class, you're out on the floor movin' your ass."
Funkadelic
WHAT IS FUNK?
Funk is a many splendored thing. Funk is a nasty vibe, and a sweet sexy feeling; Funk is funkiness, a natural release of the essence within. Funk is a high, but it is also down at the bottom, the low-down earthy essence, the bass elements. Funk is at the extremes of everything. Funk is hot, but funk can be cool. Funk is primitive, yet funk can be sophisticated. Funk is a way out, and a way in. Funk is all over the place. Funk is a means of release that cannot be denied. ... Village Voice writer Barry Walters explained The Funk as well as anyone could: "Trying to put that thang called funk into words is like trying to write down your orgasm. Both thrive in that gap in time when words fall away, leaving nothing but sensation."
Funk is impossible to completely describe in words, yet we know the funk vibe when we see it. Funk is that low-down dirty dog feeling that pops up when a baad funk jam gets to the heated part, and you forget about that contrived dance you were trying, and you get off your ass and jam. Funk is that geeked feeling that comes over you when a superstar steps into the room — or onto the stage — and everyone is hyped; The Funk hits you in competition, when that last shot you made was your best, yet you still dig down for that extra level for the overdrive that you didn't know was there; you know The Funk when you're on a date and it's time to make your move — The Funk is a rush that comes all over your body. Scientists have yet to discover that particular funk gland, but rest assured there are plenty of bodily excretions associated with it.
Funk is that nitty-gritty thang that affects people when things get heavy. Funk can be out of control, like the chaos of a rebellion, or instinctively elegant, like that extended round of lovemaking that hits overdrive. Funk is what you say when nothing else will do. When you've done all you can and there's nothing else: "Funk it!" George "Dr. Funkenstein" Clinton, the most heralded authority of funk philosophy, reduced The Funk to its barest essence: "Funk is whatever it needs to be, at the time that it is."
Someone "funky-looking" is generally thought of as someone colorful and amusing, yet unkempt, undisciplined, somewhere between exotic and ridiculous. Whether or not "funky" is in style, there are funky-looking people everywhere. Quite often, these funky people are self-styled, creative, and in touch with themselves. Funkiness, then, is an earthy sense of self that is free of inhibitions and capable of tapping instincts and celebrating the human condition in all its forms. Funkiness is a way of life.
Funkiness in a person's behavior or attitudes can mean anything from an ego trip, to a protest, to escapism. Funkiness is much more than a style, it is a means to a style. While baggy pants, nose rings, and a Hip Hop swagger are often little more than fashion statements, the combination of "far out" and "all in," the juxtaposition of what is in and what is not yet in, that original ensemble that is the postmodern person (particularly the postmodern African-American) is how people use funkiness as a guide to their uniqueness.
Funkiness for our purposes is an aesthetic of deliberate confusion, of uninhibited, soulful behavior that remains viable because of a faith in instinct, a joy of self, and a joy of life, particularly unassimilated black American life. The black popular music of the early 1970s was a consistent reminder of this new affirming, colorful, ethnic aesthetic, and the Hip Hop culture of the 1990s has spawned a return to this less formalized foundation of life.
WHY A BOOK ABOUT FUNK?
There are many aspects of The Funk that are intimately tied to an African value system that has been propagated through black culture since the Middle Passage. Funk is deeply rooted in African cosmology — the idea that people are created in harmony with the rhythms of nature and that free expression is tantamount to spiritual and mental health. If we were to look into this African philosophy, the African roots of rhythm, spiritual oneness with the cosmos, and a comfort zone with sex and aspects of the body, we would find that funkiness is an ancient and worthy aspect of life. Thus, funk in its modern sense is a deliberate reaction to — and a rejection of — the traditional Western world's predilection for formality, pretense, and self-repression.
In traditional Western society, the maintenance of rationality, civility, and pomp, with deliberate disregard and disdain for the natural urges of the body and soul, has become a goal unto itself. The influx of technology has in many ways provided a further impetus for most Westerners to obsess with the aesthetics of curbing their instincts. One of Toni Morrison's characters in The Bluest Eye looks at the situation facing upstanding "white" Americans:
They learn ... how to behave. The careful development of thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners. In short, how to get rid of the funkiness. The dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of human emotion. Wherever it erupts, this funk, they wipe it away; where it crests, they dissolve it, wherever it drips, flowers or clings, they find it and fight it until it dies. They fight this battle all the way to the grave.
