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Funk: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''Funk used to be a bad word''|'''Funkadelic''', Let's Take It to the Stage }}
A genre of music which evolved from [[Soul
As the song quote above illustrates, the word "funk" first appeared somewhere in the 1920s or so, meaning "the smell of sexual intercourse". In music, the word was used to describe songs with insistent, syncopated rhythms that was highly danceable.
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Funk started to flounder in the late Seventies as disco overtook it in popularity. Disco was massively influenced and quite similar to funk, but while funk had a "rhythm über alles" approach (real funksters wouldn't think twice about jamming over a single chord if it was funky enough), disco placed a much bigger emphasis on melodies. Disco also had much more conventional, hedonistic lyrics, and took a more flamboyant, campy approach to production. Aside from the typical funk lineup of guitar-bass-drums-keyboards-horn section, string sections were included, and the overal sound was much more poppy, with way simplified beats and grooves. Funk fans started a backlash against the genre similar to the one rock fans experienced, claiming it was soulless and overindulgent, an opinion memorably summarised by Funkadelic on their ''Uncle Jam Wants You'' album, which claimed to "rescue dance music from the blahs".
As [[Deader Than Disco|disco died an ugly death]] at the start of [[The Eighties]], funk evolved in a new direction as a reaction to the excess of disco and the increasing difficulty of keeping together large bands like in [[The Seventies]]. The new sound was stripped-down, less syncopated and more reliant on electronics, with synthesisers and drum machines overtaking the previous hallmarks of funk such as "funky drummers", slap bass and Hammond organ/Rhodes piano. The first musician to take advantage of this style (nicknamed "punk-funk", not to be confused with actual post-punk bands influenced by funk such as [[Gang Of Four]] and [[Talking Heads (
While pure funk pretty much disappeared after [[The Eighties]] thanks to hip-hop, resurgent R&B and its offshoot New Jack Swing, [[The Nineties]] saw a boom in [[Funk Rock]] and [[Funk Metal]] bands, such as the [[Red Hot Chili Peppers]], [[Rage Against the Machine]], [[Living Colour]], [[Janes Addiction]], [[Primus]], [[Faith No More]] and Infectious Grooves. Another subgenre of hip-hop called G-funk (Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Tha Dogg Pound), which was based on copying and updating the old "P-Funk" sound, also became popular in the early nineties, but pretty much wore out its welcome and died by 1996.
In Brazil, there's the subgenre [[wikipedia:Funk carioca|funk carioca]], which is actually closer to electro and hip-hop than actual funk. It's divided in [[Intercourse
It should be noted that while far from common, there ''are'' still (new) bands that play pure funk music. A good example would be T-Bird and the Breaks.
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