The tough, urban syncopated rhythms of funk were the soundtrack to
the riots and revolutions of the late Sixties and early Seventies.
Soul Deep traces the roots of funk from James
Brown's seminal Papa's Got A Brand New Bag to the crazy psychedelia
of George Clinton.
Ìý
By emphasizing the first beat of every bar in Brand New Bag, Brown
created a musical revolution that changed the course of rhythm and blues,
opening the way for hip hop.
Ìý
Brown says: "Well, I took it off the top and put it on the bottom."
Ìý
Brown's music mirrored a new era for African-Americans, defined by
the Black Panthers and a new racial epithet – negro was out and black
was in.
Ìý
Rickey Vincent, funk expert, explains: "People said 'What we have is
tight, what we have is cool. We gotta lot of raw style, we gotta lot
of rhythm. We're bad ass."
Ìý
The night after Martin Luther King's murder, Brown performed an extraordinary
concert in Boston which was televised live to lure potential rioters
back into their homes.
Ìý
Here he appealed for peace, using his status as a black man. Later
that year he released Say It Loud I'm Black And I'm Proud - a song which
was embraced by black people but rocked the whites - with many radio
stations refusing to play it.
Ìý
Born out of liberal San Francisco, Sly and The Family Stone
was a funk act which brought the psychedelic into soul. A multi-racial
band, it entered the Seventies with one of the most influential funk
tracks ever – Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself.
Ìý
It was this new edge which influenced two emerging songwriters at Motown,
Norman Whitfield and Barratt Strong, who became the architects of that
label's psychedelic soul years.
Ìý
"When Motown saw what was happening, they shifted. They shifted as
much out of commercial acuity as artistic integrity," describes commentator
David Ritz.
Ìý
Two of Motown's biggest stars in the Seventies were Marvin
Gaye and Stevie Wonder. Gaye rebelled against
his clean-cut, boy-next-door image to record What's Goin' On, an anthem
for change inspired by his brother's time in Vietnam.
Ìý
"It's basically a landscape painting of post-Vietnam Afro-American
ghetto life. Marvin takes what is ugly and makes it beautiful."
Ìý
Inspired by Gaye, Stevie Wonder negotiated himself
considerably more artistic freedom from Motown. He hired TONTO - Malcolm
Cecil and Bob Margouleff, two studio whizz-kids who specialised in analogue
synthesizers - and a new sound was born.
Ìý
If previous soul musicians reflected social unrest and the plight of
the Afro-American, George Clinton's psychedelic glam-funk
was in the realms of fantasy.
Ìý
"I was a traffic cop, ringmaster, a bridge between great musicians.
The humour had to be there because it was so serious in those times,"
he explains.
Ìý
But just when funk looked like it had had its day, a new style emerged
from the burnt-out Bronx, bringing the music back to gritty social reality
– hip-hop.
Printable version