Original subtitles

HE PLAYS SLAP BASS

BOBBY BYRD: What you going to play now?

JAMES BROWN: Bobby, I don't know,

but whatsoever I play, it's got to be funky.

Yow!

MUSIC: Give It Up or Turnit a Loose by James Brown

What is funk?

Well, it's funky, but, beyond that,

I don't know if I can describe it, but when you hear it, you know what

it is. And, perhaps more importantly,

you know it when you feel it.

Funk itself is an essence of energy.

You know how they say, "Use the force, Luke"?

You're free of all the rules, and you just let go

and let the groove take over.

MUSIC: Funky Stuff by Kool & the Gang

# Can't get enough of that funky stuff... #

There's no sad funk songs.

Funk's primary purpose is to get people moving,

get people dancing, shaking their behinds, having a good time.

# I said, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa

# Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, yeah... #

You're not thinking in the sense of trying to reason everything out.

That part of your being you've kind of surrendered to something

greater than yourself.

What its music instructed you to do is dance in a way that the

music dictates.

Funk music literally instructs you on how to move.

The story is in the rhythm. You know, you just, like...

HE PLAYS FUNK RIFF

HE PLAYS SAME RIFF

And people are like, "Oh, come on now," right?

"I don't know what you're talking about. We want the funk,

"got to have the funk." OK, that's good enough for me.

MUSIC: Give Up the Funk by Parliament

# We need the funk, we gotta have that funk... #

Funk music offers us this opportunity to reach

for a certain kind of transcendent feeling and freedom in the way

we move through the world that we're not often granted elsewhere.

Funk is about transcendent joy.

Funk is a reminder that it's a joy to be in this world.

Funk is really a spiritual experience.

Is there a black music that is a black music that is a black music,

then it would be funk.

HE PLAYS BASS RIFF

Funk was the domain of black folks in the early '70s, but, you know,

once you put it out there into

the world, you don't know who it's going to affect.

Hit it!

MUSIC: Doin' It to Death by James Brown

# We gonna have a funky good time... #

When funk got out into the world, it was only a matter of time

before people across the globe hear it and feel it.

Funk lives on.

We have Bruno Mars, D'Angelo, Janelle Monae, Cory Henry.

Funk will continue to live as long as there is music,

and music is not going anywhere.

How you feel, brother?

Funk music, it's easy to speak the same language.

# We gonna have a funky good time... #

It's not only universal, it's interplanetary.

# We gonna take you higher. #

MUSIC: Give Up the Funk by Parliament

Hammer headlines from the News of the Day.

NEWSREEL: Unopposed bombing raids sent defenceless civilians

fleeing in stark terror.

After the Second World War,

there was a sense that the world had been in chaos.

NEWSREEL: The happy crowd screamed their relief at the end

of the greatest war in history.

We've just been through this tumultuous planetary event.

NEWSREEL: It's a great day for the whole world,

and especially for the servicemen.

What do we need to do to kind of move and feel safe?

One, two, heel of the hand, one, two...

There was this rise of something we call leisure culture.

Suddenly there is this idea that young people

could have their own dances and their own culture.

MUSIC: Bandstand Boogie by Les Elgart and his Orchestra

ANNOUNCER: From Philadelphia,

it's time for America's favourite dance party, American Bandstand.

Everybody watched American Bandstand.

I mean, that thing was huge.

Shall we stroll a bit.

By the Diamonds, The Stroll.

# Come, let's stroll

# Stroll across the floor... #

"Funky" is not the way you would describe

the dancers on American Bandstand, not in the least bit.

Perhaps the opposite of funky, whatever that is.

# And let's go strolling

# In wonderland... #

American Bandstand represented

the conservatism of 1950s culture,

and the whiteness was glaring.

This was the height of Jim Crow racism,

and the show really reflected those policies.

MUSIC: My Girl by The Temptations

# I got sunshine

# On a cloudy day... #

Berry Gordy Jr,

early in starting his record company,

wanted Motown to be "the sound of Young America,"

he wanted to cross over.

He wanted his music to be played on the same radio

stations as Elvis Presley, as The Beatles, as Frank Sinatra.

# What can make me feel this way?

# My girl... #

Motown was trying to satisfy how Black Americans could kind of fit

in to the media place.

# I got so much honey

# The bees envy me... #

And one way to do that was to be respectable.

So Motown hired choreographers to actually train the artists

how to dance in public.

So it's not like The Temptations or The Supremes needed

practice in dancing, but they needed to be trained in how to be

presentable to a general, overwhelmingly white audience.

MUSIC: Shop Around by the Miracles

# Just because you've become a young man now

# There's still some things that you don't understand now

# Before you ask some girl for her hand now... #

The artists were impeccably dressed, impeccably in sync.

# My mama told me

# You better shop around... #

Now, it was always soul underneath. Don't get it twisted.

They weren't trying to completely emulate white music,

but what they were trying to do was show that we have the

sophistication and also we have this underlying soul.

# My mama told me

# You better shop around... #

In an era where people are focused on assimilating,

you have to suppress certain things about yourself in order to be

accepted in mainstream society.

NEWSREEL: The new negro family,

their name is Wells or Wilson, Smith or Brown, or Alexander or Green.

All over the country, families such as this are enjoying new prosperity.

Black people had to be concerned with white observation

and what white people thought about them.

What we now term as respectability politics,

it is about being as put-together, as presentable,

as literally clean as possible.

# I need love, love to ease my mind

I need to find, find someone to call mine

# But mama said

# You can't hurry love... #

Berry Gordy contains them so they could be accepted

by this larger white audience.

So, that's one thing he thought. The other thing he thought is,

getting involved in political issues - like the civil rights

movement or the anti-war movement -

if his singers come out publicly in favour of those things,

that might cause them to not be accepted by the white community.

So he tamps down their politics, at least in their public presentations.

All of them have political ideas and what they feel about

the civil rights movement, but it doesn't show up in those

early songs in the 1960s.

They're not down in Selma doing a benefit,

when the Selma to Montgomery marches are going on,

Tony Bennett is there, Sam Cooke goes down there,

Aretha Franklin goes - but not The Temptations, not The Supremes.

