Lurking on the iplayer is the soul brother to the super disco series of documentaries: We Want The Funk. We finally got round to watching this on Friday and it’s a treat. Actually the first 15 minutes are skippable, as we get the background funk grew from in the early sixties music such as Motown that was about fitting in. By the end of the sixties with the rise of black power people were less interested in fitting in. Enter James Brown, rightly put front and centre as funk ground zero, with Say It Loud. From here we get some awesome clips of JB sweating and hollering, the psychedelia of Sly Stone – and the still bonkers sound and sight of George Clinton and Funkadelic. Someone watching the Parliaments in the late sixties recounts how the first three nights were normal soul music. Night four George went to the bathroom and came out with his hair frizzed out and wearing a nappy. There’s Bowie’s Thin Ginger Haired Duke appearance on Soultrain and the descent of the mothership at a Funkadelic gig. David Byrne of course crops up with his take on the skew wiff funking of Talking Heads. Burning Down the House is revealed to be an unused Funkadelic gig chant.
There are a succession of fabulously dressed academics and critics – including one with the great title of Dance Researcher – taking it all apart for significance and impact. But for me – as in the disco docs – the motherlode is hearing a succession of musicians deconstruct just what makes the funk. Marcus Miller on bass describing how Larry Graham’s thumbs changed the world, Clinton himself on Bernie Worrell’s funky bass keyboard riffs, and Carlos Alomar just well being the best funk guitarist ever – possibly – showing how Fame came about – possibly. As with the four on the floor drumming patterns of disco, the heart of funk is revealed to be ‘The One’ – the first beat where drums, bass, guitar everything hits to make it impossible to resist dancing.
The river of funk flows into hip-hop of course, but as interesting is yet again the links to gospel and church music. It’s a great 80 minutes.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002hqjm/we-want-the-funk
I really enjoyed this show. It was a decent stab at a potted history of funk. As it was a BBC4 production, I was waiting nervously for them to crowbar in Franz Ferdinand as the future of funk. Thankfully it didn’t transpire. It was wise of them to concentrate on the Holy Trinity of funk.
My music collection is practically a funk-free zone (a bit of Prince and Jacko, a Motown box set, and that’s your lot), but in the interest of broadening my knowledge I gave this a try, and thought it was really well done.
It was nice to see ace musicians explaining passionately why certain performers mean so much to them and what a difference they made to music and culture as a whole. Most of the music itself is not for me, but I can see why it’s had such an impact, and some of the performance footage – hello, Funkadelic and Parliament and everybody on George’s good-times spaceship! – was a great window into a world I knew almost nothing about.
It was also fun to see people trying in various ways to describe what the funk actually is. I’m not sure I could describe it now, other than “You know it when you hear it. Oh, and James Brown and his band REALLY had the funk.”
I was under the impression that, owing to a lack of funds, BBC 4 don’t make new docs anymore? Could this be something I’ve seen before?
To paraphrase from the credits:
“We want the funk! is a co-production of Firelight Films, Inc. (*US*) and the Independent Television Service (*US*) for the Public Broadcasting Service (*US*), with funding provided by Corporation for Public Broadcasting (*US*) in association with the BBC (*UK*) and ARTE G.E.I.E (*EU*)”
ARTE is based in Strasbourg, with editorial and production in France and Germany.
I’m guessing there won’t be many more of these for a few years, with Trump de-funding the public broadcasting sector.
My favourite genre, probably. Duly bookmarked, cheers.
I think I watched this a while ago? Really good.