Now I enjoy a Friday night music documentary on BBC4 as much as any bloke who’s ever had a record collection. But there is a certain way about them. You know, you get some good music clips interspersed with a lot of blokes (always blokes) sitting with their guitars or in front of their mixing desks, or in front of their record collections if they’re music journalists. They talk about seeing so-and-so back in whenever and how it changed everything. And there’s a lot of name-dropping – they played with Chuck, or Hank, or Billy – and a bit of showing off, about how much they know and how important it all is. Last week’s was a bit much, to be honest; it wasn’t even about a genre, or a musician, or a band. It was about a piece of electronic equipment. A significant piece of equipment, sure (the Marshall amp), but still a one-hour documentary about a box.
The Story of Funk: One Nation Under a Groove (BBC4) is better. So it follows the usual pattern, the clips and the blokes with the mixing desks and the guitars. But this is Sly and the Family Stone’s bass player Larry Graham demonstrating the slap bass technique he developed. There’s a nice little story to go with it, too – Larry used to play with his mum, who one day decided not to have a drummer any more, possibly for economic reasons, so Larry had to start “kinda playing the drums on the bass”. A lot of the best things come out of poverty.
When James Brown brought out Cold Sweat, he “turned the whole band into a drum”, says writer and musician Greg Tate. James Brown, “the man that taught us all how to be funky,” says Cameo’s Tomi Jenkins. What is funk, anyway? “Unapologetic blackness,” says historian Kevin Powell.
See, still blokes saying stuff, but good stuff. And blokes with the funk. Even a couple of laydeez too: Sheila E and Cynthia Robinson. Plus an important civil rights story intertwined. It wasn’t just the best damn music around, without which hip-hop would never have happened; it had an important message, too, uniting and empowering through the funk. Say it loud: I’m black and I’m proud. Wooooow!!! (That’s a James Brown yell, obviously.)
