You Can't Escape the Funk

Even people who don't think they like funk music – or know much about it – likely have some funkalicious tunes in their music collection. Maybe it's Fishbone or Me'Shell NdegeOcello or, perhaps, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction, or Rage Against the Machine.

Even jam bands can't resist the power of the funk. It's somewhat omnipresent and omnipotent that way.

NdegeOcello is a great example of contemporary funk-infused R&B. First of all, she's a bass player, so a deep groove is at the heart of her work. From the time she came onto the scene with “If That's Your Boyfriend,” NdegeOcello has been pushing boundaries with both her music and lyrics. That gives her some funk credibility right there.

But unlike the wealth of party-time funk tunes, her 1996 offering, Peace Beyond Passion, used religious themes to explore and exploit very non-religious notions. The titles of two tracks -- “Deuteronomy: Niggerman” and “Leviticus: Faggot” -- really say all there is to say. It's a compelling contemplation that was taken up again with 1999's Bitter.

A band like the Chili Peppers also use the bass as their entry into the land of funk. For a tatted-out white boy, Flea can surely get down. Jazz fusion and various rock vibes round out their sound, but funk is so suredly at the heart of it all that George Clinton produced their second album, Freaky Styley back in 1985. The rest is musical history still in the making.

With Fishbone, who were tourmates of the Peppers, the band's early roots were in funk and ska, but they starting shifting more toward harder punk and metal sounds in 1993. However, their 2000 effort, Fishbone and the Familyhood Nextperience Present: The Psychotic Friends Nuttwerx, featured folks like Rick James and George Clinton. That's funk royalty, right there.

Considering that extended instrumental sections have long lived within the funk tradition, it's not completely surprising that jam bands the likes of Phish, Medeski Martin & Wood, and Galactic have all blended the genre into their respective styles either permanently or temporarily.

For artists more of the here and now, like Gnarls Barkley and OutKast, the impact of funk is softened by adding in a lot of other styles to soften it up or twist it around. OutKast's brand of hip hop, for example, melds spoken word with blues, jazz, electronica, soul, rock, and, of course, funk.

Being specifically general about their sound, Cee-Lo Green says of his output with Gnarls, "That is that electric industrial Euro soul, that's what I call it... if I can call it anything. It truly is shapeless and formless.” But there's some definite funkiness happening in there.

The moral of the story is that the whole of funk is so much greater than the sum of its parts. Sure, artists like James Brown, George Clinton, and Sly & the Family Stone defined the terms, but a myriad of interpretations has since followed. And the genre is all the richer for it.

Copyright 2011 mind-funk-music.com