Funk

Funk is a music genre that originated in African-American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that

Etymology#

The word funk initially referred (and still refers) to a strong odor. It is originally derived from Latin (which means “to smoke”) via Old French and, in this sense, it was first documented in English in 1620. In 1784, funky meaning “musty” was first documented, which, in turn, led to a sense of “earthy” that was taken up around 1900 in early jazz slang for something “deeply or strongly felt”. Even though in white culture, the term funk can have negative connotations of odor or being in a bad mood (in a funk), in African communities, the term funk, while still linked to body odor, had the positive sense that a musician’s hard-working, honest effort led to sweat, and from their “physical exertion” came an “exquisite” and “superlative” performance. In early jam sessions, musicians would encourage one another to “get down” by telling one another, “Now, put some stank on it!” 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”, with improvised lyrics that were, according to Donald M. Marquis, either “comical and light” or “crude and downright obscene” but, in one way or another, referring to the sweaty atmosphere at dances where Bolden’s band played. As late as the 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. According to one source, 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.” The style later evolved into a rather hard-driving, insistent rhythm, implying a more carnal quality. This early form of the music set the pattern for later musicians. The music was identified as slow, sexy, loose, riff-oriented and danceable. The meaning of funk continues to captivate the genre of black music, feeling, and knowledge. Recent scholarship in black studies has taken the term funk in its many iterations to consider the range of black movement and culture. In particular, L.H. Stallings’s Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures explores these multiple meanings of funk as a way to theorize sexuality, culture, and western hegemony within the many locations of funk: “street parties, drama/theater, strippers and strip clubs, pornography, and self-published fiction.”

Rhythm and tempo#

Like soul, funk is based on dance music, so it has a strong “rhythmic role”. The sound of funk is as much based on the “spaces between the notes” as the notes that are played; as such, rests between notes are important. While there are rhythmic similarities between funk and disco, funk has a “central dance beat that’s slower, sexier and more syncopated than disco”, and funk rhythm section musicians add more “subtextures”, complexity and “personality” onto the main beat than a programmed synth-based disco ensemble. Before funk, most pop music was based on sequences of eighth notes, because the fast tempos made further subdivisions of the beat infeasible. New Orleans funk, as it was called, gained international acclaim largely because James Brown’s rhythm section used it to great effect.

Harmony#

Funk uses the same richly colored extended chords found in bebop jazz, such as minor chords with added sevenths and elevenths, or dominant seventh chords with altered ninths. Some examples of chords used in funk are minor eleventh chords (e.g., F minor 11th); dominant seventh with added sharp ninth and a suspended fourth (e.g., C7 (#9) sus 4); dominant ninth chords (e.g., F9); and minor sixth chords (e.g., C minor 6). Some of the best known and most skillful soloists in funk have jazz backgrounds. Trombonist Fred Wesley and saxophonists Pee Wee Ellis and Maceo Parker are among the most notable musicians in the funk music genre, having worked with James Brown, George Clinton and Prince. Unlike bebop jazz, with its complex, rapid-fire chord changes, funk often uses a static single-chord or two-chord vamp (often alternating a minor seventh chord and a related dominant seventh chord, such as A minor to D7) during all or part of a song, with melodo-harmonic movement and a complex, driving rhythmic feel. Even though some funk songs are mainly one-chord vamps, the rhythm section musicians may embellish this chord by moving it up or down a semitone or a tone to create chromatic passing chords. For example, the verse section of “Play That Funky Music” (by Wild Cherry) mainly uses an E ninth chord, but it also uses F#9 and F9. The chords used in funk songs typically imply a Dorian or Mixolydian mode, as opposed to the major or natural minor tonalities of most popular music. Melodic content was derived by mixing these modes with the blues scale. In the 1970s, jazz music drew upon funk to create a new subgenre of jazz-funk, which can be heard in recordings by Miles Davis (Live-Evil, On the Corner), and Herbie Hancock (Head Hunters).

