At a time when some folks still don’t think Black lives matter, and respond to any assertion that they do with deflections and denialist “All Lives Matter” reactions, I’m reminded of when James Brown’s “I’m Black and I’m Proud” became an anthem and the genre of music we now know as “funk” was born. We, as a people, no longer had to hide Blackness behind white acceptability; we could express Black sensibilities without apology. A lot the Black pride and assertiveness you see today is rooted in that ‘60s and ‘70s era, that wave of funk rhythms and back beats.
Funk was—and still is—unapologetically and unabashedly Black. Out of its birth, rooted in times of trouble and strife, came many musical styles that would borrow from it and follow in the ensuing decades, like hip-hop and rap. However, none of them can match the sheer pounding groove and rhythms of the driving bass lines that got us up and “offa our feet,” dancing and marching. Those bass lines are so potent, it is the most sampled rhythm in today’s hip-hop and rap.
Funk changed Black attitudes and Black styles, shaping many of the parents of the young folks who have hit the streets in today’s protests.
Get ready for the funk.
This is not gonna be an installment of my Sunday music series that you can play softly. I double dare you to stay still in your seat. Be prepared to move. If your neighbors are still sleepin’, better grab your headset.
I’m dedicating today’s story to Funkmaster George Clinton, who celebrated his 79th birthday this week, and who also claims roots in a uniquely Black style of music I’ve recently explored. His website offers more insight into his remarkable career.
Recording both as Parliament and Funkadelic, George Clinton revolutionized R&B during the ’70s, twisting soul music into funk by adding influences from several late-’60s acid heroes: Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, and Sly Stone. The Parliament/Funkadelic machine ruled black music during the ’70s, capturing over 40 R&B hit singles (including three number ones) and recording three platinum albums.
Born in Kannapolis, NC, on July 22, 1941, Clinton became interested in Doo-wop while living in New Jersey during the early ’50s. . Basing his group on Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, Clinton formed The Parliaments in 1955, rehearsing in the back room of a Plainfield barbershop where he straightened hair. The Parliaments released only two singles during the next ten years, but frequent trips to Detroit during the mid-’60s – where Clinton began working as a songwriter and producer – eventually paid off their investment…
In reviewing Clinton’s illustrious career and success as a producer / writer/ performer, perhaps his greatest achievement stemmed from his relentless dedication to funk as a musical form. Funk as a musical style had been around for what seems like forever, deeply rooted in the music traditions of New Orleans and the Blues of the Deep South. Following the lead – and commercial success – of James Brown and Sly Stone, Clinton took Funk to new heights, blending elements of Jazz, Rock, Pop, Classical and even Gospel into his productions, eventually developing a unique and easily identifiable style affectionately called “P-Funk.” Clinton’s inspiration, dedication and determination resulted in the elevation of “funk” music to complete recognition and acceptance as a true genre in and of itself.
Birthday wishes poured in for Clinton on Twitter.
Clinton may be 79, but his music (and unique sartorial style) are still reaching younger generations of funk fans.
The Detroit Academy of Arts & Sciences Choir paid tribute to the funk in “One Nation under a Groove” late in 2019, and garnered a shout-out from Clinton himself.
The video is also a love letter to Detroit.
For those of you who are not funkaholics (yet), a good starting place for some funk history is the BBC. The network has produced two excellent documentaries on funk. The first was 2006’s George Clinton - Tales of Dr. Funkenstein, directed by Don Letts. It features interviews with the Doctor himself, as well as musicians with careers spanning decades.
The BBC delivered another funk documentary, produced in 2017 by James Hale. The Story of Funk: One Nation Under a Groove digs into the genre writ large as well as its lasting influence. It includes interviews with Clinton; Sly & the Family Stone; Earth, Wind & Fire; Kool & the Gang; War; Cameo; Ray Parker Jr.; and trombonist Fred Wesley.
