Funk is ending up like the Blues

[AndyVanBass]

All musical styles are born out of a culture — usually a youth culture. Once those teen-20s are in their 30-40s, have careers & kids (and their brains are fully developed), that culture shifts purpose and the music with it. Every generation makes music as a statement of independence, usually against their parents.

Every genre of music suffers this fate. Every current new style will be museum music in 40-50 years. '70s funk itself has been through several revisions - '80s synth/Prince, '90s rockfunk/RHCP, '90s-00s neo-soul/Dangelo, and now 40 years later white-nerd funk.

Some have said "hip hop is the music of now", but today's mainstream hip hop is hardly like old school HH of '80s-early '90s (when I got into it). It's generational, 40+ think trap music is stupid, lazy, uncreative, etc. But teens-20s think Tupac is their parents' music, fuddy duddy & can't relate to it.

It's all generational. Miles Davis is the perfect example of a leader who saw this & shifted his style 3x to ride the current zeitgeist. (bop, cool, funk/fusion, pop/jazz)

 

[JimmyM]

well, they are doing their job, and working overtime, too!

Good, and I hope you hate it every step of the way as you yell at them to get off your lawn!

 

[two fingers]

I'm still stewing over how I could contribute. But, for the most part, this thread has been a really interesting read so far.

Great topic @Dr. Cheese !!!!

 

[BassBrass]

Not necessarily on topic, but interesting.
How Jimi Hendrix stopped being black - CNN

Article leaves out the fact Hendrix was part American Indian, as a child he visited his grandmother on the reservation. The feathers, leather and turquoise were all his heritage.
Blues music is 1/2 Indian and Charlie Patton, an Indian, taught it to Howlin' Wolf. Lots of these blues rhythms are Indian, the refrain-chant style is Indian but the string drone that became the original low banjo is African. Yes sir.

 

[Gaolee]

Vulfpeck is the future of Funk. Young Black kids are totally into Hip Hop, frankly most White kids are into Hip Hop too. Even country acts are being heavily influenced by Rap these days. Funk is being produced by music school “nerds” like Vulfpeck (I love them, but they do come off as music department nerds.) Of course, musicianship is very healthy in the Black Church, Black Church bassists can certainly get funky, but Gospel is not Funk, funk is just one of many flavors comprising current Urban Gospel. I am not complaining, I was blessed to have grown up during the heyday of Funk, and just like the Big Band and Jump Blues that my parents grew up listening to gave way to R&B, Funk was not going last forever. It is just a sign of my aging that I am seeing what happened to my parent’s music, happen to my music.

My son who is ethnically all of the above, plays in a couple LA funk bands. They are more Latin funk, I suppose, but they sure are not academic. He plays with a band called Orgone on occasion, and with a band called Mestizo Beat a whole lot more often. He plays trumpet, sometimes keys. It's not Graham Central Station or P-Funk style music. It is its own thing with roots in '70s funk and soul. It's evolving, not going away.

 

[AndyVanBass]

He plays with a band called Orgone on occasion

Recently discovered Orgone (thanks to Lettuce, Soulive, Quantic) — love them!

 

[Bulky Bass]

Recently discovered Orgone (thanks to Lettuce, Soulive, Quantic) — love them!

Orgone is great, check out Cali Fever, one of my all time favorite records. Also check out a band called Jungle Fire which has Orgone's drummer, they are a Latin Funk powerhouse!

 

[Brad Johnson]

I learned the power of hypnosis-by-repetition on ‘The Big Payback’. When I cut out the fills, amazing, magical things happened on the dance floor, and to my datebook.

Yes they did.


My first band in high school was an education in this. We were a unit with a goal... make them hurt themselves on the dance floor. If there were egos I never saw them. And peer pressure was a good thing... you didn't want to be the one holding things up.

 

[mellowgerman]

Wish people would stop trying to listen to music with their eyes. Who cares what the skin-color, clothing-choice, dietary preference, touring vehicle, etc. of a musician is? Music is made for ears. When I hear a new song that I like, I don't need to know any of this stuff before I hand my money over for a copy of the album or try to educate myself about the musician's techniques and potentially adapt an influence of it in my own playing.
Just because a supposed innovator of a style of music (which is pretty subjective to begin with and can be infinitely dissected and broken down farther) is of a certain skin color, doesn't mean that the next guy who might be doing something similar is stealing that genre for the benefit of other people of his skin color -- the majority of whom may not even like the way it sounds. In that line of thinking you could argue that Larry Graham was just ripping off Domenico Dragonetti because Dragonetti played bass way before Graham was born. Also, what if a new genre is invented by a Swiss expatriate living in Italy and an Irish man of far-back partial African descent comes along and starts playing similar bass lines... who exactly is stealing from who then?