Improvisation#

Funk continues the African musical tradition of improvisation, in that in a funk band, the group would typically “feel” when to change, by “jamming” and “grooving”, even in the studio recording stage, which might only be based on the skeleton framework for each song. Funk uses “collective improvisation”, in which musicians at rehearsals would have what was metaphorically a musical “conversation”, an approach which extended to the onstage performances.

Bass guitar#

Funk creates an intense groove by using strong guitar riffs and basslines played on electric bass. Like Motown recordings, funk songs use basslines as the centerpiece of songs. Indeed, funk has been called the style in which the bassline is most prominent in the songs, with the bass playing the “hook” of the song. Early funk basslines used syncopation (typically syncopated eighth notes), but with the addition of more of a “driving feel” than in New Orleans funk, and they used blues scale notes along with the major third above the root. Later funk basslines use sixteenth note syncopation, blues scales, and repetitive patterns, often with leaps of an octave or a larger interval. and Bootsy Collins. While slap and funky is important, some influential bassists who play funk, such as Rocco Prestia (from Tower of Power), did not use the approach, and instead used a typical fingerstyle method based on James Jamerson’s Motown playing style. Funk bass has an “earthy, percussive kind of feel”, in part due to the use of muted, rhythmic ghost notes and imitate keyboard synthesizer bass tones (e.g., the Mutron envelope filter) Other effects that are used include the flanger and bass chorus.

Drums#

Funk drumming creates a groove by emphasizing the drummer’s “feel and emotion”, which including “occasional tempo fluctuations”, the use of swing feel in some songs (e.g., “Cissy Strut” by The Meters and “I’ll Take You There” by The Staple Singers, which have a half-swung feel), and less use of fills (as they can lessen the groove). Drum fills are “few and economical”, to ensure that the drumming stays “in the pocket”, with a steady tempo and groove. These playing techniques are supplemented by a set-up for the drum kit that often includes muffled bass drums and toms and tightly tuned snare drums. By using two drummers, the JB band was able to maintain a “solid syncopated” rhythmic sound, which contributed to the band’s distinctive “Funky Drummer” rhythm. Two-handed sixteenth notes on the hi-hats, sometimes with a degree of swing feel, is used in funk. Payne states that funk can be thought of as “rock played in a more syncopated manner”, particularly with the bass drum, which plays syncopated eighth-note and sixteenth-note patterns that were innovated by drummer Clive Williams (with Joe Tex); George Brown (with Kool & the Gang) and James “Diamond” Williams (with The Ohio Players). As with rock, the snare provides backbeats in most funk (albeit with additional soft ghost notes).

Electric guitar#

In funk, guitarists often mix playing chords of a short duration (nicknamed “stabs”) with faster rhythms and riffs. If a band only has one guitarist, this effect may be recreated by overdubbing in the studio, or, in a live show, by having a single guitarist play both parts, to the degree that this is possible. Early examples of that technique used on rhythm and blues are heard on the Johnny Otis song “Willie and the Hand Jive” in 1957, with future James Brown band guitar player Jimmy Nolen. The technique can be broken down into three approaches: the “chika”, the “chank” and the “choke”. With the “chika” comes a muted sound of strings being hit against the fingerboard; “chank” is a staccato attack done by releasing the chord with the fretting hand after strumming it; and “choking” generally uses all the strings being strummed and heavily muted. Funk guitarists playing rhythm guitar generally avoid distortion effects and amp overdrive to get a clean sound, and given the importance of a crisp, high sound, Fender Stratocasters and Telecasters were widely used for their cutting treble tone. Guitarist Eddie Hazel from Funkadelic is notable for his solo improvisation (particularly for the solo on “Maggot Brain”) and guitar riffs, the tone of which was shaped by a Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone pedal. Michael Hampton, another P-Funk guitarist, was able to play Hazel’s virtuosic solo on “Maggot Brain”, using a solo approach that added in string bends and Hendrix-style feedback.

