Black Atlantik (III)
Funk is a slippery category, not so much a musical genre but rather a feeling, nurtured in the blues, schooled in R&B, spirited as a sonic dust devil, fatback organ and shape-shifting guitar, Gabriel’s mighty horn, smoldering saxophone and slinky low-down second-line bass, polyrhythm and a crosscut saw, percussive anvil hammer at the forging fire of beauty, weaving lightning through this masquerade of darkness, a slumbering nocturne and the wail of a long lonesome train, the unanswered call and response, “Where does the night go ?”
Funk genesis, social history, people on the move, involuntary, desperate to live, so many routes and tributaries of rhythm, West Africa and the Caribbean, New Orleans, Memphis, coursing the Mississippi, trawling the American South, Houston, Fort Worth, Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, New York, LA, San Francisco and the Spanish main. For all ages young enough to dream, a little trip on the night train.
Michael Stone
Jazz Roots & Branches
Title | Artist | Album
Night Train | Jimmy Forrest | Jimmy Forrest’s Night Train
Peter Gunn | King Curtis | Have Tenor Sax Will Blow
One Mint Julep | Ray Charles | Genius + Soul = Jazz
Green Onions | Booker T & The MGs | Green Onions
I Got You (I Feel Good) | James Brown | I Got You (I Feel Good)
Cissy Strut | The Meters | The Meters
Everyday People | Sly & The Family Stone | Stand
(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below We’re All Going to Go | Curtis Mayfield | Curtis
Related to What Chant | The Last Poets | This Is Madness
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised | Gil Scott-Heron | Pieces of a Man
What’s Going On | Marvin Gaye | What’s Going On
Slippin’ into Darkness | War | All Day Music
Four Cornered Room | War | The World Is a Ghetto
Young Enough to Dream | John Handy | Hard Work