Berry Gordy is not going to allow them to be a part of that publicly.

# Calling out around the world

# Are you ready for a brand-new beat?

# Summer's here and the time is right

# For dancing in the street... #

Starting in 1963, you have mass protests in Birmingham,

and then you have the mass uprising in New York, in 1964,

culminating in the Watts Rebellion in 1965.

# All we need is music, sweet music

# There'll be music everywhere

# There'll be swinging, swaying and records playing

# Dancing in the street... #

It's a song that you could listen to and think is just about dance.

But at a time of real political shift and change,

and new kinds of struggle, it's also articulating a message

to this mass mobilisation of black people into the streets to protest.

# It doesn't matter what you wear

# Just as long as you are there

# So come on

# Every guy, grab a girl

# Everywhere around the world

# They're dancing... #

People understood that the call to dance in the streets was about

a call for people to engage with the revolution that was happening

at the time, in which people were rioting.

People were resisting the establishment culture.

And the call to dance is not just a call to dance,

but also a call to come together and to protest.

We want Black power.

We want Black power!

We want Black power! We want Black power!

We want Black power!

A lot of people identified with moving away from of a certain

kind of respectability.

All of that needs a soundtrack.

That soundtrack to all of the upheavals of the '60s

doesn't really want things to be so polished and so manicured.

# Watch me

# Watch me, hey!

# I got something that makes me want to shout

# I got something to tell me what it's all about, ha

# I got soul and I'm super bad... #

When you get to the late '60s, early '70s, a lot of people feel like,

"I'm not interested in assimilating.

"I'm interested in being as Black as I can possibly be."

# Now I got a move that tells me what to do... #

It captures the sentiment of a generational change,

where conformity is not the priority.

# I love

# I love to do my thing

# Ha!

# And I, and I don't need no-one else... #

Black folks have finally reached a point where we're not trying to

impress you. We don't care what you think.

I'm in this other space here. I'm in the funk.

The Black power movement is not about reforming the society.

It's more about reforming the way we think and the way Black folks act.

# I'm super bad... #

And James said, "Boom! We're blowing all that out,

"and y'all going to deal with it."

And people just got exhilarated by it.

# I got something that tells me what to do... #

The definition for funk, it would be James Brown.

# I got soul, uh

# And I'm super bad... #

Seeing James Brown do splits...

..spins...

..and him sweating onstage abundantly,

with just wetness all over him

was funk to me.

# I don't give a.... #

He is just, like, all funk.

I don't think he could do nothing else but funk.

Even if he was singing the Star Spangled Banner,

it was going to be funky.

# Gimme! #

He was just super, super Black, you know?

Like, a lot of people were afraid to say something to him, you know.

I would talk to him like a normal person, you know.

He was not normal, though.

# I, I, I, I, I

# I got it

# Uh, get it! #

What Brown took out of gospel music was the vamp,

the idea that you're just going to stay on one chord

and have everyone, you know...

HE PLAYS RIFF

It ain't going nowhere.

HE LOOPS COUNTER RIFF

And then you had the rhythm guitar.

HE PLAYS CHORDS

And that creates this whole... Oh, my God.

HE VOCALISES HARMONY

It's an onslaught of just, a groove.

How do you resist such a heavy groove?

Answer - you can't.

# Get back, I want to do some such

# I got soul

# And I'm super bad

# I got soul!

# All right

# And I'm super bad

# Ah, ah! #

There is not a lot of room for straying from the groove.

And the only way you get that kind of cohesion,

that kind of accuracy, that kind of tightness,

is by rehearsing it.

We rehearsed all the time.

As long as he could, as often as he could, you know.

I don't think he had anything else to do.

HE PLAYS RIFF

I played with James Brown.

And, look, James Brown basically only played one chord

for the whole song, so, you know, you just got to learn the groove.

But come to find it wasn't as easy as that.

I want to go to the bridge.

Can I go to the bridge? can I go to the bridge?

Cos I was like...

HE PLAYS RIFF

Can I go to the bridge?

"Going to change to the bridge!"

Yeah, I know I heard that time before.

I'm going to the bridge.

Oh, Lord, when is he going to take a breath?

"Hit me!"

I didn't hit it.

And that ended my stay with James Brown.

But it didn't matter.

I played with James Brown.

First concert I ever went to, my mom took me to see James Brown.

I'll never forget.

He had two drummers, and I don't know what that meant.

But to me, as a 14-year-old kid, it meant,

this is going to be so funky, he's going to wear one out!

He needs backup!

We were in California at the time.

James Brown called up, and said, "Send the band over here.

"We're going to record a tune."

James Brown brought a bunch of kids in the studio,

and he said, "Say it loudly."

They said, "I'm black and I'm proud!"

# Say it loud

# I'm black and I'm proud!

# Say it loud... #

It became an anthem for the Black movement.

It was everywhere.

It was EVERYWHERE.

You know, I was 14 when he came out with Say It Loud - I'm Black

and I'm Proud, and until the day I die, it will be the most

significant song ever for me, because it taught me Black pride.

It just set off like fireworks, and it allowed us the ability

to just unapologetically be who you are.

And it's no accident that it is one of the architects of funk

that gives us that anthem.

Now, we demands a chance to do things by ourself.

We're beating our heads against the wall and working for someone else.

We're people, too.

We're like the birds and the bees.

But we'd rather die on our feet than keep living on our knees.

# Say it loud! #

It was so empowering for me.

"Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud!"

You know, "I'd rather down my feet than to keep living on my knees."

Those kind of messages.

# Say it loud! #

We were tired of all the repression.

All the stay in the line, don't look up.

You know, keep your head down.

Be a good negro.

Same people that are listening to Martin Luther King

and others say...

# We shall overcome some day... #

..they're listening to Amiri Baraka saying...

# Who will survive America?

# Very few negroes

# No crackers at all.... #

You had this energy of a Black revolution.

And James Brown put it in the beats, put it in the music.

It was on the radio.

Say it loud! I'm Black and I'm proud!

Go ahead, James.

# Say it loud! #

And folks were like, "Whoa! Give me some of this."

# Say it loud!

# I'm Black and I'm proud

And you know who was singing, "I'm Black and I'm proud"?

