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Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular MusicA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZFUNKA term originally applied to bad smells or body odour, particularly sexual; recorded in dialect '06, used by novelist Thomas Wolfe '29. The O'Kenna Hall in Perdido Street in New Orleans was also called the Funky Butt Hall. It was used to mean 'low down' or 'gutbucket' in the musical sense, then in early '50s to describe a genre of post-bop modern jazz which used modern harmonies but concentrated on swing and a reinjection of what would later be called soul; hence Milt Jackson's 'Opus De Funk' '54. Horace Silver, later Lee Morgan and Herbie Hancock on Blue Note established hard bop's more general popularity, e.g. with tunes 'Señor Blues', 'Sidewinder', 'Maiden Voyage' respectively. The word was widely used in R&B and soul music, i.e. James Brown's 'Ain't It Funky Now?' '69. The term acquired new but less precise meaning as the baby-boomers took over: the white proto-heavy metal band Grand Funk Railroad (first album '69) started as a pun on 'Grand Trunk', then shortened their name to Grand Funk; there was nothing funky about their loud, basic, three-chord music, but the word had been well and truly debased, a process furthered in the disco era. Disco initially relied on black pop, but became fashionable, slick and over-produced; Brown, regarding himself with much justification as the original disco man, recorded 'It's Too Funky In Here' c'79, which may have had any of several meanings. Black artists tried to take their music back, retaining an iconoclastic attitude and their R&B roots to describe a music with rough edges, its energy inspired by something more than dollar signs; George Clinton and his Parliament/Funkadelic empire was the best example ('Free your ass and your mind will follow'). Since then the word has become quite useless, describing white acts trying to play black dance music, or in phrases such as 'jazz-funk' (neither jazz nor funk), all sub-genres in a pop scene that is somehow both cluttered and empty. |