Black Music Sunday: Time to funk it up in the summer sun

Now that the summer solstice has come and gone and heat waves are sizzling across the nation, folks are blasting music at barbecues and picnics. Whether they’re celebrating Juneteenth, observing birthdays and anniversaries, or just plain partying, when people are dancing the musical soundscape is bound to get funky.  

The musical genre known as funk began in the late 1960s, and much of the music of that era has been sampled by present-day rockers, rappers, and soul bands.

Join me in celebrating funky music and funky bands. I hope this post gets you up and dancing!

”Black Music Sunday” is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 200 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.

Portia K. Maultsby dove into the origins of funk for Carnegie Hall’s Timeline of African American Music. She cites this quote from Dr. Rickey Vincent, the author of “Funk: The Music, the People and the Rhythm of The One,” which you can read here via the Internet Archives.

“Funk is the means by which Black folks confirm identity through rhythm, dance, bodily fluids, and attitude,” Vincent said. “Funkiness in a person’s behavior or attitude can mean anything from an ego trip, to a protest, to escapism.”

Here’s Maultsby’s funk timeline:

Funk music, labeled “happy music” by drummer Hamilton Bohannon, reunited African Americans “one nation under a groove.” Its emergence parallels the transition from a segregated to a “desegregated” post–civil rights society in the late 1960s and early-1970s. Despite promises for new opportunities and advancement, the Black working class and the poor experienced little change in their lives in an era of deindustrialization and during two recessions 1973–1975 and 1980–1982. At the same time, members of the Black middle class encountered exclusionary practices in integrated workplaces, housing, and social settings. The prospect for advancement in corporate America, and predominantly white institutions of higher education, became illusive for many. The term “funk” as well as the diversity of funk music’s styles captures both the complex, and often contradictory, feelings of optimism, ambivalence, disillusionment, and despair that accompanied the transition from a segregated to a post–civil rights society.

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Although a core set of features define the funk tradition, it is stylistically diverse, influenced by various factors: regional preferences, musical background of performers, and new technologies. The J.B.s (James Brown’s backup band) (“Maceo” 1970), Kool and the Gang (“Love the Life You Live, Pts. 1 & 2” 1971), the Ohio Players “Pain” (1972), and Earth, Wind & Fire (“Shining Star” 1975) represent a jazz-derived funk style that incorporates solos, horn riffs, and melodic phrasings from the bebop and swing band tradition. The sound of funk groups from Dayton, Ohio (Slave “Slide” 1977 and Lakeside “Fantastic Voyage” 1980), California (Con Fun Shun “Ffun” 1977), and the South, especially Memphis (Bar-Kays), reflect their roots in rhythm and blues, whose rhythmic patterns and horn arrangements are best illustrated by the Bar-Kays’ “Shake Your Rump to the Funk” (1976). Funk musicians who “apprenticed” in the Black church often reveal a gospel influence in their sound, such as the Isley Brothers, a former gospel quartet (“Freedom” 1970). Larry Graham, Sly Stone’s former bass player and leader of Graham Central Station, incorporates the vocal stylings, percussive timbres, and “shout” rhythms of the Black Pentecostal and Sanctified churches, as heard in “Release Yourself” (1974).

One of the most innovative funk styles that became associated with Parliament-Funkadelic, the Parlets and the Brides of Funkenstein was the brainchild of George Clinton. Known as P-funk and described as pure funk, it builds on the musical foundation established by James Brown and Sly Stone and is rooted in the ideology of Black Power. Clinton observed that the movement towards a desegregated society resulted in the erosion of Black cultural values and the fragmentation of Black communities. He believed that Black people should liberate themselves from the social and cultural restrictions of society, a philosophy. Towards this end, he encouraged them to culturally redefine themselves in the land of funk evident in Parliament’s “Mothership Connection (Star Child)” (1975) and “Flashlight” (1977). P-funk has its own language, fashion, dances, and mythical heroes and villains who Clinton presents as science-fiction characters.

Filmmaker Nelson George’s 2013 documentary “Finding The Funk,” narrated by Ahmir-Khalib Thompson (aka Questlove), explores the history and impact of funk and includes interviews with funk greats like James Brown, Sly Stone, Bootsy Collins, and George Clinton.

Music blogger riquespeaks, known as Rique Melo on X, reviewed the film in “Quick Thoughts on Nelson George’s ‘Finding the Funk.’”

“Finding the Funk” uses a modern multimedia internet age approach to telling the story of funk, with “Funk Chunks” appearing on the screen at various intervals to add information to what is being discussed or displayed on the screen. I really like the “talking heads” used, featuring musicians such as Marcus Miller, Questlove and Mike D from the Beastie Boys. These are all musicians who were not generally old enough to be major players during the heyday of funk, but served their apprenticeships in that era and have kept the flame of funk during their careers in the ’80s, ’90s’, and ’00s. In Millers case, he was involved in records in the late ’70s on the tail end of the funk era. The Beastie Boys also had a funk and punk cover band in the early ’80s, and Questlove was learning to play those records and in some cases playing them as a little kid in his fathers band. These commentators all speak of funk from the perspectives of fans, but also musicians serving their apprenticeships and learning, as when Miller demonstrates Larry Grahams “Hair” or “Skin Tight”, Questlove the Honey Drippers “Impeach the President”, D’Angelo doing Parliaments “Do That Stuff”, or Mike D Funkadelics “Good Ole Funky Music.” These performance features are some of my favorite moments of the doc.

