Introduction to Funk Music Instrumentation key Artists key Tracks Timeline Socio-Political Issues Lyrics Attire

1. “TEAR THE ROOF
OFF THE SUCKER”
SESSION ST YLES
FUNK MUSIC
W W W. M U S I C S T U D E N T I N F O. CO M

2. FUNK MUSIC
Funk music and its commercial offspring, Disco,
brought the focus on dancing back into the pop
mainstream.
Most album-oriented rock music was aimed at a
predominantly white male audience and was designed
for listening rather than dancing.

3. THE TERM “FUNKY”
• Probably derived from the (Central African)
BaKongo term “Funki,” meaning “healthy sweat”
• Already in wide use by New Orleans jazz musicians
during the first decade of the twentieth century
• Today, “Funky” carries the same ambivalent
meaning that it did a century ago - strong body
odors and a quality of earthiness and authenticity,
quintessentially expressed in music.

4. ORIGINS OF FUNK
• Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid to
late 1960s
• African-American musicians created a rhythmic,
danceable new form of music through a mixture of
soul music, jazz, and R&B.
• Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and
brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and
drums to the foreground.
• Funk songs are often based on an extended vamp
a single chord, distinguishing it from R&B and soul
songs, which are built on chord progressions.

5. FUNK MUSIC- GENERAL
• Funk typically consists of a complex groove with
rhythm instruments such as electric guitar, electric
bass, Hammond organ, and drums playing
interlocking rhythms.
• Funk bands sometimes have a horn section of several
saxophones, trumpets, and in some cases, a
trombone, which plays rhythmic "hits” or stabs.

6. FUNK MUSIC - RHYTHM
• Like soul, funk is based on DANCE MUSIC, so it has a
strong "rhythmic role.
• The sound of Funk is as much based on the "spaces
between the notes" as the notes that are played.
• While there are rhythmic similarities between funk
and disco, funk has a "central dance beat that's
slower, and syncopated than disco”

7. FUNK - HARMONY
• Funk uses the richly coloured extended chords found
in jazz, such as minor chords with added sevenths
and elevenths.
• In funk, minor seventh chords are more common
than minor triads because minor triads were found to
be too "thin"- sounding.
• Some of the best known and most skilful soloists in
funk have jazz backgrounds.
• Unlike jazz, with its complex, chord changes, funk
virtually abandoned chord changes, creating static
single chord VAMPS

8. FUNK THEMES & VOCALS
• Funk used influences from blues, gospel, jazz and
doo-wop.
• Funk used yells, shouts, hollers, moans, humming,
and melodic riffs", along with styles such as call and
response and narration of stories (like the African
oral tradition approach).
• The call and response in Funk can be between the
lead singer and the band members who act as
background singers.

9. FUNK LYRICS
• The lyrics addressed issues faced by the African
American community in the United States during the
1970s
• Funk songs addressed "economic conditions and
themes of poor inner-city life in the black
communities”
• Other lyrics echoed in Blaxploitation films, which
depicted "African-America men and women standing
their ground and fighting for what was right".
• Both funk and Blaxploitation films addressed issues
faced by Blacks and told stories from a Black
perspective.
• "One Nation Under A Groove" (1978) is about the

10. JAMES BROWN
This Photo by Unknown Author is licened under CC BY-SA-NC

11. JAMES BROWN
One of the prime inspirations for Funk musicians.
• During the early 1970s, Brown continued to score
successes with dance-oriented songs.
• Brown’s ranking on the pop charts declined
gradually throughout this period.

12. THE CORE OF FUNK MUSIC
Funk centered on
• The creation of a strong rhythmic momentum
or groove
• The electric bass and bass drum often playing
on all four main beats of the measure
• The snare drum and other instruments playing
equally strongly on the second and fourth
beats (the backbeats)
• Interlocking ostinato patterns distributed
among other instruments.

13. PEAK POPULARITY 1970’S
• The 1970s were the era of highest mainstream
visibility for funk music.
• In addition to Parliament Funkadelic, artists like Sly
and the Family Stone, Rufus & Chaka Khan, The
Brothers, Ohio Players, Con Funk Shun, Kool &
Gang, The Bar-Kays, Commodores, Roy Ayers,
Stevie Wonder, among others, were successful in
getting radio play.

14. THE ONE
By the mid-1960s, James Brown had developed his
signature groove that emphasized the downbeat—with
heavy emphasis on the first beat of every measure
etch his distinctive sound, rather than the backbeat
that typified African American music.