Keyboards#

A range of keyboard instruments are used in funk. Acoustic piano is used in funk, including in “September” by Earth Wind & Fire and “Will It Go Round in Circles” by Billy Preston. The electric piano is used on songs such as Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon” (a Fender Rhodes) and “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” by Joe Zawinul (a Wurlitzer). The clavinet is used for its percussive tone, and it can be heard in songs such as Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” and “Higher Ground” and Bill Withers’ “Use Me”. The Hammond B-3 organ is used in funk, in songs such as “Cissy Strut” by The Meters and “Love the One You’re With” (with Aretha Franklin singing and Billy Preston on keyboards). Bernie Worrell’s range of keyboards from his recordings with Parliament Funkadelic demonstrate the wide range of keyboards used in funk, as they include the Hammond organ (“Funky Woman”, “Hit It and Quit It”, “Wars of Armageddon”); RMI electric piano (“I Wanna Know If It’s Good to You?”, “Free Your Mind”, “Loose Booty”); acoustic piano (“Funky Dollar Bill”, “Jimmy’s Got a Little Bit of Bitch in Him”); clavinet (“Joyful Process”, “Up for the Down Stroke”, “Red Hot Mama”); Minimoog synthesizer (“Atmosphere”, “Flash Light”, “Aqua Boogie”, “Knee Deep”, “Let’s Take It to the Stage”); and ARP string ensemble synth (“Chocolate City”, “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)”, “Undisco Kidd”). Synthesizers were used in funk both to add to the deep sound of the electric bass, or even to replace the electric bass altogether in some songs. Funk synthesizer bass, most often a Minimoog, was used because it could create layered sounds and new electronic tones that were not feasible on electric bass.

Vocals and lyrics#

In the 1970s, funk used many of the same vocal styles that were used in African-American music in the 1960s, including singing influences from blues, gospel, jazz and doo-wop. The call and response in funk can be between the lead singer and the band members who act as backup vocalists. As funk emerged from soul, the vocals in funk share soul’s approach; however, funk vocals tend to be “more punctuated, energetic, rhythmically percussive , and less embellished” with ornaments, and the vocal lines tend to resemble horn parts and have “pushed” rhythms. Funk bands such as Earth, Wind & Fire have harmony vocal parts. Funk singers used a “black aesthetic” to perform that made use of “colorful and lively exchange of gestures, facial expressions, body posture, and vocal phrases” to create an engaging performance. The lyrics in funk music addressed issues faced by the African American community in the United States during the 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. Funk songs included metaphorical language that was understood best by listeners who were “familiar with the black aesthetic and black vernacular”. For example, funk songs included expressions such as “shake your money maker”, “funk yourself right out” and “move your boogie body”. Another example is the use of “bad” in the song “Super Bad” (1970), which black listeners knew meant “good” or “great”. For example, The Ohio Players had a song entitled “Fopp” which referred to “Fopp me right, don’t you fopp me wrong/We’ll be foppin’ all night long…”.

Other instruments#

Horn section arrangements with groups of brass instruments are often used in funk songs. Horn sections would “punctuate” the lyrics by playing in the spaces between vocals, using “short staccato rhythmic blast s “. Notable funk horn players included Alfred “PeeWee” Ellis, trombonist Fred Wesley, and alto sax player Maceo Parker. Notable funk horn sections including the Phoenix Horns (with Earth, Wind & Fire), the Horny Horns (with Parliament), the Memphis Horns (with Isaac Hayes), and MFSB (with Curtis Mayfield). The instruments in funk horn sections varied. If there were two horn players, it could be trumpet and sax, trumpet and trombone, or two saxes. A standard horn trio would consist of trumpet, sax, and trombone, but trios of one trumpet with two saxes, or two trumpets with one sax, were also fairly common. A quartet would be set up the same as a standard horn trio, but with an extra trumpet, sax, or (less frequently) trombone player. Quintets would either be a trio of saxes (typically alto/tenor/baritone, or tenor/tenor/baritone) with a trumpet and a trombone, or a pair each of trumpets and saxes with one trombone. With six instruments, the horn section would usually be two trumpets, three saxes, and a trombone. Notable songs with funk horn sections include: * “Cold Sweat” (James Brown & the Famous Flames), 1967 * “Superstition” (Stevie Wonder), 1972 * “Funky Stuff” (Kool & The Gang), 1973 * “What Is Hip?” (Tower of Power), 1973 * “Pick Up the Pieces” (Average White Band) * “Up for the Down Stroke” (Parliament), 1974 * “Hair” (Graham Central Station), 1974 * “Too Hot to Stop” (The Bar-Kays), 1976 * “Getaway” (Earth, Wind & Fire), 1976 In bands or shows where hiring a horn section is not feasible, a keyboardist can play the horn parts on a synthesizer with brass patches; however, choosing an authentic-sounding synthesizer and brass patch is important. In the 2010s, with micro-MIDI synths, it may even have been possible to have another instrumentalist play the keyboard brass parts, thus enabling the keyboardist to continue to comp throughout the song.