This vengeance against nature is also manifest in the obsessively cruel and sexually violent treatment of blacks by whites throughout American history. The thousands of public lynchings, castrations, whippings, burnings, and Klan terrorism are grounded in the planet's most hysterical legacy of race hate. This has, of course, perpetuated the social repression of blacks and their self-expressive virtues, among them jazz, the Caribbean Carnival, be-bop, and The Funk. It is The Funk which has provided the modern musical backdrop and forum for explicit confrontations of the vicious racial legacy in America.
In addition, the implicit nature of The Funk, its inherent nastayness, which cannot help but drive people closer to their funky soul, peels off the veneer of pretense and exposes the unpackaged self for all to see. Just as rock and roll began the sexual liberation of America in the 1950s, it is The Funk that drives the soundtrack for the American sexuality of the 1990s. Part of the affirmation of the human condition in America is the acceptance of The Funk as a music, as a lifestyle, and as a grassroots philosophy of self-development.
Aspects of black folks' funkiness are ultimately what has fueled mainstream American culture and made it distinct from the culture in any other Western nation. One might even claim that it is the funky nature of black Americans that is the salvation of this nation. The psychologists Alfred Pasteur and Ivory L. Toldston thusly position The Funk in its proper place:
Thus we could say that "funk" rests at the root and stem of popular culture in America. From beneath the arms, the crotch, a sensuously fragrant, musky perfume has arisen, activating an affective force that provides for life, enjoyment, enrichment and regeneration. It is the most natural force in the universe.
WHO HAS THE FUNK?
Funk exists on an instinctive level that none of us can control, though some may try. With every new dance on a sweaty dance floor, with every extra dose of cheap cologne, with every swoop of loud lipstick on thick red lips, funk exists. With every new 360 dunk, beaded braids, and "African" fashion statement, with every swaggering pimp-strut and hood ornament on a pink Cadillac, with every black child's natty hairdo, with every country-fried remnant of black folk life seeping into integrated American culture, funk is the channel for this creative flow. Funk is the means by which black folks confirm identity through rhythm, dance, bodily fluids, and attitude. But every booty is funky.
Things first got funky in the late 1960s. The militant surge of black America ripped open the existing formulation of community — as whites could no longer determine or control the priorities of black America. No longer marginalized, no longer entering through the rear door, entertaining onstage, and cleaning up afterward, black folks could go anywhere (almost) in America by 1970, and in doing so, would transform that once stale environment into one that is rhythmic, spontaneous, sensual, and stylish. From raucous, revival-style local elections to a bum-rush of blacks into state-mandated jobs, the wild rides on enforced school busing, the rush of blacks moving into white neighborhoods, a tripling of the interracial marriage rate, and a black entertainment overload, the presence of African-Americans turned the social fabric upside down. As a result, the fundamental essence of community — of nation — was all of a sudden mutated by the earthy ways of black folk.
The idea and the importance of funk comes from the depths of black American life, particularly that aspect of black America which never got around to integrating. Funk and funkiness was a part of the lifestyle of those whom Malcolm X described as the "Field Negroes," those black Americans who toiled in the fields as sharecroppers and slaves and to this day struggle in the urban centers to eke out an existence. This is the population that lived in the "ghettos" in the 1960s and now lives in the "inner city." This is the population that torched Watts in 1965, Newark and Detroit in 1967, South-Central Los Angeles in 1992, and is still just as pissed off today. These are the young black Americans whom the poet Etheridge Knight refers to as "the wild guys, like me."
When Malcolm X died in 1965, there were no members of the civil rights movement who could speak to the dispossessed black masses in the meaningful ways that Malcolm had. There emerged Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Eldridge Cleaver, Huey P. Newton, Angela Davis, and a host of black revolutionaries ready to continue the struggle, but the one person who captured and personified the attitudes and aspirations of the "wild guys" was the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. James Brown spoke to that group and identified their world. He understood and mastered that special process needed to inspire the dispossessed. He came up from the poorest of the poor, and while his politics were not of the militant variety, his manhood was. It was James who captured the rage of black America after the death of Malcolm with a "New Bag," and helped to contain the rage after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. It was James who articulated the grim yet determined response to Marvin Gaye's question, "What's Goin' On." It was James and his band who provided the musical backdrop for the authentic musical reflection of black America in the 1970s, in all its hope, despair, charm, style, and nasty, unforgiving truths.
THE BOMB
The Godfather of Soul, James Brown, dropped The Bomb on America in an aesthetic fashion that many irate African-Americans were wishing that they could do in real terms. The force, the flavor, and the funkiness of the James Brown experience affirmed and validated the African-American experience at the dawn of the 1970s. The politicians and activists had largely been killed and co-opted, and the burden of capturing and maintaining the vision of a black nation fell on the Godfather, and he did not disappoint. Later, artists like Stevie Wonder and George Clinton assumed the role of the avatar of a black nation's dreams, but the central locus of all funk, the representation of the total and complete black man, was James Brown. Brown represented the political black man, the successful black man, the sexual black man, the relentless black warrior that was "Black and Proud," and as the song says, "ready to die on our feet, rather than be livin' on our knees." Brown grabbed hold of the jugular vein of black aspirations and would not let go.