 

[Brad Johnson]

Same with some jazz cats trying to play something like ZZ Top, they never listened to it, don't really respect it so can't really play it. I've seen seriously trained cats fail at La'grange

The "This music is beneath me" crowd.

 

[Dr. Cheese]

I think Vulfpeck contains a large dose of millenial irony, intentionally nerdy & not taking themselves seriously while being very precise & passionate at the same time. It's a way of saying "I know we're white, nerdy & separated from the cultural music we're playing, so we'll do it tongue-in-cheek".

(I'm 40, midwest, white -- part of Gen X & Millenial cultures.)

I can see that.

 

[Brad Johnson]

Uhhh...?

I can't. You even bolded it.

 

[L Anthony]

Yes, unfortunately everything (not just music) diverges away from how it began and what influenced it (early-1900's solid wood furniture vs. particle board furniture, for example). It's just good that, for those of us who were able to be around or be part of the heyday of whatever our love was, we will always know the realness and fullness of it, as opposed to a modernized/sanitized/bastardized version of it.

Not to mention the fact that, whenever you enter into a new field or endeavor, you don't necessarily have the ability or time to delve as deeply into it as you should or might want to. But as long as you know that you have limited knowledge about a field's depth and breadth, you won't pretend that you're not just swimming in the wading pool.

 

[MultiScaleMale]

I just want to say that I'm purposely sitting this out because this type of discussion is best done in person were inflection and such better convey what you want to say than plain text.

 

[Dr. Cheese]

Wish people would stop trying to listen to music with their eyes. Who cares what the skin-color, clothing-choice, dietary preference, touring vehicle, etc. of a musician is? Music is made for ears. When I hear a new song that I like, I don't need to know any of this stuff before I hand my money over for a copy of the album or try to educate myself about the musician's techniques and potentially adapt an influence of it in my own playing.
Just because a supposed innovator of a style of music (which is pretty subjective to begin with and can be infinitely dissected and broken down farther) is of a certain skin color, doesn't mean that the next guy who might be doing something similar is stealing that genre for the benefit of other people of his skin color -- the majority of whom may not even like the way it sounds. In that line of thinking you could argue that Larry Graham was just ripping off Domenico Dragonetti because Dragonetti played bass way before Graham was born. Also, what if a new genre is invented by a Swiss expatriate living in Italy and an Irish man of far-back partial African descent comes along and starts playing similar bass lines... who exactly is stealing from who then?

If you go back to my original post, you will see that I said Vulfpeck sound like music school nerds. I said nothing about race. The club structure that supported bands in the African American community no longer exists. In the Metroeast (Illinois)part of the St. Louis metropolitan area, a fair amount of clubs either became stripjoints or went 100% DJ. Black kids playing today largely learn in church or the same university programs where folks like Vulfpeck studied. Church bass playing allows a level of overplaying that would have gotten someone fired from James Brown’s or Oliver Sain’s (St. Louis legend) band back in the day.

 

[JimmyM]

I just want the focus on music, not something that will be shut down.

Dig. I'll delete my last post.

 

[Stranger Danger]

Recently discovered Orgone (thanks to Lettuce, Soulive, Quantic) — love them!

All of these things are wonderful

 

[mellowgerman]

If you go back to my original post, you will see that I said Vulfpeck sound like music school nerds. I said nothing about race. The club structure that supported bands in the African American community no longer exists. In the Metroeast (Illinois)part of the St. Louis metropolitan area, a fair amount of clubs either became stripjoints or went 100% DJ. Black kids playing today largely learn in church or the same university programs where folks like Vulfpeck studied. Church bass playing allows a level of overplaying that would have gotten someone fired from James Brown’s or Oliver Sain’s (St. Louis legend) band back in the day.

I see what you're saying here. I guess I'm speaking more to the greater conversation that appears to be developing in response to the original post. It may have stemmed from the mention of race in your initial post, though it is historically/contextually relevant to the topic.
In any case, it's an interesting topic and I think the farther back the subjective origins of any well-documented and recorded musical genre goes, the more study, influence, and imitation of it will come about, but people will inevitably try to find ways to set themselves apart from those viewed to be their predecessors, which I think very often takes the form of adding more notes and overplaying.

 

[eJake]

I can't. You even bolded it.

lol all in good fun my man! Ill present you a haiku on how wrong you are any day of the week!!!!

 

[IamGroot]

I think the funkiest bass player out there is Flea. At night, he probably sprouts bat wings and sucks the blood of Booty . He is kinda pale, ya know, like a funk vampire.