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The doc goes on to focus on the Kings of Funk, James Brown, Sly Stone, and George Clinton, but it adds space that other funk docs haven't, for Earth, Wind & Fire, and Prince in the ’80s. It also deals with hip hop as the direct descendant of funk, and deals with the new funk frontier, also featuring D’Angelo and Dam Funk. This was a modern approach I was particularly pleased with. The earlier “History of Funk” I saw back in the ’90s made a clear narrative choice to treat funk as the creative black music of the ’70s, that was overtaken by hip hop in the ’80s. While that is true to some extent in historical terms, it’s only a small part of the story in real terms. George alters this perception by covering funk bands that were cracking in the late ’70s and early ’80s like Slave, and highlighting how Prince was a musician well versed in funk, as was Michael Jackson. He also emphasizes the importance of funk to hip hop. All of this is a vital contribution to how we think about funk.

For those of you who want to take a deeper dive into funk’s roots and origins and explore Ohio funk bands, this interview with the aforementioned author and radio producer Vincent is an eye-opener.

Let’s listen to some of the funk groups mentioned in the “Finding The Funk” documentary. It’s hard to know where to start, but I’ll pick Sly and the Family Stone.

Some of you who are old enough may remember their appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” performing “Everyday People” and “Dance To The Music” on December 29, 1968.

Moving on to Ohio, here are The Ohio Players.

They get down on “Funky Worm.”

Lakeside’s “Fantastic Voyage” was played in every dance club I went to back in the day.

Steve Arrington of the group Slave talks about Dayton, Ohio, funk groups in this March 23, 2016, interview at the The Funk Music Hall of Fame & Exhibition Center:

I’ve already covered George Clinton, Parliament, and Funkadelic in “Funk music is as unapologetically Black as the musicians who pioneered it,” which includes the documentary “One Nation Under A Groove” (check it out).

One of the other facets of funk discussed by Vincent is the graphic artists and animators who designed the visual aspect of funk, especially for George Clinton.

Detroit-born artist Overton Loyd is one of the few besides James Brown, Rick James, Prince or George Clinton and a select few others authorized to talk about the word “Funk.” Loyd’s cover art for seminal funk band Parliament aka P-Funk is the visual equivalent of P-Funk‘s music. Loyd’s signature style is now known the world over as the “Funk Aesthetic. “ His work retranslates funk music’s swagger and flavor into paintings, prints, cartoons, comics, loose sketches, and digital illustrations. For over 40 years Loyd’s art has worked symbiotically with P-Funk’s music to bring a powerful “multimedia” experience before they even had the word. Like many pioneers, Loyd has been too busy living the experience to realize how groundbreaking his work is.

Pedro Bell was another revolutionary funk artist, and the George Clinton Parliament Funkadelic website explains the history of his “scartoons”:

What Pedro Bell had done was invert psychedelia through the ghetto. Like an urban Hieronymus Bosch, he cross-sected the sublime and the hideous to jarring effect. Insect pimps, distorted minxes, alien gladiators, sexual perversions. It was a thrill, it was disturbing. Like a florid virus, his markered mutations spilled around the inside and outside covers in sordid details that had to be breaking at least seven state laws.

More crucially, his stream-of-contagion text rewrote the whole game. He single-handedly defined the P-Funk collective as sci-fi superheroes fighting the ills of the heart, society, and the cosmos. Funk wasn’t just a music, it was a philosophy, a way of seeing and being, a way for the tired spirit to hold faith and dance yourself into another day. As much as Clinton’s lyrics, Pedro Bell’s crazoid words created the mythos of the band and bonded the audience together.

Half the experience of Funkadelic was the actual music vibrating out of those wax grooves. The other half was reading the covers with a magnifying glass while you listened. There was always more to scrutinize, analyze, and strain your eyes. Funkadelic covers were a hedonistic landscape where sex coursed like energy, politics underlay every pun, and madness was just a bigger overview.

Pedro called his work ‘scartoons’, because they were fun but they left a mark. He was facing the hard life in Chicago full-on everyday with all the craft and humor he could muster.

I’ll have lots more music to play in the comments section below, and am looking forward to you posting your favorite funky tunes. However, before I close, I want to acknowledge a special artist who spanned genres including Latin soul, doo-wop, and funk. Today is the birthday of Jimmy Castor, born on June 23, 1940. He passed away in 2012 at age 71. From his New York Times obituary, written by Douglas Martin:

Mr. Castor grew up in Harlem and Washington Heights with the legendary rock ’n’ roll singer Frankie Lymon. Possessing a pure, high voice like Mr. Lymon’s, Mr. Castor often filled in for him when Mr. Lymon couldn’t make a performance with his group, the Teenagers.

Mr. Castor soon started his own group, Jimmy and the Juniors, and wrote the first song it recorded, “I Promise to Remember.” Mr. Lymon and the Teenagers made it a Top 10 rhythm-and-blues hit for themselves in the summer of 1956.

By the 1960s, Mr. Castor, an African-American, had gained recognition for his version of the Latin soul sound that emerged as Puerto Ricans joined blacks in Upper Manhattan. In 1966 he had a hit on Smash Records, “Hey Leroy, Your Mama’s Callin’ You.” The melody was calypso-inflected, the groove was Latin and the liner notes were bilingual.

With another band, the Jimmy Castor Bunch, he moved on to funk, combining a big beat with spirited storytelling on records like “Troglodyte (Cave Man)” on RCA, which hit No. 6 on the pop charts in 1972 and sold a million copies. Another hit was “The Bertha Butt Boogie” in late 1974.

Here’s a medley of some of his top hits:

We love the funk!  Join me below for more and please post your funky favorites!   Campaign Action