Larry over at Funky16Corners has been eulogizing James Brown like mad for the past week. His essay on JB's birthing of modern funk is a good one, despite the dubious, cranky-old-man shots at JB's musical descendants. (Prince borrowed a lot from Brown, but to say that he is wholly Brown-derivative is just bullshit.)
I especially like the section on "There Was a Time," a song that is probably the perfect demonstration of Brown's polyrythmic approach to funk, where no single instrument carries the groove. You can also draw a straight line from that song to Fela Kuti, someone who stole a hell of a lot more from Brown than Prince, and who made just as much brilliant and original music with what he took.
[Update: How not to write about Brown (from ZNet):
James Brown was spot-on in voicing black people's demand for more fairness and justice in U.S. employment. He nailed the alienated, exploited and oppressed lot of wage-labor for African Americans.Moreover, his freedom lyrics for them had to, and I say did in fact, appeal to others for whom the workplace by its very structure of inequality creates un-human conditions. Therefore, I think we overlook to our loss the revolutionary attraction of Brown's lyrics to society's mass, the laboring class, employed and unemployed. The black struggle was/is a race, class and gender struggle for a new society.
Not that any of this is wrong, but don't write about the guy like he's frigging Pete Seeger. The revolutionary aspect of Brown's music was in performance, not mere lyrical content. It's an extension of gospel music – the words sung are secondary (something Brown himself both parodied and affirmed in The Blues Brothers). Even "Say it Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)" gets most of its power from the intensity of Brown's exhortation, not the mere fact of it's title/chorus.]
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