Costumes and style#

Funk bands in the 1970s adopted Afro-American fashion and style, including “Bell-bottom pants, platform shoes, hoop earring s , Afros hairstyles , leather vests,… beaded necklaces”, dashiki shirts, jumpsuits and boots. In contrast to earlier bands such as The Temptations, which wore “matching suits” and “neat haircuts” to appeal to white mainstream audiences, funk bands adopted an “African spirit” in their outfits and style.

History#

Funk was formed through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the mid-20th century. Musicologist Anne Danielsen wrote that funk might be placed in the lineage of rhythm and blues, jazz, and soul. Sociologist Darby E. Southgate wrote that funk is “an amalgam of gospel, soul, jazz fusion, rhythm and blues, and black rock.” 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/songs, praise shouts, gospel, blues, and “body rhythms” (hambone, patting juba, and ring shout clapping and stomping patterns). Like other styles of African-American musical expression including jazz, soul music and R&B, funk music accompanied many protest movements during and after the Civil Rights Movement.

New Orleans#

Gerhard Kubik notes that with the exception of New Orleans, early blues lacked complex polyrhythms, and there was a “very specific absence of asymmetric time-line patterns (key patterns) in virtually all early twentieth century African-American music … only in some New Orleans genres does a hint of simple time line patterns occasionally appear in the form of transient so-called ‘stomp’ patterns or stop-time chorus. These do not function in the same way as African time lines.” In the late 1940s this changed somewhat when the two-celled time line structure was brought into New Orleans blues. New Orleans musicians were especially receptive to Afro-Cuban influences precisely at the time when R&B was first forming. Dave Bartholomew and Professor Longhair (Henry Roeland Byrd) incorporated Afro-Cuban instruments, as well as the clave pattern and related two-celled figures in songs such as “Carnival Day” (Bartholomew 1949) and “Mardi Gras In New Orleans” (Longhair 1949). Robert Palmer reports that, in the 1940s, Professor Longhair listened to and played with musicians from the islands and “fell under the spell of Perez Prado’s mambo records.” In his “Mardi Gras in New Orleans”, the pianist employs the 2-3 clave onbeat/offbeat motif in a rumba-boogie “guajeo”. The syncopated, but straight subdivision feel of Cuban music (as opposed to swung subdivisions) took root in New Orleans R&B during this time. Alexander Stewart states: “Eventually, musicians from outside of New Orleans began to learn some of the rhythmic practices of the Crescent City . Most important of these were James Brown and the drummers and arrangers he employed. Brown’s early repertoire had used mostly shuffle rhythms, and some of his most successful songs were ballads (e.g. “Please, Please, Please” (1956), “Bewildered” (1961), “I Don’t Mind” (1961)). Brown’s change to a funkier brand of soul required metre and a different style of drumming.” Stewart makes the point: “The singular style of rhythm & blues that emerged from New Orleans in the years after World played an important role in the development of funk. In a related development, the underlying rhythms of American popular music underwent a basic, yet generally unacknowledged transition from triplet or shuffle feel to even or straight eighth notes.”