I have some quibbles with this documentary, simply because I thought there was too much focus on Earth, Wind & Fire and not enough on those groups who were more hardcore funk. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an avid EWF fan; however, their catalog of hits range from R&B to disco to pop; meanwhile, other funk groups like The Gap Band barely garner a mention. Though Hale interviews Harold Ray Brown, one of the founders of War, I just would have loved to hear more.
Independent Lens released Parliament Funkadelic: One Nation Under a Groove in 2005.
What set P-Funk apart from other bands? In the music industry, George Clinton was known as much for his innovative business practices as for his music. Ultimately, Clinton morphed his core band members into multiple groups on multiple record labels, something no one had ever done. The band also created an alternate reality in which young P-Funk fans, especially African American males, could imagine themselves. George Clinton developed a mythology about “brothers” from another planet who came to liberate earth from the restrictions of Puritanical morality. It was a concept that allowed P-Funk’s fans to transcend the confines of their neighborhood and imagine themselves as citizens of a much larger universe.
Throughout discussions of funk, including in the aforementioned documentaries, you will hear people talk about being “on the one,” which is a beat. You don’t have to be a musician to get a basic understanding of just what the heck “the one” is, or why it’s the funk foundation.
Here’s Bootsy Collins to demonstrate this key ingredient in the “funk formula.”
Both of the BBC documentaries explore the spark set off by James Brown, whose “Cold Sweat,” co-authored with Pee Wee Ellis in 1967, is most often dubbed the first funk tune.
The West Coast influence of Sly and the Family Stone cannot be ignored; their epic “Dance to the Music” is in the GRAMMY™ Hall of Fame.
Switching back to “P-Funk,” as the combo of George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic is lovingly called, I spent about nine years of my life living in Washington, D.C., which—pre-gentrification—was dubbed “Chocolate City” (with vanilla suburbs). It was in Washington that I got “funkified.”
P-Funk fans were everywhere—including Chocolate City.
Check out these “Chocolate City” lyrics for unapologetic Blackness, P-Funk style.
Uh, what's happenin', CC?
They still call it the White House, but that's a temporary condition too
Can you dig it, CC?
To each his reach and if I don't cop it ain't mine to have
But I'll be reachin' for you 'cause I love you, CC
Right on
There's a lot of chocolate cities around
We got Newark, we got Gary
Somebody told me we got LA
And we workin' on Atlanta
But you're the capital
Gainin' on ya
Interestingly enough the theme of this song has been the subject of academic discourse in Black- and POC-majority spaces. In Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life, authors Marcus Anthony Hunter and Zandria F. Robinson explore Afro-futurist visions.
“We didn’t get our forty acres and a mule, but we got you, C[hocolate] C[ity]!”— George Clinton on the title track of Parliament Funkadelic’s 1975 Chocolate City album
Rather than wait for unfulfilled political promises, Black Americans were occupying urban and previously White space in massive numbers, their movement and increasing political power embodied on the track by multiple yet complementary melodies. Bass and piano take turns keeping the beat and beginning new melodies, saxophones speak, a synthesizer marks a new era, and a steady high hat ensures the funk stays in rhythm. The Parliament, its own kind of funky democratic government, chants “gainin’ on ya!” as Clinton announces the cities that Black Americans have turned or will soon turn into “CC’s”: Newark, Gary, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and New York. Parliament’s “Mothership Connection” public-service announcement is broadcast live from the capitol, in the capital of chocolate cities, Washington, DC, where “they still call it the White House, but that’s a temporary condition.”
Spurred on by postwar suburbanization, by 1975 the chocolate city and its concomitant “vanilla suburbs” were a familiar racialized organization of space and place. The triumphant takeover tenor of Chocolate City may seem paradoxical in retrospect, as Black people inherited neglected space, were systematically denied resources afforded to Whites, and were entering an era of mass incarceration. Still, for Parliament, like for many other Black Americans, chocolate cities were a form of reparations and were and had been an opportunity to make something out of nothing. For generations these chocolate cities—Black neighborhoods, places on the other side of the tracks, the bottoms—had been the primary locations of the freedom struggle, the sights and sounds of Black art and Black oppression, and the container for the combined ingredients of pain, play, pleasure, and protest that comprise the Black experience.
