•
Rating: People, get up and drive your funky soul!
Everybody up (get on the good foot, get on the good foot, get on the good foot!) and move your hips, this is funk, the craziest and most tribal of all musical genres, but what am I saying, of all human mind's creations. Because funk didn’t merely exist... it is not just music, but also culture, fashion, and politics. Funk is a mindset.
No, folks, I am not exaggerating. I would have thought the same before reading "Funk - The Music, The People, and The Rhythm of The One" by Rickey Vincent. This book opens the mind, opens the door to a past world which somehow has returned, perhaps it never left, surely it’s still here. Vincent analyzes not only what funk was, but also what it is now, how it evolved, why it was born and why it declined, why it flourished. The topic is complex, much more than it might seem, and the author tackles it with the expertise of an insider and an enthusiast, reconstructing the evolution of Afro-American music, the Black revolution of the '60s, the awareness and commitment of the black people that was reflected in music that was harder, more marked, and more extreme compared to soul, which had dominated the decade and had taken a hard hit with the death, in 1967, of Otis Redding and the original Bar-Kays, leading to a crisis for Stax Records (the only big rival of Motown Records in the field of black music).
In short, by the late '60s, soul evolved, became harder, thanks especially to the "Godfather of Soul", and, it must be added, of funk: James Brown. Starting from Brown, many crafted their unique sound, like Sly & The Family Stone, Parliament-Funkadelic, Kool & The Gang, Ohio Players, and then the fusion with jazz by Ramsey Lewis, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Donald Byrd, Tower Of Power and then the proto-rap of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets, the genius of Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire, Commodores, Average White Band, the birth of dance (KC & The Sunshine Band, Chic...) the funk of the '80s (Rick James, Prince, Michael Jackson, The Time) the birth of rap and hip hop (Afrika Bambaataa) that owe much to funk, their proliferation in the '90s (Public Enemy, Ice Cube, Boogie Down Production...) up to today’s history.
Rickey Vincent discusses the music (the birth, the characteristics, the evolutions), the rhythm (the call of Africa, the centrality of the groove), the protagonists (and I've already mentioned enough!). Funk is a misunderstood genre, ignored and snubbed, if one has listened to just one album by Sly & The Family Stone, it’s already a lot, and this book offers the opportunity to understand a social and human movement that was widespread and has fundamental developments in today’s world, and it also provides the chance to discover bands that truly deserve recognition and are overlooked by most.
In short, this book makes us all a little funkier.
Free your mind...your ass will follow.
Loading comments slowly
