What the Funk's Happening?

When I was young I caught a dose of the Funk. I was eight. It was 1970, a year when you could look up at the Moon and say, “there are people up there.” We were living in Ibadan, Nigeria. James Brown was coming to town. In the aftermath of a brutal civil war, Nigerians were ready to get a brand new bag on. All day long Alfred, my Yoruba friend and mentor, played ’Sex Machine’, and danced to and/or sang along with, “Stay on the scene, (get on up), like a sex machine, (get on up)”. In my teens, the Funk would strike again and again, like a persistent boyhood fever. “Ow!”

        The next time I was living in Dar-es-salaam, Tanzania. Aged 13, I’d already had my first puff of marijuana so why not resample the Funk. At the International School of Tanganyika, Kevin, a black American student hit me up with a triple whammy: Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions, Earth, Wind and Fire’s Gratitude, and the Jackson 5’s Dancing Machine. Sure, this was mainstream black music, tamed by white sensitivities, but it had something of the Funk to it, and a whole lotta soul. Kool and the Gang’s ‘Spirit of the Boogie’, mind you, was pure Funk. I felt it in my groin. “Cause when the boogie come to get you / You ain't got nowhere to go“. From then on I couldn’t control my dancing feet. The best discos at the Yacht Club were the ones where the Funk got top billing. I’d hear Van McCoy’s ‘The Hustle’, War’s ‘Low Rider’, George McCrea’s ‘I Get Lifted’, or David Bowie’s ‘Fame’ and get all loose and funky like a bowlegged monkey to the beats. White boys can dance.
        In 1978 the fullness of the Funk finally found its way into my ear. Trapped in Tananarive, the capital of Madagascar, for a week on my way home from boarding school in Fort Dauphin, I hung out at a clubhouse run by the Marines who guarded the US Embassy. It had a bar, a pool table, and a high-end stereo. Marines are dedicated followers of the Funk, I’d soon find out. I heard Parliament, Bootsy Collins, and Funkadelic, whose song 'Maggot Brain' was a trip, perfectly in sync with a marijuana joint. One Marine could twirl a pool cue in time to ‘One Nation Under A Groove’.
        Talking Heads’ Remain In Light, released the year I repatriated, was a turning point in the Funk, and in my own musical journey. My family record collection included Shakara, an album by Fela Kuti that is credited with being an essential influence on Remain in Light. Raised on African polyrhythms, I could relate to that ethno-funk more than I could my home and native land. When I heard to the album’s hit song, ‘Once In A Lifetime’ for the first time, I was surprised, elated and grateful. It was as if Talking Heads had heard the quarrel between my heart and head and turned it into music.

        It begins with a sonic boom, a blow to the solar plexus — drum, bass, and synth fused into one explosive note — then takes off on a fiery trajectory, driven by looping grooves, an odd time signature, and a myriad of instruments, arranged by producer Brian Eno into an exquisite confusion, like an open market in Ibadan.
        ‘Once In A Lifetime’ confronted me. “And you may ask yourself, "Well... how did I get here?” sings David Byrne, who later said the song was about the unconscious: "We operate half-awake or on autopilot and end up, whatever, with a house and family and job and everything else, and we haven't really stopped to ask ourselves, 'How did I get here?'" That certainly was the burning question in my mind at the time. How the funk did I end up feeling like a foreigner in my own country, searching for an identity? Living in the gloomy metropolis of Toronto only intensified that culture shock. But my dissonance could always be soothed by the Funk. 

        Not until it all got rolled into one delicious funk-cicle did I stand up and finally pay full attention to the Funk, tho. The year was 1985. I'd just dropped out of university and was on a year-long westward trek from British Columbia to England (though, at the time, I was oblivious to my journey's end). As before, I hung out at the Marine House. One night a funk-loving Grunt put on Prince’s Purple Rain. Raised on a diet of rock and soul, I immediately recognized the bold and brilliant act of crossover that this new, fresh funk-rock signified, and I danced my ass off to that jam. The Funk would never be the same again.