15. JAMES BROWN
Brown often cued his band with the command "On the
one!," changing the percussion emphasis/accent from
the one-two-three-four backbeat of traditional soul
music to the one-two-three-four downbeat – but with
an even-note syncopated guitar rhythm (on quarter
notes two and four) featuring a hard-driving, repetitive
brassy swing. This one-three beat launched the shift in
Brown's signature music style, starting with his 1964 hit
single, "Out of Sight" and his 1965 hits, "Papa's Got a
Brand New Bag" and "I Got You (I Feel Good)". Band
members missing cues were either fined or sacked,
some times on stage!

16. FUNK ATTIRE
• Funk bands in the 1970s adopted Afro-American
fashion and style.
• "Bell-bottom pants, platform shoes, hoop earring,
Afros, leather vests,... beaded necklaces", dashiki
shirts, jumpsuits and boots.
• In contrast to earlier bands such as Temptations,
which wore "matching suits" and "neat haircuts" to
appeal to white mainstream audiences, funk bands
adopted an "African spirit" in their outfits and style.
• George Clinton and Parliament are known for their
imaginative costumes and "freedom of dress", which
included bedsheets acting as robes and capes.

17. FUNK STYLE

18. THE ONE BOOTSY COLLINS

19. SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE

20. SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE
• Interracial “Psychedelic Soul” band whose recordings
bridged the gap between rock music and soul music.
• Sly Stone (Sylvester Stewart)
• Born in Dallas in 1944, moved to San Francisco with his
family in the 1950s
• Began his musical career at age four as a gospel singer
• Went on to study trumpet, music theory, and
composition in college
• Later worked as a disc jockey at both R&B and rock-
oriented radio stations in the San Francisco Bay Area

21. SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE
• Between 1968 and 1971, Sly and the Family Stone
recorded a series of albums and singles that reached
the top of both the pop and soul charts:
• “Dance to the Music” (1968)
• “Everyday People”/”Sing a Simple Song” (1969)
• “Thank You - Everybody is a Star” (1970)
• “Family Affair” (1971)
• The sound of the Family Stone
• Anchored by the electric bass of Larry Graham
• Approach to arranging that made the whole band,
including the horn section, into a collective rhythm
section

22. FUNK MUSIC
• By 1973, Funk music had burst onto the Pop
music scene
• Crossover gold records were played constantly
on AM radio and in nightclubs and
discotheques.
• Kool and the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie” and
“Hollywood Swinging”
• The Ohio Players’ “Fire” and “Love
Rollercoaster”
• The multimillion-selling “Play That Funky
Music” by the white band Wild Cherry
• These bands kept the spirit and style of James
Brown and Sly Stone alive, albeit in a
commercialized and decidedly nonpolitical

23. GEORGE CLINTON

24. GEORGE CLINTON
• Loose aggregate of around forty musicians
(variously called Parliament or Funkadelic), led by
George Clinton (a.k.a. Dr. Funkenstein)
• George Clinton (b. 1940)
– An ex-R&B vocal group leader and songwriter
• Developed a mixture of compelling polyrhythms,
psychedelic guitar solos, jazz-influenced horn
arrangements, and R&B vocal harmonies
• Enlisted some former members of James Brown’s
band
– Bassist William “Bootsy” Collins
– Saxophone players Maceo Parker and Fred
Wesley

25. “GIVE UP THE FUNK (TEAR THE ROOF
OFF THE SUCKER)”
• From the million-selling LP Mothership
Connection, was Parliament’s biggest crossover
single (Number Five R&B, Number Fifteen pop in
1976)
• Exemplifies the band’s approach to ensemble style,
known to fans as “P-Funk”:
– Heavy, syncopated electric bass lines
– Interlocking rhythms underlain by a strong pulse on each
beat of each measure
– Long, multi-sectioned arrangements featuring call-and-
response patterns between the horn sections and
keyboard synthesizer
– R&B-styled vocal harmonies
– Verbal mottoes designed to be chanted by fans (We want
the funk, give up the funk; We need the funk, we gotta

26. FUNK LEGACY
• Funk samples have been used extensively in genres
including hip hop, house music, and drum and
bass.
• It is also the main influence of go-go, a subgenre
associated with funk.

27. FUNKY DRUMMER SAMPLE

28. THE END