All those young kids.

There's no melody.

All you got to do is scream it.

"I'm Black and I'm proud!" That's all you got to do.

You want to sing along? There it is.

# Say it loud! #

I really felt that there was no-one in the world more important

than James Brown.

He was bigger than the president or kings to me.

He really was.

HE PLAYS BASSLINE

That's the bassline to Doing It To Death,

otherwise known as Gonna Have a Funky Good Time.

And, man, that thing was so funky.

Hit it.

# Lookit here, ha!

# We're gonna have a funky good time

# We're gonna have a funky good time

James Brown had this approach to music where...

I call it simplexity.

Simplexity.

It's simple...

..but when you put it all together, it's complex.

And then Fred Wesley played the funkiest trombone solo

that ever got recorded.

I don't think anybody's going to argue with me.

This was a funk solo -

and a funk solo had repetition in it.

HE VOCALISES

FRED PLAYS SOLO

Everybody who hear that solo remembered it, you know.

Somebody say, "Are you Fred Wesley?" I say, "Yeah."

HE VOCALISES

The first thing they say. I say, "Oh, yeah, OK, all right."

I usually think that James Brown is one of the great musical geniuses

of the 20th century.

Come on!

# Hey, hey!

# I feel all right... #

Because the rhythmic concept that James Brown introduced to American

popular music basically brought the elements that we thought of

being background into the foreground.

And because what James Brown did was so simple -

or at least it seemed simple -

it's hard for people to understand that it is genius.

# The Monkey

# Mashed Potatoes

# Jump Back Jack #

# See you later, alligator.... #

Everything in funk music is folded into percussion.

Drums, guitar, even the vocals are folded into percussion.

# Did you hear

# Bout that new breed, babe?

# All right

# Ain't no drag

# Ow! Papa's got a brand-new bag

# Papa... #

Like a Holy Grail, James Brown, he discovered the one.

# Do the Jerk

# Do the Twist... #

What is the one?

The one? The musical terminology, the one?

I don't really know, but I know that that was the thing.

Like, that's what Bootsy talks about, that James taught him.

One, two, three.

And you hit on the one. One.

You know? One.

Here you go. One.

BOOTSY PLAYS BASSLINE

And then you want to break it down.

Break down. One.

Two, three, four.

ONE, two, three, four.

BOOTSY: One.

MARCUS PLAYS BASSLINE

ONE, two, three, four.

ONE, two...

One...

You got to keep hitting that one.

James Brown found out that if you hit the one strong,

that what comes after that... is funky.

Take a song like I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing -

Open The Door I'll Get It Myself, and James Brown's band hits...

HE VOCALISES INTRO

# I don't want nobody to give me nothing

# Open up the door

# I'll get it myself

# I don't want nobody to give me nothing

# Open up the door

# I'll get it myself... #

James Brown tapped into something.

Like Nikola Tesla says, "There's this electricity

"that's in the atmosphere that we can tap into it."

Well, James Brown tapped into that.

One.

One.

One.

When you dancing, you might not be counting,

but you know that beat's coming,

and that's when your body, like, syncs up.

One.

One.

Landing on the one does something magical.

It literally mobilises you,

and makes you want to shake your... something.

# Baby!

# Get up...

And you feel it, you feel the concussion of it

coming at you in a different place,

that kicks you upside the head

and makes you let all the funk loose.

# Turning it loose

# All right

# Hey!

# Got to have it

# Turning it loose

All right... #

People like to dance, people like to move.

When you give them something to move to, they're happy.

# All right, come on

# Good God, come on... #

Why does this music make you want to dance?

I'm trying to...

..in my little brain trying to figure out,

what is it about this music that makes you want to dance?

Listening to any music starts with vibrating air molecules

going into our ears.

And then it starts to go all the way up to a pathway

that winds up on the side of the brain over here,

and that's called the auditory cortex.

It goes right to parts of the brain that are involved in

motor function movement.

When you think about what's happening in funk,

your brain is saying,

"OK, I'm dealing with some really interesting rhythm here."

Your body is in tune with it, you're actually moving to it.

It's a direct connection.

Because of the rhythm, because of those projections to this

motor centre, which is going to make you move your arms

and move your legs and shake your booty.

There's no question about it.

# Can't get enough

# Of that funky stuff

Funk is kind of taking us higher, because it's driving this liking,

wanting response that's all about feeling good.

If you're with other people, doing an activity like dancing together,

that turns on what's called the dopamine reward system.

And so, when we like something, we get this not only dopamine reward,

but something else gets triggered - endorphins.

Endorphins are things that make you not feel pain,

or not care about pain.

So, when you're with a group of people experiencing something

together like that, you can actually drive this sense of self-acceptance

and acceptance within the group.

You become one with the community, one with the music,

and you give up a little bit of your own self

in order to gain this greater thing.

And it's completely transcendent.

We dance as a form of communication and expression

that is outside of language.

It is about the carnal, the fact that we are actual human beings

made of flesh, with fear and desire.

And I think that's so important.

And that's the part of us that often was neglected.

And so, it found a home in this music that allows us

to be desired and desirable.

Certain rhythms have a way of putting you into a trance-like state

or activating a kind of euphoria.

The listener had to be exposed to these rhythms for a sustained period

of time for the euphoria to really kick in.

# Happy music makes you feel good

# All the time... #

Funk is something that takes you over.

Most Western music is about the melody and about the song.

But when you get to funk,

you're talking about music based on the groove.

Repetition of chants, repetition of riffs and grooves.

It's like you learn at some point, oh, there's nothing wrong with that.

That's not a shortcoming.

That's a good thing.

When I played in funk bands coming up, when we found the right groove,

we would play that groove for an hour and a half.

Nobody changes anything.

The band leader in our group,

when we got the groove right,

he would say, "OK, I got to run some errands.

"Y'all keep playing that groove till I get back."

And then you start to discover a deeper part of yourself, man.

You know, you just lost in it.

MARTIN LUTHER KING: I have a dream

that my four little children will one day live in a nation

where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin,

but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

# Get up

# Dance to the music! #

Sly and the Family Stone is the musical version of I Have a Dream.

There's Sly, there's his brother, there's his sister.

