As
soul began to experiment with rock textures in the late '60s, funk emerged.
Funk kept the groove of soul but made it deeper. It also added a greater reliance
on improvisation, much like the blues-rock and psychedelia of the era. James
Brown and Sly Stone were the godfathers of funk -- Brown's funk was stripped
down and spare, while Stone's was wilder and drew more from rock & roll. George
Clinton, the leader of Parliament and Funkadelic, was the next great funkster.
Clinton expanded Stone's blueprint, adding wild conceptual fantasies derived
from the psychedelia of Sgt. Pepper and the counterculture humor of Frank Zappa.
But the main signature of Clinton's music was how he kept working one groove,
how he kept jamming over a deep bass line and adding instrumental breaks. Most
of the funk bands of the '70s picked up on the groove, not the concepts, though
funk and hip-hop groups in the '80s and '90s would expand on both the sound
and the concept.
Funk
