The genre I have chosen for this blog is the music of Funk and Soul. I will be talking about the following:
• Features of the genre.
• Lyrical content.
• Important artists and albums/singles.
• Artists that have influenced funk and soul.
• What artists have been influenced by Funk and Soul.
• The image at the time.
• And the relationship between the genre and society at the time.
One of the main features of funk and soul was ‘the one’, this is a beat firstly brought to use by James Brown and his band and when they were playing, he would command the band to play ‘the one’ beat by saying ‘On the one’. In doing this command the band would emphasis the first beat of every bar. One other important feature that came from this genre was that funk and soul had a very intense groove that was created by the strong bass lines and also riff’s too. When you talk about Funk and Soul you will always come across the subject of the riots in L.A which took place in the late 1960’s and in the long run inspired a lot of artists in writing many effective songs. This music is essentially known as being created by James brown and it’s known as the identity of African Americans.
The lyrical content in Funk and Soul wasn’t always about standing for your rights and being equal as a black person, it was also about having fun and basically just dancing, for example the song by Sly and the family stone ‘Dance to the music’ . But a huge percentage of the time it was about being equal in culture. When the L.A riots hit, a lot of the songs that came from this genre had the lyrical content of being accepted and being proud to be part of the African American community, with songs such as ‘Say it loud I’m black and I’m proud’ and ‘War (what is it good for)’. In fact some artists were so passionate about having peace in this world it made Marvin Gaye recording again and he wrote the song ‘What’s going on’ as a sign of his wanting the world to be a happy place.
Of course James Brown is an important name in the world of Funk; he created this new kind of soul music in 1965 with the classic hit ‘Papa’s got a brand new bag’. Another huge name in this genre is Stevie Wonder. In one recording session he made four successful albums. ‘Innversions’ is one of the many great albums by Stevie Wonder.
Funk came about in the late 1960’s by African Americans good talents to blend music such as, soul, jazz, R’n’B and turn it into a danceable sound. A lot of the inspiration came from soul music in the 1940’s. Major soul singers came to life in the 1960’s, such as, Ray Charles. Late examples of soul music are, The Staple Sisters, Al Green and Bobby Womack. I would say funk is a little like disco too as they both have a very dance like groovy feel to both genre’s.
Disco was a huge example of how influential funk is, that genre owes a lot to funk for inspiration. I think some of the artists that have been influenced since this genre came about are people such as, Chic who had the hit song ‘Le freak’ and KC and the sunshine band. And obviously funk went on to influence R’n’B tracks today.
I'd say the image of funk was just a very basic 1970’s fashion, usually big hair, flared trousers and platforms. It was full of bright colours and ‘funky’ images to go with the genre and it was often very big and bold, with either big or frilly collars. You would see the hair as being normally afro’s as they were mostly African Americans.
The relationship artists in this genre and just the genre itself created, I think, is a very political relationship. It taught people to stand up for their culture, to stand up for their rights and be equal to one another and its caused such a huge impact on the world today as the African Americans and black people all over the world are far more accepted than what they used to be, but that doesn’t mean there are not more discrimination towards them because there is still a lot of it going on in the world but if it weren’t for funk it would be a lot worse today if they didn’t inspire many people.
Faine Dovaston.