The white guy's the drummer.

# Dance to the music! #

They're all wearing these interesting kind of colours onstage.

Sly got his Afro. It's multiracial.

It captured what was happening in the Bay Area, that whole

Summer Of Love vibe, but it was also deeply embedded in black music.

# All we need is a drummer

# The people only need a beat, yeah... #

If you say, "All we need is a drummer," that's...

that's African. Like...!

All we need is a beat.

That's a statement of not just the importance of the beat,

but also optimism.

Like, let's go.

Sly and the Family stone were aspirational.

They really wanted a future where we could all get along,

be together, have fun.

So, it is very much a flavour of hippie funk.

# Dance to the music

# We're gonna dance to the music!

# Dance to the music... #

James Brown was funky, in a pocket.

Then Sly just jumped off the stage and just took it to a whole another

psychedelic rock, funk level.

And then when you had Larry Graham slapping the hell out of that bass,

how could you not understand that ain't usual?

# Dance to the music

# All night long... #

Bass players all around the world were like,

"What is he doing? What's that sound?"

We heard that, we said, "What is it?"

We had never heard a bass like that. We weren't even sure it was a bass.

# Mama's so happy... #

The most revolutionary aspect of Thank You For Letting Me

Be Myself Again is Larry Graham's right thumb.

Larry Graham said he just kind of started using his thumb

to kind of mimic a bass drum.

You know...

HE PLAYS BASSLINE

That song was so monumental that everyone that heard that song

rehearsed it and practised it ad nauseum.

In their garage bands...

..in their high schools...

..amongst themselves.

I remember going to this bass camp,

and there were probably 50 electric bass players sitting in the room,

and all 50 of them, you know, they were just like...

HE SLAPS ERRATICALLY

And I was just like...

"Hey, erm, do any of you guys play with your fingers?"

# Stiff all in the collar

# Stuffy in the face... #

Larry Graham figures out a way to take a riff,

but to make it a feeling.

Because he's expressing in a way that no-one's ever expressed before,

a feeling of Blackness.

# I want to thank you

# For letting me be myself

# Again

Sly Stone changed the game.

He gave everybody the template for incorporating soul, gospel,

rock, jazz, joy and inclusion into funk

that is so powerful you can't run from it.

Sly came along.

He became extremely pop with funk.

I mean, his stuff was funky, but slick, clever,

and good musicians and everything.

Funk became the thing to do.

# Friends, inquisitive friends

# Are asking me what's come over me... #

By the time we got the hit record, Testify, Motown was peaking.

It was always about Motown to me.

We was always trying to prove we was worthy of being with Motown.

George Clinton is writing and producing

and arranging for Motown acts.

But Motown is a respectability place.

And he realises that that's not his strength,

and so he won't last at Motown much longer.

You could not beat that stuff.

Cos, I mean, you got to come up with a hit single every time

you put a record out.

And everybody was changing to rock and roll.

Cause the Led Zeppelins, and the Cream, and Rolling Stones,

all that, Beatles, they was taking over.

So we chose funk.

They played four nights at the Phelps Lounge.

First night, it's the Parliaments, you know, matching suits,

doo-wop, you know, a couple of spins,

grabbing the microphone and, you know...

That's what they're doing.

We still had Motown all in us.

But we learned that, you play Motown loud,

it was just like playing rock and roll.

On the last night, George Clinton goes into the bathroom,

he puts his head in the sink to wash out the process.

Comes out in a baby diaper.

Well, all right!

Starchild.

Citizens of the Universe, Recording Angels.

We have returned to claim the Pyramids.

Partying on the Mothership.

I am the Mothership Connection.

If you hear any noise, ain't nobody but me and the boys

out here tonight.

We're going to turn the mother out tonight. Are you ready to get down?

Are you ready?

So, we're all in New York,

and George come up to us and said,

"Listen, man, I'm going funkadelic.

Said, "What do you mean, funkadelic?"

Psychedelic was the thing that was happening.

We just threw funk and delic together.

We became Funkadelic.

Sing!

# If you hear any noise it's just me and the boys

# Hit me... #

# You got to hit the band.... #

I joined Parliament-Funkadelic fresh out of high school as a vocalist,

as part of the band.

We going to turn the motherfucker out.

It was just sort of this hard presence that they were

just trying to present.

A dip in your hip and come on to the mothership...

So you still had to be that aggressive, but also be feminine,

which is kind of a hard thing to do.

You know, it's like, I'm going to pump this out,

but, you know, I still want to have my feminine side too.

Moves that...

Things like that, yeah.

What do you think?

# If you ain't gonna get it on

# Take your dead ass home... #

GEORGE: We started clowning.

We went on into absurd.

We wore diapers.

We wore sheets, we wore wigs.

Everybody was smoking weed, tripping on acid.

You can just lose yourself in it, and that was the thing.

Y'all ready to give up the funk?

I want you to free your mind, and your ass will follow tonight.

GEORGE: We wanted to be more than just a singing group.

We wanted it to be a play.

We wanted to have a funk opera.

We had seen Pink Floyd do that.

So we had our own mythology.

Hey, everybody funking, and don't know....

Parliament-Funkadelic is like a cult.

And it came to pass that Dr Funkenstein returned to find

that the planet had fallen prey to the...

It's almost like reading a comic book, but seeing it in real life.

JEANETTE VOCALISES

# Flash light

# Red light... #

If you're going to make a full sound,

you're going to need some female vocals.

# Most of all to funk

# Help them find the funk

# Most of all to funk

# Help them find the funk... #

It's that sauce that you put on your spaghetti that makes it better.

# Flash light... #

We had Bernie Worrell,

who was classically trained keyboard player.

Bernie could play anything on the keyboard.

Just had the funk energy.

But he also revolutionised funk music,

because he would play the bass on the synthesiser.

Which was the new sound that Emerson, Lake and Palmer,

King Crimson used in rock and roll.

Bernie actually was playing what he thought Larry Graham would play,

from, you know, Sly and the Family Stone.

He actually imitated Larry's style.

GEORGE VOCALISES BASSLINE

# Stop light

Bass players just saw their whole careers just crumbling

in front of their eyes.

