This month’s On Moves YouTube Round-Up is about FUNK. There’s no Funkadelic or Parliament because this isn’t about painting a portrait, it’s about juicing a feeling. It’s not about a history lesson, what’s essential, or what’s relevant, accurate, etc. etc. This is my own public research into the nature of Funk and you’re just along for the ride. Is this an overshare studio diary kind of thing? Some West-Coast feelings-meditation-slime-spill? Probably.
Within the last few weeks, any number of people with the misfortune to be saved in the address book of my bargain bin cell phone have received brief text messages about Funk. These messages are a sentence or less, a word, an idea, never an image because my phone can’t do that. These Funk-waves from the void are research, like I said. Rather than take notes in my sketchbook, I’m taking notes in our telecomfriendship.
Am I trying to find out what Funk really “IS” beyond just a genre of music? Not really, I’m secure in my relationship to the Funk but I think I’m playing with it now, using it as a raw material, a building block towards something. Where it comes from or who does it best and truest are irrelevant for my purposes and I believe for the purposes of intentional Funking everywhere. It’s a conundrum. As Bootsy says in “The Pinocchio Theory:” “If you fake the funk, your nose will grow.” But Bootsy, if you won’t tell me what it is how do I know if I’m faking it?
Oh, well, if you say so. Let’s look at some more examples of technique from Bernard Purdie and Buddy Hankerson (Slave, Aurra, Young & Co, etc.).
Uh-huh and now let’s look at this stuff in action, chronologic-ish.
I’ll be expecting your report.
xo
sd
http://samdavis.us
- What We Talk About When We Talk About Funk - February 13, 2013
- On Moves: Best of 2012 - January 9, 2013
- On Moves: I Moved. - September 20, 2012