His band backed up this no-nonsense message with a furious and unrelenting barrage of stripped-down rhythmic R&B, the primordial funk groove that had a gravitational pull so strong that, like a black hole, it moved the music of the world toward its core. By turning rhythmic structure on its head, emphasizing the downbeat — the "one" in a four-beat bar — the Godfather kick-started a new pop trend and made a rhythmic connection with Africa at the same time. James Brown songs hit their accents in "On the One," yet drove the furious bluesy fatback drumbeats all around the twos and fours to fill up the rhythms, never leaving any blank space. The necessary change was made all the more convincing as Soul Brother #1 delivered the screaming, screeching centerpiece of soulfulness onstage, making his every action essential.
When Sly Stone and others hooked up a fuzz guitar and bass-plucking layer on top of this rhythmic madness, a whole new thang was developed, and the music world would never be the same. Off in Jamaica, the grooving, side-to-side syncopated ska sound began to change — emphasizing the fat note on the downbeat (DOOM chick chicka chick, DOOM ...) — and reggae was born. All of a sudden African conga players became essential to jazz and soul performances around the world, as the one-count emphasis fit with African drum meters better than the old two-four thang. Jazz giants Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, Herbie Hancock, and Donald Byrd disposed of their "modern jazz" fare and got busy with bass guitars, electric pianos, and James Brown rhythms, fusing an entirely new concept of jazz, all because of the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, and The Bomb.
The James Brown Bomb was an explosion of such atomic proportions that its echoes can still be heard lingering today, just like the electromagnetic remnants of the Big Bang. Soul music took a radical turn down south, as the one-count could be heard on songs like Stevie Wonder's "Superstition," Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues," and the Temptations' "Cloud Nine." What began as an effect became a standard, as the funk jam became an essential aspect of any black artist's ability to reach the people in the 1970s.
James Brown — based R&B/funk dance music swept across the world in trendy discotheques from Europe to Japan. Gradually, a simplified form of this dance music began to gain popularity and ultimately sweep across mainstream America. While the "disco craze" swept the country, in malls, in movies, in fashions, and in dances, there was always a deep, grounded black anchor of unassimilated music played by "funk bands" — echoes of The Bomb — which maintained a street connection despite the pressures of record producers to change. Funk music survived, a black aesthetic in music endured the decade of integration known as the 1970s, and the music is being remembered today in glorious fashion in reconstituted form on popular rap music records.
THE FUNK REVIVAL
The legacy of the funk tradition can be found in the function of The Funk in modern rap music. The modern incarnation of rap music was always understood to be, as rap writer David Toop put it, "syncopated speaking over a funk beat." Mixing old records on turntables has always been an integral element of Hip Hop (rap) culture. However, with the advent of sampling technology, the ability to digitally "splice" pieces of older music into new tracks, the true revival of funk began in earnest. Since the late 1980s, rap music producers have used "samples" of older black music to enhance their beats. Around 1990, during the zenith of the sampling era, the most popular rap stars sampled Funk Era music almost exclusively, and without exception every original funk artist referred to in this book can be found reincarnated in some modern rap song. This cannot be said for Motown soul music artists, earlier rhythm and blues artists, pop soul artists, disco artists, or mainstream (i.e. white) rock artists.
Rather than loop music from out of the tradition, rap samplers are uncanny in their integrity about the records they choose to pillage. Most of the "greatest hits" of the Funk Era have been stripped of all usable parts like an abandoned car. Vibe magazine called James Brown's 1974 recording of "The Payback" as the sample of the year for 1992, naming a half dozen raps that use the old loop. Rap superstar M. C. Hammer's first national hit, "Turn This Mutha Out," featured a chant that was taken verbatim from the chorus of Parliament's 1975 number-one soul hit, "Tear the Roof Off the Sucker." Hammer's biggest hit ever, "You Can't Touch This," used the basic riff from Rick James' 1981 hit "Super Freak" repeated endlessly. The rap group Digital Underground looped the number-one 1979 Funkadelic single "(Not Just) Knee Deep" on three separate songs of their 1991 gold record LP, Sons of the P, and it goes on and on.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Funk by Rickey Vincent. Copyright © 1996 Rickey Vincent. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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