GEORGE VOCALISES

That chant right there.

At grade school, sixth grade,

I had a Jewish friend, that was his bar mitzvah.

I remember him practising...

GEORGE VOCALISES

And it just stuck with me...

So, when I got that groove and stuck that in,

and not thinking about it, but it just fitted.

I was on a city bus one day, and Flash Light was out.

People rocking boom boxes.

And, you know, Flash Light comes on, and everybody on the bus

starts jamming.

And the bus turns into, like, this, you know, mobile disco.

And, I mean, shit, even the driver was grooving to it.

The song instantly created a commonality amongst

all the riders on that bus.

As a people in this country that really didn't allow us

to express any emotions whatsoever,

music was our therapy.

And so, when they say, like, funk is freedom,

that's what they're talking about.

I'm of the opinion black people have always been funky.

You know, black people have always been funky.

It's in our DNA.

Whether it's music, whether it's fashion, whether it's art.

There's always a heavy dosage of funk in it

when it's in the hands of black people.

# We got the funk

# We got the funk, yeah

# We got the funk

# We got the funk, yeah

# We got the funk

# We got the funk, yeah

# We got the funk

# We got the funk, yeah... #

I mean, you had to be funky just coming here

under those conditions and everything, and surviving.

Black people have had to continuously make something

out of nothing, to make something not just necessary,

but to make something fly!

Rock and roll, jazz, hip-hop.

It is the innate funkiness that's passed down within us.

That is the DNA of who black people

have always been.

The way black people express themselves in funky music,

they also express themselves to Jesus the same way, you know?

It's a spirit that gets in you.

It's secular and it's spiritual.

That's the way black people express themselves.

You know, you just let it all out.

We come to church, and we find a way to tarry with God,

but also to tarry with each other.

And you could let the hard edges of life fade and grow soft

for a moment.

And there's something incredibly cathartic about sharing

that burden with each other.

And so funk is doing the same thing.

It's giving people a Saturday night that they can go to

and they can tarry together.

You know, it's that constant Saturday night,

Sunday morning relationship.

HE PLAYS VAMP

You've got these secular styles that are sometimes

prohibited in those sacred spaces.

There's a lot of borrowings, where secular traditions

are borrowing from gospel.

And you see elements of funk beginning to rise,

but it's not fully funkified.

# Woo!

# GP!

# Lately, I've been going through some things

# That's really got me... #

But when Kirk Franklin came up with that song, Stomp,

it was like, well, the church house is the funk house.

# Now you know

# Glory, glory...

And of course it always was.

It gave us a way to explore our funkiness inside a spiritual

practice and spiritual deliverance.

# Makes me clap my hands

# Makes me want to dance

# And stomp

# Oh, you put them hands together

# And have a Holy Ghost party with me. #

You just take the George Clinton sample.

# So I can't get around it.... #

HE PLAYS CHORDS

# Can I get a witness up in here?

KIRK: So, you know, that's what brings the funk.

It ain't over.

It ain't over, you know?

What makes funk gospel is when gospel begins to add chords

that are intentional to affect emotion

Like...

# We want the funk.... #

It's right there.

HE VOCALISES

Right? That's funk.

Gospel go...

You know?

See, that's what gospel did to funk.

Like, it lifted it,

and then it made it back stanky again.

You lift it, and you make it back stanky again.

With funk, it is forever stanky.

I remember being a young boy,

and going to Black choir musicals.

HE PLAYS CHORDS

You a little boy hearing that.

I mean, what else is that going to be but funk?

I got all my musical education from the church, honestly.

I'm a Pentecostal minister's son.

And, incidentally, I found this chord called the seventh chord.

It's a dominant seventh chord.

That's the one that got me in trouble in church,

because when I would play...

# Bringing in the sheep

# Bringing in the sheep... #

Pages.

But then I learned the seventh.

HE PLAYS CHORDS

# Bringing in the sheep

# We were... #

Miss Gonzalez, "Carlito, that's not Christian music.

"That's the devil's music."

"Devil's music?"

Once they started labelling the seventh chord as the devil's music,

I knew I was in trouble.

A bass player that played at a local church is probably the same

bass player that played in a local funk band.

But the thing about the local funk band,

they had to pay for a space to rehearse.

They had to pay for sound, they had to pay for this thing.

Where in the church, you had a place where you could shred

almost every time you got together,

and you also had a captivated audience.

And if you're doing good, they standing up.

"Oh, play, Tyre!"

You know, "Play, Raekwon!"

And now you know if you're killing,

it's because in the church there's no barrier.

There's no barrier for the response and for the,

and getting to know if you can.

There's going to be some young musicians over there talking about,

"Ooh! Ooh!"

In real time, you know if you funky or not.

In real time, you know if you dope or not.

# Swing down, sweet chariot

# Stop and let me ride... #

# Swing down, sweet chariot

# Stop and let me ride

Swing Down Sweet Chariot has a history that goes back

to the spiritual - Swing Low, Sweet Chariot -

but its reinterpretation by Parliament-Funkadelic

puts funk in a spiritual context.

# Everybody, swing down

We had a band that everybody was straight out of the church,

so there was overabundance of gospel in our songs.

Even though we were singing songs about smoking weed,

the overall feeling in it was always gospel.

Our show is always gospel, even when it's being silly.

Having that as a backdrop, having the Jimi Hendrix,

James Brown as the other side of it,

oh, it was blacker than black.

We would be in this groove.

You know, so we're there for a little while.

And then Glenn would come in.

# Do you want to ride...

# Do you want to ride?

# Do you want to ride tonight?

If you were in church, you were singing to bring down

the Holy Spirit.

But they were singing to bring down a mothership.

You're tuned into something ancient.

And yet it's moving YOU into the future.

Parliament-Funkadelic took their world into space

and, at the time of what we call the great Space Race,

the idea of going into space still felt very much like science fiction.

Look, another one of those spaceships.

All of this happening while you have people on Earth

just trying to get basic rights.

How come I ain't got no money here, and whitey is on the moon?

And so, it became this irony.

And yet, the idea of going into space was such an inspiration.

Funk is a way to think about somewhere else.

Like, here isn't really working. How could I be somewhere else?