It only seems right that the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC) in Chocolate City became the proud home of George Clinton’s iconic stage prop, the Mothership.
The Mothership landed at the museum in 2011.
It’ll be somewhat of a homecoming. The group first formed as the Parliaments in Plainfield, New Jersey in the late 1950’s, but after morphing into a two-group collective — Parliament and Funkadelic — it would go on to enjoy one of its most loyal followings in Washington. Parliament’s 1975 album “Chocolate City” gave the nation’s capital an unofficial nickname that still sticks today.
When the band lowered the Mothership from the rafters of the Capital Centre in Landover in 1977, the response was rapturous. Not only was it instantly stunning — it felt like a cosmic metaphor for the sense of possibility that followed the civil rights movement.
That symbolism isn’t lost on the Smithsonian.
“With large iconic objects like this, we can tap into . . . themes of movement and liberation that are a constant in African-American culture,” says Dwandalyn R. Reece, curator of music and performing arts for the museum. “The Mothership as this mode of transport really fits into this musical trope in African American culture about travel and transit.”
The Mothership’s current home is worth a visit.
I don’t know how many times I’ve watched this clip from the October 1976 P-Funk concert at the Summit in Houston and thrilled to the entrance of the Mothership. Wait for it … and then wait some more.
Funk performances on film have never achieved the fame of concert films like Woodstock; however, the sheer exuberant Blackness of the 1972 Wattstax concert had me hooked from the first time I saw it.
"Originally it was going to be called 'Woodstax,' " said Rob Bowman, a Toronto-based author of "Soulsville, USA," a history of Stax Records. "Thank God it wasn't." Bowman noted that although admission was originally going to be free, "for various contractual reasons they couldn't do that. So tickets were $1 apiece. They still gave away $30,000 in tickets to kids and people who couldn't afford them." The earnings from tickets, about $73,000, went to the charitable organizations associated with the Watts Summer Fest.
Throughout the hot August day of Wattstax, music fans danced, sang and celebrated in relative tranquility, while an all-black and unarmed security force stood watch. "This was the largest single gathering of African-American people outside of a religious or civil rights function," Bowman said. "It was very much a statement. 'We don't need the white police. The community can maintain itself, even 100,000 people, without guns.' "
Watch the concertgoers jump from the stands to come down and dance the Funky Chicken.
You can watch the entire Wattstax film on YouTube.
Lest I ignore the distaff side of funk history, I want to give a shout out to Chaka Khan, the Black female lead singer with a mixed-race funk band, Rufus, who has been dubbed “the Queen of Funk.”
Chaka Khan grew up as Yvette Marie Stephens in Chicago’s Hyde Park area, at the peak of the Civil Rights movement. At 16, she moved out and became a Black Panther, providing aid to Chicago’s youth through the organization’s free breakfast initiative. Chicago, and the rest of the country was afflicted by segregation, which rendered upward mobility institutionally impossible for most black Americans. Like many before her in the Black Power movement, she rejected her given name as a form of defiance against normative white society. She was Chaka Adunne Aduffe Yemoja Hodarhi Karifi—or simply Chaka, which meant "woman of fire," according to the Yoruba priest who named her. As Rufus’s leading lady, she was pushing the boundaries of the spaces she could occupy. "I was a black chick with a white band and I could do that," she said in a 2008 interview with The Guardian. "It was powerful."
As a former Panther myself, a devotee of Yemoja/Yemaya, and a diasporic Orisha worship practitioner, I’ve been following Chaka Khan’s music from its beginning.
So, tell me something that you like … yeah. I could sit here all day listing funk bands and favorite tunes, but I’ll save those for the comments section. I hope you’ll share yours too. As we move into the heat of August next week, we’ll meld funk to jazz in a heady brew.
As always, don’t forget to get up offa that thang and boogie on down to the mailbox or the polls—and vote.