Funk  

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"Afrofuturist ideas were taken up in 1975 by George Clinton and his bands Parliament and Funkadelic with his magnum opus Mothership Connection and the subsequent The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein, P-Funk Earth Tour, Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome, and Motor Booty Affair. In the thematic underpinnings to P-Funk mythology ("pure cloned funk"), Clinton in his alter ego Starchild spoke of "certified Afronauts, capable of funkitizing galaxies." --Sholem Stein


"The Techno Rebels are, whether they recognize it or not, agents of the Third Wave. They will not vanish but multiply in the years ahead. For they are as much part of the advance to a new stage of civilisation as our missions to Venus, our amazing computers, our biological discoveries, or our explorations of the oceanic depths."--The Third Wave (1980) by Alvin Toffler, cited in "Machine Soul: A History Of Techno" (1993) by Jon Savage

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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 soul music, jazz, and rhythm and blues (R&B). Funk de-emphasizes melody and chord progressions and focuses on a strong rhythmic groove of a bassline played by an electric bassist and a drum part played by a drummer, often at slower tempos than other popular music. Like much of African-inspired music, funk typically consists of a complex groove with rhythm instruments playing interlocking grooves that create a "hypnotic" and "danceable" feel. 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 and thirteenths.

Funk originated in the mid-1960s, with James Brown's development of a signature groove that emphasized the downbeat—with heavy emphasis on the first beat of every measure ("The One"), and the application of swung 16th notes and syncopation on all basslines, drum patterns, and guitar riffs. Other musical groups, including Sly and the Family Stone, Kool and the Gang, Parliament-Funkadelic, B.T. Express, Fatback Band, Slave and Ohio Players, began to adopt and develop Brown's innovations in 1970s.

Funk derivatives include the psychedelic funk of Sly Stone and George Clinton; the avant-funk of groups such as Talking Heads and the Pop Group; boogie; a hybrid of boogie, disco music and funk, funk metal; a mix of funk and metal (example, Living Colour); G-funk, a mix of gangsta rap and funk; Timba, a form of funky Cuban dance music and funk jam. Funk samples and breakbeats have been used extensively in hip hop and various forms of electronic dance music, such as house music, and Detroit techno. It is also the main influence of Washington go-go (Chuck Brown, Trouble Funk, EU), a subgenre associated with funk.

See also

Related: Afro funk - American music - disco - deep funk - electro-funk - black music - "Funky Drummer" - jazz funk - James Brown - Cymande - Jorge Ben - soul music - P-Funk - rare grooves - George Clinton



Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Funk" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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