# Take me to your place in space

# I'm sick and tired of the rat race... #

So, when we get to all the interplanetary narratives,

we're taken away from here and now towards somewhere else.

# I'll take you out to see the place

# Where the man in the moon has a smiling face... #

What if we just had our own planet systems?

What if we just claimed coming from other places

so that we could be free?

Then we could build the worlds we want to see.

I am Sun Ra, ambassador from the intergalactic regions

of the Council of Outer Space.

# Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage

# To the land of funk... #

You're literally riding in a ship going somewhere,

and I think that's a metaphor for how people perceive the power

of funk, that it could actually transport you.

It could beam you.

Captain, someone has activated the transporter mechanism.

Fire phasers.

That was the thing playing out of this world.

Jimi Hendrix, to me, was that.

You know, was taking music out of space.

If you go back to the sci-fi of the early 20th century,

there were no black people.

Whereas after George Clinton and Earth, Wind and Fire

started injecting us into the future, you started to see

Lando Calrissian, you know, in The Empire Strikes Back.

You've got a lot of guts coming here after what you pulled.

Afrofuturism was about saying,

"We're going to build ourself out of new cloth.

"We're going to come from outer space.

"We're not going to root ourselves in the history of violence

"and stripping of personhood.

"We're going to recreate ourselves anew.

"We are the new man, the new woman."

# Check it out, check it out

# Check it out, check it out, oh

# Check it out, check it out

# Check it out, check it out Oh... #

And now you have Labelle and their transformation,

going from this girl group and then, all of a sudden,

they had these amazing costumes

and they're singing about quasars and stars afar.

We started as the Bluebelles.

It was like a lot of girl groups - the Chantels, the Shirelles,

the Ronettes.

And it was like nice dresses and bouffants.

And it felt innocent, in terms of like you were singing, you know,

about love, and about dating, and boys, and going to the beach.

But inside of us, we had been different from

other girl groups anyway.

And now we were presenting to an audience something

that they hadn't seen before.

# Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?

# Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?

# He sat in her boudoir while she freshened up... #

And I think that first phrase set it up.

# Hey sister, go sister, soul sister, go sister

# Hey sister, go sister

# Ooh... #

# Go sister

# Soul sister

For me to get your attention, I've got to really do something

to move you to where I am.

To take you to a different place.

If you are chained to the bottom of a boat,

you have to have hope,

an idea of a future, to survive.

So, to me, that is the core,

that is the seed of Afrofuturism,

is that I can see a future beyond the bottom of this boat.

# More, more, more!

# Getcha, getcha, ya ya, da da... #

In the late '40s and early '50s, there was the great migration

of black folk leaving the south.

Escaping the south.

A lot of families moved from the south to the north

because they saw a future in the north that they necessarily

wouldn't have down south.

It was about building something new,

and they could see that in the north.

# Gonna tell the story of morning glory

# All about the serpentine fire... #

The funk capital of the world...

At first, I used to think it was, like, Detroit.

# Walking down the street watching ladies go by

# Watching you... #

The funk capital of the US is New Orleans.

Maybe DC?

But maybe it was Texas?

Cincinnati.

# Said hold it tight

# Got to keep on dancing... #

Dayton, Ohio.

Certainly, Ohio.

I would have to say Ohio.

Somewhere in Ohio.

Have to be in Ohio, cos more funky bands come out of Ohio

than anywhere else in the world.

Thousands of people left the south,

and many of them settled in these industrial cities in the Midwest.

We also have a time in American funding of education

where you have music programmes.

We were still a country where a kid, especially a black kid,

could go to their public school, their public school had a band.

They could be handed an instrument.

You're going to seventh period like,

"I'll play that one. That looks interesting."

It was required - it wasn't optional -

you have to learn an instrument.

Most of those people came up to work industrial jobs, factory jobs.

That means they could own homes, they could have garages.

That means the kids could rehearse in basements.

And that helped the music flourish.

Now they're making enough money to afford instruments.

That's why you get this hotbed of funk music,

cos funk really depends on instruments.

And everybody was in a band.

I was in three bands.

And so, like, these huge bands came out of this region.

# When you're hot you're hot

# You really shoot your shot

# You're dynamite, child

# Yeah... #

The proximity of these cities are important.

You can get from Dayton to some other place in Ohio, Cincinnati

in a short period of time.

You can get from Detroit and Chicago in a short period of time.

If you got 18 dudes in the band, instead of 18 airline tickets,

you just putting them all on a bus.

So, the Midwest becomes this incubator for funk music.

We don't have funk as we understand it now without what's popping

in the Midwest in the late '60s and early '70s.

Nobody's really thinking about Minneapolis

until Prince comes along.

# Aristocrats on a mountain climb... #

He has such a strong vision at such a young age

of what this music could be.

He becomes the centre of that very identifiable

Minneapolis funk sound.

# America, America

# God shed His grace on thee

# America, America... #

Prince at his root was a Midwestern funk artist.

He grew up listening to the Ohio players -

James Brown, all of the major players.

He's citing funk, even as he's building his own musical world.

He's citing these bands and these artists who've come before him.

So, you see the direct lineage and flow through what will become

his own incredible career.

The Minneapolis sound is Midwest funk.

Cos all these bands are coming through that a young Prince

is being exposed to, and he's like, "Yeah, we can do this too."

Prince becomes the conduit to think about modern funk, in one way,

but not forgetting the innovators who came before him.

The hair, the splits, the mic work...

Yeah, I definitely consider Prince funky.

I mean, how could he not be funky?

Prince realises the power of taboo,

the power of titillation, salaciousness.

Prince had the sound of the present, and took the sound of the past,

and refiltered it into the sound of tomorrow.

Africa has always been a pretty big consumer

of American popular music.

Soul music started to get pumped in consistently,

and it's something that took off like nothing else had ever had.

Many African countries, they gained their independence in the 1960s.

At that time, Africa was looking for an identity for itself

coming out of colonialism.

Funk showed a new form of Blackness,

a way you could be black in the modern world.

Well, James, it seems like we are going back home.

Yeah, after such a long time.

We finally...got our heads together.

Every little band in Kinshasa and Zaire

is playing the James Brown beat.

