Funk

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 various music genres that were popular among African-Americans in the mid-20th century. It deemphasizes 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 percussionist, often at slower tempos than other popular music. Funk typically consists of a complex percussive groove with rhythm instruments playing interlocking grooves that create a "hypnotic" and "danceable" feel. Funk of James Brown fused jazz and blues.

Funk originated in the mid-1960s, with James Brown's development of a signature groove that emphasized the downbeat—with a 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. Rock- and psychedelia-influenced musicians Sly and the Family Stone and Parliament-Funkadelic fostered more eclectic examples of the genre beginning in the late 1960s. Other musical groups developed Brown's innovations during the 1970s and the 1980s, including Kool and the Gang, Ohio Players, Fatback Band, Jimmy Castor Bunch, Bootsy Collins, Earth, Wind & Fire, B.T. Express, Hamilton Bohannon One Way, Lakeside, Dazz Band, The Gap Band, Slave, Aurra, Roger Troutman & Zapp, Con Funk Shun, Cameo, Bar-Kays and Chic.

Funk derivatives include avant-funk, an avant-garde strain of funk; boogie, a hybrid of electronic music and funk; funk metal; G-funk, a mix of gangsta rap and psychedelic funk; Timba, a form of funky Cuban dance music; and funk jam. It is also the main influence of Washington go-go, a funk subgenre. Funk samples and breakbeats have been used extensively in hip hop and electronic dance music.

The word funk initially referred (and still refers) to a strong odor. It is originally derived from Latin fumigare (which means "to smoke") via Old French fungiere and, in this sense, it was first documented in English in 1620. In 1784, funky meaning "musty" was first documented, which, in turn, led to a sense of "earthy" that was taken up around 1900 in early jazz slang for something "deeply or strongly felt". Even though in white culture, the term funk can have negative connotations of odor or being in a bad mood (in a funk), in African communities, the term funk, while still linked to body odor, had the positive sense that a musician's hard-working, honest effort led to sweat, and from their "physical exertion" came an "exquisite" and "superlative" performance.

In early jam sessions, musicians would encourage one another to "get down" by telling one another, "Now, put some stank on it!" At least as early as 1907, jazz songs carried titles such as Funky. The first example is an unrecorded number by Buddy Bolden, remembered as either "Funky Butt" or "Buddy Bolden's Blues", with improvised lyrics that were, according to Donald M. Marquis, either "comical and light" or "crude and downright obscene" but, in one way or another, referring to the sweaty atmosphere at dances where Bolden's band played. As late as the 1950s and early 1960s, when funk and funky were used increasingly in the context of jazz music, the terms still were considered indelicate and inappropriate for use in polite company. According to one source, New Orleans-born drummer Earl Palmer "was the first to use the word 'funky' to explain to other musicians that their music should be made more syncopated and danceable." The style later evolved into a rather hard-driving, insistent rhythm, implying a more carnal quality. This early form of the music set the pattern for later musicians. The music was identified as slow, sexy, loose, riff-oriented and danceable.^{[citation needed]}

The meaning of funk continues to captivate the genre of black music, feeling, and knowledge. Recent scholarship in black studies has taken the term funk in its many iterations to consider the range of black movement and culture. In particular, L.H. Stallings's Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures explores these multiple meanings of funk as a way to theorize sexuality, culture, and western hegemony within the many locations of funk: "street parties, drama/theater, strippers and strip clubs, pornography, and self-published fiction."

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; as such, rests between notes are important. While there are rhythmic similarities between funk and disco, funk has a "central dance beat that's slower, sexier and more syncopated than disco", and funk rhythm section musicians add more "subtextures", complexity and "personality" onto the main beat than a programmed synth-based disco ensemble.

Before funk, most pop music was based on sequences of eighth notes, because the fast tempos made further subdivisions of the beat infeasible. The innovation of funk was that by using slower tempos (surely influenced by the revival of blues in the early 1960s), funk "created space for further rhythmic subdivision, so a bar of ⁴
₄ could now accommodate possible 16 note placements." Specifically, by having the guitar and drums play in "motoring" sixteenth-note rhythms, it created the opportunity for the other instruments to play "more syncopated, broken-up style", which facilitated a move to more "liberated" basslines. Together, these "interlocking parts" created a "hypnotic" and "danceable feel".