The Funk Movement

Music, Culture, and Politics

Reiland Rabaka

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781040172308
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Rabaka explores funk as a distinct multiform of music, aesthetics, politics, social vision, and cultural rebellion that has been remixed and continues to influence contemporary Black popular music and Black popular culture, especially rap music and the Hip Hop Movement.

The Funk Movement was a sub-movement within the larger Black Power Movement and its artistic arm, the Black Arts Movement. Moreover, the Funk Movement was also a sub-movement within the Black Women's Liberation Movement between the late 1960s and late 1970s, where women's funk, especially Chaka Khan and Betty Davis's funk, was understood to be a form of "Black musical feminism" that was as integral to the movement as the Black political feminism of Angela Davis or the Combahee River Collective and the Black literary feminism of Toni Morrison or Alice Walker. This book also demonstrates that more than any other post-war Black popular music genre, the funk music of the 1960s and 1970s laid the foundation for the mercurial rise of rap music and the Hip Hop Movement in the 1980s and 1990s.

This book is primarily aimed at scholars and students working in popular music studies, popular culture studies, American studies, African American studies, cultural studies, ethnic studies, critical race studies, women's studies, gender studies, and sexuality studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Endorsements
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction to Funk Music and the Funk Movement
• 1 “Black Is Beautiful!”: The Black Power Movement, the Black Arts Movement, and the Black Aesthetic
• 2 Pre-Funk—The Prelude to Funk: Hard Bop Jazz and the Cultural Roots of Funk Music and the Funk Movement
• 3 “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud”: James Brown and the Foundations of Funk
• 4 “There’s a Riot Goin’ On”: Sly and the Family Stone’s Psychedelic Rock, Psychedelic Soul, and Invention of Psychedelic Funk
• 5 “One Nation under a Groove”: George Clinton, Parliament/Funkadelic, Psychedelic Rock, Psychedelic Soul, and Psychedelic Funk
• 6 “The Personal Is Political”: The Black Women’s Liberation Movement
• 7 “I’m Every Woman”: Chaka Khan, Jazzy Soulful Sensual Funk, and the Black Feminist Funk Movement
• 8 “Nasty Gal”: Betty Davis, Erotic Funk Rock, and the Black Feminist Funk Movement
• 9 P-Funk to G-Funk: From Funk Music and the Funk Movement to Rap Music and the Hip Hop Movement
• Index