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James Brown: The Evolution Of Funk Music

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Funk is an important music genre that began in the 1960s as an African-American music style where musicians created a new rhythmic form of music through a mixture of soul songs, jazz music and R&B. Funk minimizes melody and harmony and creates strong rhythmic patterns of electric bass, along with the drums and also a vocal style drawn from soul music. Funk songs are usually formed on a prolonged vamp on a particular chord, which effectively distinguishes them from soul music and R&B songs as these are normally based on complex chord progressions. The lyrics are commonly spiritual themes and social commentary. James Brown is generally considered the first artist to present funk in a complete form, and would not have done so without the influence …show more content…

However, for a time, in the early years, There were negative suggestions associated with the word funk leading it to being. This prevented its promotion on the radio and formed a barrier to older, black fans. Other musical groups then picked up on these vocal styles and rhythms refined by Brown and his band, and the funk style began to expand. Another band, Tower of Power, released an album in 1970 and this was also considered an important milestone in funk by many enthusiasts. They had many hits throughout the 1970s and the band assisted in making funk music a successful genre, with an even broader audience. A different group of musicians then began to further develop this genre. New ideas were significantly made by George Clinton, with his two bands; Parliament and Funkadelic. The Parliament group emphasized using horns whilst Funkadelic emphasized using guitars, but both had a deep, rhythm filled groove. Simultaneously, they formed a new kind of funk sound, greatly influenced by psychedelic rock as well as jazz. Clinton had successfully fused together many types of music to create this P-Funk, as he called

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