Now, it's a total, total, total French-speaking country,

and it's saying every one of your lyrics in English.

Now, that says a whole lot for me.

It says that we're not coming...

We're there. Black is here.

# Welcome, James Brown, to Nigeria

# We Nigerians, we are proud of you... #

In Lagos, James Brown was mobbed.

Right from the airport, people running beside his car

all the way to the hotel.

This is James Brown, and I'm looking forward to meeting

all the Nigerian cats during my tour!

People didn't have to understand the words.

They understood the emotions that were embedded in those wails,

the screams, the grunts.

Soul brother one, James Brown!

James Brown was so popular across Africa because his music

really bought out the Africanist qualities in African-American music.

I always wanted to go to Africa,

because I want to know where my soul come from, the heritage.

I want to know where it really started.

I have so much in common.

My music even got the drum syncopation,

the movements and the sound.

People looked at James Brown as if he was an African.

People really felt that he was one of their own.

There were lots of African imitators of James Brown,

and they tried to get that feeling.

Some of them even tried to sing and scream like James Brown.

But it was really Fela Kuti, in Nigeria, who kind of took that

James Brown influence, internalised it,

and pushed everything to the next level.

Fela saw James Brown, and was blown away.

But at the same time, he was coming from that rich foundation

of Juju music and Yoruba traditional music.

Fela had been in the United States.

He had been in Oakland, he'd seen the rise of the Black Panthers

and others in Oakland.

So he was aware of what was going on here.

But he intentionally went back to Nigeria and decided,

"We're going to do it our own way."

At the end of the '60s and the beginning of '70s,

he blew up in a whole new way when he invented this style of music

called Afrobeat.

They called him the James Brown of Africa.

He was definitely one of those African musicians that played,

you know, R&B, but African style.

You know, just get a groove.

Fela did not adapt funk to Africa,

so much as he went back to the well that funk originally grew from,

and started building his own from there.

His secret weapon, Tony Allen, the great drummer, who said,

"We don't have to play it like the Americans.

"We don't have to play those American funk beats."

We can take that structure, and make it more polyrhythmic

and really make it jump.

HE VOCALISES BEAT

When you are revolutionary, and you talk the truth,

people will come and slap you down.

Then you talk the truth again,

they lock you in jail.

Fela Kuti used his music as a platform for political expression,

his social outrage at hypocrisy or establishment doctrine in Nigeria.

Then when you are very strong and you talk again,

they may kill you.

They may even burn your house down.

They want to see the police beating.

It's terrible. I'll show you.

You must see it.

They beat the shit out of me.

It was more than just a musical statement.

It became a political statement.

And it was at a time when musicians were realising that they

could include social statements in their music

and have people dance at the same time.

I realised funk music doesn't only have to be about

get up off your ass and dance.

I guess Afrobeat could be viewed as African funk.

But there were other African musicians who were making

much more explicitly funky music.

At the beginning of the '70s, we made a sort of anthem

for the Cameroonian soccer team in the African Cup of Nations.

The side A was just a very conventional, very straight march.

But the B side was initially a filler record,

it was nothing that was meant to be serious.

But Cameroon did not win the African Cup of Nations,

and all the people of Cameroon were so upset that they broke

the record and threw it away.

But somehow it started showing up in record bins in New York,

just as the early disco scene was starting to take off.

Some DJs heard it, and said,

"Oh, no, no, no, no.

"That's the hit right there. Put that out."

And then that thing blew the whole world up.

# Mama ko mama sa maka makossa Mama ko mama sa maka makossa

# Mama ko mama sa maka makossa... #

What Soul Makossa showed was that there was funk coming out of Africa

that could groove New York City.

It could groove LA, it could groove London, it could groove Paris.

Manu Dibango spoke about playing that song at the Apollo Theatre,

and seeing all these black Americans just reaching across a time warp

and connecting with this mythical Africa of their dreams.

There was a sense of recognition that people didn't even know

how to put words to.

But they just knew that there was something deeper.

There was something that was spiritual about it.

# Tunga debo ombo e tunga nailso makossa... #

It was a beautiful cultural conversation.

And that was really the first time that African-Americans realised

that there was a modern contemporary urban Africa that was producing

funky music. Because everyone looks at Africa like it's traditional

and it's ancient.

But the funk cast African energies in a modern light.

Funk got the whole world dancing.

You certainly couldn't contain it culturally, and you couldn't

contain it geographically either, so just get it out there.

Our ears are very broad, a lot broader than any programmers

are ever willing to give listeners credit for.

And you're accepting of anything if it moves you.

# Hey kid, shake it loose together

# The spotlight's hitting something

# That's been known to change the weather

# We'll kill the fatted calf tonight so stick around... #

Bennie and the Jets broke out of Detroit.

I played it twice that night on my show.

The next morning, the morning DJ is calling me at home, waking me up,

"What is this song you played last night?

"Ginny and The Nets or something?"

Elton is on the phone with the radio station, calling from England.

# B-B-Bennie and the Jets

# Oh, but they're weird...

They said, "Listen, it's the number one R&B record in Detroit."

And I went, "R&B? It's number one?"

And they said, "Yeah."

I said, "Well, I'm a white boy from Pinner."

# She's got electric boots A mohair suit... #

And it's all because, as I grew up as a kid,

I loved to listen to R&B records.

Everybody that came out of England loved that kind of music.

# Bennie and the Jets... #

If you're not from here, you can just be like, "Well, I'm British.

"I'm from London. I'm from Liverpool.

"I just know I like this music."

And so that allows a point of entry that wasn't available

because of how racism works in this country.

He's, like, the biggest rock star in the world, you know?

But it introduced him to a whole other market.

All of a sudden, he's on Soul Train.

# B-B-Bennie and the Jets... #

It was all about that groove being on those hard beats.

HE VOCALISES BEAT

It's just dropping on these hard beats.

How you going to be funking like that over in Europe?

You ain't never been to the hood, and you pull out that?

Man, black folk all over were loving that record

when that record dropped, because it was authentic.

A great welcome, gang, for the gifted singer, composer,

producer, Mr David Bowie.

At that particular time, the music that I was listening to

was definitely the soul music that was really, really big

in the clubs in America.