James Brown#

James Brown credited Little Richard’s 1950s R&B road band, The Upsetters from New Orleans, as “the first to put the funk into the rhythm” of rock and roll. Following his temporary exit from secular music to become an evangelist in 1957, some of Little Richard’s band members joined Brown and the Famous Flames, beginning a long string of hits for them in 1958. 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 (on quarter notes two and four) 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, 16th beat drum patterns, and syncopated guitar riffs. 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. Stewart states that the popular feel was passed along from “New Orleans—through James Brown’s music, to the popular music of the 1970s.” 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.

Parliament-Funkadelic#

A new group of musicians began to further develop the “funk rock” approach. 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. “P-funk” also came to mean something in its quintessence, of superior quality, or sui generis. 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 – early 1970s#

Other musical groups picked up on the rhythms and vocal style developed by James Brown and his band, and the funk style began to grow. 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. In 1969 Jimmy McGriff released Electric Funk, featuring his distinctive organ over a blazing horn section. Meanwhile, on the West Coast, 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. Also from the West Coast area, more specifically Oakland, California, came the band Tower of Power (TOP), which formed in 1968. Their debut album, East Bay Grease, released 1970, is considered a milestone in funk. Throughout the 1970s, TOP had many hits, and the band helped to make funk music a successful genre, with a broader audience. In 1970, Sly & the Family Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” reached #1 on the charts, as did “Family Affair” in 1971. Notably, these afforded the group and the genre crossover success and greater recognition, yet such success escaped comparatively talented and moderately popular funk band peers. 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 defined funk around this time 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 jazzy sounds of Brown, the psychedelic rock of Jimi Hendrix, and the upbeat soul of Sly & the Family Stone and Mother’s Finest. The Temptations, who had previously helped to define the “Motown Sound” – a distinct blend of pop-soul – adopted this new psychedelic sound towards the end of the 1960s as well. Their producer, Norman Whitfield, became an innovator in the field of psychedelic soul, creating hits with a newer, funkier sound for many Motown acts, including “War” by Edwin Starr, “Smiling Faces Sometimes” by the Undisputed Truth and “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone” by the Temptations. Motown producers Frank Wilson (“Keep On Truckin’”) and Hal Davis (“Dancing Machine”) followed suit. Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye also adopted funk beats for some of their biggest hits in the 1970s, such as “Superstition” and “You Haven’t Done Nothin’”, and “I Want You” and “Got To Give It Up”, respectively.

1970s#

The 1970s were the era of highest mainstream visibility for funk music. In addition to Parliament Funkadelic, artists like Sly and the Family Stone, Rufus & Chaka Khan, Bootsy’s Rubber Band, the Isley Brothers, Ohio Players, Con Funk Shun, Kool and the Gang, the Bar-Kays, Commodores, Roy Ayers, Curtis Mayfield, and Stevie Wonder, among others, got radio play. Disco music owed a great deal to funk. Many early disco songs and performers came directly from funk-oriented backgrounds. Some disco music hits, such as all of Barry White’s hits, “Kung Fu Fighting” by Biddu and Carl Douglas, Donna Summer’s “Love To Love You Baby”, Diana Ross’ “Love Hangover”, KC and the Sunshine Band’s “I’m Your Boogie Man”, “I’m Every Woman” by Chaka Khan (also known as the Queen of Funk), and Chic’s “Le Freak” conspicuously include riffs and rhythms derived from funk. In 1976, Rose Royce scored a number-one hit with a purely dance-funk record, “Car Wash”. Even with the arrival of disco, funk became increasingly popular well into the early 1980s. Funk music was also exported to Africa, and it melded with African singing and rhythms to form Afrobeat. Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, who was heavily influenced by James Brown’s music, is credited with creating the style and terming it “Afrobeat”.

Genre family: 1960s in music, 1970s in music, 1980s in music, 20th-century music genres, African-American music, American styles of music, Popular music, Rhythm and blues genres