Funk

Funk begins with a count: the One. Around 1965 — “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” is the customary birth certificate — James Brown rebuilt his band around the first beat of the bar and treated every instrument as a drum: guitar scratching sixteenth notes, bass popping syncopations, horns stabbing like a snare. Harmony nearly stopped moving (one chord could last the whole song); the groove was the composition (Smith 2012).

Through the late sixties and seventies the idea propagated: Sly and the Family Stone added psychedelic optimism and an integrated band; George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic blew it up into mythology and Mothership stagecraft; the Meters distilled New Orleans funk to four instruments; Stevie Wonder and the Isley Brothers folded it back into song form.

Funk’s afterlife is arguably bigger than its life. When Brown’s drummer Clyde Stubblefield played eight bars alone on “Funky Drummer” (1970), he unknowingly recorded what became one of the most sampled passages in music history — the breakbeat that, looped by Bronx DJs a few years later, helped found hip-hop. Disco, electro, house and Afrobeat all carry funk’s genome; this site’s web shows the most direct line: funk → hip-hop → electro, and onward (in a future tree) to Miami bass and funk carioca.