Hi, David. Hello.

I kind of, you know, tried to do my own interpretation

of that kind of music.

I met him, and we got along really fine.

Here I was, a Puerto Rican with a gigantic afro and dashikis.

And here he is with REAL orange hair.

I told him, "Man, you are way too thin. You look like hell.

"You need to come to my house and get a real meal."

HE PLAYS RHYTHM PART

And so, we started developing this song.

So, as you can see, that one...

One, two, three, and...

One.

HE PLAYS LEAD PART

Another part.

HE PLAYS RIFF

When you have those three guitar parts answering each other,

perfect syncopation.

# Fame

# Makes a man take things over

# Fame

# Lets him loose and hard to swallow... #

Fame is one of those songs that becomes a hit with us first.

The black community makes it a hit, and then it becomes a national

and international hit with everybody.

But black people saw the funk, they heard the funk in it,

and they made it a hit first.

# Fame

# What you need is in the limo... #

His funky music was almost in contrast to the way

that he presented himself, as this duke-like figure,

wearing a suit, who's really stiff.

But the music is super funky.

He appeared on Soul Train, and let me tell you,

he was, like, so nervous.

But he was, like, so happy.

He was in heaven.

# Is it any wonder I reject you first? #

I think my stage movements was kind of my version

of James Brown movement.

# Fame

# Puts you where the things are hollow

# Fame

# Fame... #

We did what we call haul off-ing.

You ever hear people say, "I'll haul off and do this."

We exaggerated to the point that it was silly.

You know...

# Aw, we want the funk

# Give up the funk... #

We got that from David Bowie.

# Got to have that funk... #

I think it was in art school.

Somebody had a copy of the first Funkadelic record,

Maggot Brain,

with the woman buried in some pit or sand

with just her head sticking up.

And I thought, what? What is this?

What's going on here?

I saw them once live.

In the middle of the show, there was a chant that went up.

# Burning down the house! Burning down the house... #

They never used it in a song.

I thought, OK, it's an amazing phrase.

It's kind of up for grabs then.

# Burning down the house!

# My house

# Is out of the ordinary

# That's right

# Don't want to hurt nobody... #

I felt like I could try and imitate James Brown.

I could try and imitate Fela.

I can try and imitate Kool & the Gang, or whoever.

And I did try and do that, but I never got it quite right.

# Burning down the house. #

And I realised at some point, by missing,

I ended up with something else.

I ended up with something that was more mine.

It's got a funkiness, but it's not like everybody else I've heard.

And it was a transformative experience for me.

# Burning down the house! #

# You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack

# You may find yourself in another part of the world. #

When Once In A Lifetime started getting played on Black radio

and in dance clubs, it was like, phew...

That's validation.

# Letting the days go by Let the water hold me down

# Letting the days go by Water flowing underground

# Into the blue again... #

At the same time, the rock stations wouldn't play it.

They said, "This is too funky.

"We don't play that kind of stuff."

# Same as it ever was

# Same as it ever was... #

It speaks to the open-mindedness of the larger musical community

that we're not going to draw the kind of lines

that had been drawn for us.

# Same as it ever was... #

This was a kind of healing process for me.

This was a way to become part of a community.

# Into the blue again Into the silent water

# Under the rocks and stones... #

DAVID: It was spiritual, in a way.

I mean, it was very close to a church experience.

It was transcendent.

# Once in a lifetime

# Water flowing underground

# Same as it ever was

# Same as it ever was... #

Funk was the ideal foundation for hip-hop, right?

Cos it was this continuous groove.

It was just a natural marriage.

You can even narrow it down to one song in particular,

James Brown's Funky Drummer.

It's one of the most sampled songs in hip-hop to this day.

"One, two, three, four, hit it."

HE VOCALISES BEAT

# Beats to the rhyme, the rhyme I just made

# Party at the jammie till lights the night fade... #

James Brown is such a main staple of hip-hop,

because that's where we came from.

# Yes, the rhythm, the rebel

# Without a pause I'm lowering my level... #

# I'm gonna knock you out

# Mama said knock you out... #

Back in the '70s, the Nixon administration pulled away

art and public school funding.

Many a hip-hop pioneer has come to me and says,

"Yeah, man, I wanted to always be a saxophone player."

There's, like, one sax, you know what I'm saying?

So, it was just so limited.

And some schools, they just didn't have that available.

# I hold the microphone like a grudge

# B will hold the record so the needle don't budge... #

Suddenly, the turntable becomes an instrument.

You know, I'm a street cat, you know what I'm saying?

With turntables, using what I had.

That was the hip-hop part of it.

I didn't have a band.

Funk is the DNA, straight DNA, for hip-hop.

# Swing down, sweet chariot

# Stop and let me ride

# Hell, yeah... #

Sample the bass, sample the drums.

That becomes the new thing.

When I made 3 Feet High and Rising, I mean, all I listened to

was Parliament-Funkadelic.

My idea was to take that vibe and that feeling

that I got from P-Funk...

..to hip-hop.

# Mirror, mirror on the wall

# Tell me, mirror, what is wrong?

# Can it be my De La clothes or is it just my De La song? #

When hip-hop come along, I had no idea they was going to make it

a legitimate thing...

..till De La Soul showed up and paid us for it.

# Me, myself, and I

# Just me, myself, and I... #

Without funk, there would be no hip-hop.

If you took funk away from hip-hop,

there clearly would be no hip-hop.

I mean, to me, it's as simple as that.

Funk is always evolving.

It's almost like an organism, you know what I'm saying?

It goes from one thing to the next thing, to the next thing,

to the next thing.

It is not going anywhere.

It will always be, because it's in our soul.

Funk is able to come in and say,

"Listen to the music and get into a groove.

"It's OK to dance.

"Dance the way you choose to dance."

Free your mind, your ass will follow.

Funk said that it doesn't matter what dance you're doing,

but you better do one.

You better get down, you better move.

If you've done your best, you can literally leave it alone.

You've done all that's required of you.

So, do the best you can, and then funk it.

# We got the funk

# We got the funk, yeah

# We got the funk

# We got the funk, yeah

# We got the funk

# We got the funk, yeah... #