Presence and Pleasure: The Funk Grooves of James Brown and Parliament

by Anne Danielsen

Overview

What does it mean to be in the groove?

Winner of the 2007 Irving Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music

Winner of IASPM's 2007 International Book Award

In this exploration of the funk groove and its unique sounds, author Anne Danielsen takes an in-depth look at this under-explored genre. Danielsen concentrates on the golden age of funk in the late 1960s and the 1970s, focusing on two of the era's artists who made a substantial impact on the landscape of popular music: James Brown and George Clinton/Parliament. Aiming to understand funk not only as objectified musical meaning but also as lived experience, she begins with the musical events themselves and draws on her experiences as both a fan and a scholar to capture how their particular organization creates the funk listener's pleasure. Danielsen further examines issues surrounding race in the construction and consumption of this music, focusing her study with how white listeners responded to funk in the 1970s, and arguing that African American music has remained a means of catharsis and of dealing with pleasures of the body. Funk's crossover to international success among listeners of pop and rock music affected both the music itself and audiences' understanding of it. Presence and Pleasure shows us how.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819501608
Publisher:	Wesleyan University Press
Publication date:	08/06/2024
Series:	Music / Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

ANNE DANIELSEN is a researcher in the department of musicology at the University of Oslo.

Table of Contents

PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
BLACK AND/OR WHITE: INTRODUCTORY PERSPECTIVES
Whose Funk?
James Brown and Parliament—A Short History
Whose Funk?
Understanding Funk—Hermeneutic Challenges
Two Discourses on Blackness
The Primitivist Representation of Black Culture
Black Is Beautiful!—Black Music and Black Struggle
A Common Source of Otherness?
A BRAND NEW BAG: ANALYTICAL INVESTIGATIONS
From Songs to Grooves
A Fabric of Rhythm
On Multilinear Rhythm
Virtuality—Actuality, Figure—Gesture
The Heterogeneous Sound Ideal
The Conversational Mode
On Internal Beat
Genre and Individuality—The Art of Signifyin(g)
Rhythm and Counter-Rhythm
Simple Syncopation or Secondary Rag?
A Tendency of Cross-Rhythm
Limitation, Concealment, Fragmentation—On the Perfectly Imperfect Balance
Rhythm and Counter-Rhythm—A Metrical Romance
"The Downbeat, in Anticipation"
"Sex Machine"
On and Off—On Displacement, Offbeat Phrasing, and the Way to Treat Strong Beats
More on Manner—James Brown as Vocal Percussionist
Disturbing the Internal Beat
The Pulse of the Rhythm and the Pulse of the Counter-Rhythm
Ants and Downstrokes
FUNK IN THE CROSSOVER ERA
A Brand(ed) New Fad
Social Change and the Era of Crossover
Hot, Hot, Hot . . . ?—James Brown at Polydor
. . . And Beyond—The Despiritualization of Funk
The Influence of Disco
"Some Say It's Funk after Death"
P-Funk as Black Consolidation
The Rhythm on One
Extended Ambiguity—"The Ifs, the Ands, and the Buts . . ."
The Funk Riff
Grounded Ambiguity—On the Stable Unstable
One Nation under a Groove!—The Gospel of Dr. Funkenstein
Analytical Afterthoughts
"ONCE UPON A TIME CALLED NOW!": TEMPORALITIES AND EXPERIENCE
"The Payback"
The State of Being in Funk
The Groove Mode and the Song Mode of Listening
Time and Again
The Dominance of Linear Temporality
Eternal Present vs. Eternal Presence—On Different Nonlinearities
Repetition vs. Repetition
Repetition with a Difference
Repetition in Time
Repetition as Production
Repetitive Production in Grooves
Circularity and the One
Between Song and Groove
Groove Becoming Song
The Dissolution of the Hierarchy of Sequences
Song Becoming Groove
The Pure Groove
Consecration, Cut, and a New Beginning
Continuity and Breaks
Groove vs. Nonsong
Feeling, Intensity, and the Sublimity of the Event
Funk (A)live
The Imploding Event
I Feel Good!—The Feeling of Feeling
Give Me a Break!—Intervention and Intensity
"Once Upon a Time Called Now!"
Presence and Pleasure
The Veiling of Musical Means
Externalizing the Internal Other
Body vs. Time—Renaming the Internal Other?
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Mitchell Morris

"Not only the first major study of funk, but also a major contribution both to the study of rhythm in American popular music and to the phenomenological analysis of music."
— Mitchell Morris, Associate Professor of Musicology, University of California, Los Angeles

From the Publisher

"Not only the first major study of funk, but also a major contribution both to the study of rhythm in American popular music and to the phenomenological analysis of music."—Mitchell Morris, Associate Professor of Musicology, University of CaliforniaLos Angeles

"Not only the first major study of funk, but also a major contribution both to the study of rhythm in American popular music and to the phenomenological analysis of music."—Mitchell Morris, Associate Professor of Musicology, University of California, Los Angeles

"This is an original, well-presented, and innovative theory of groove, exploring the meaning and appeal of funk beyond an African-American/North American audience. Danielsen displays great sensitivity in handling its complex inter-cultural resonances."—David Brackett, author of The Pop, Rock, and Soul Reader

David Brackett

“This is an original, well-presented, and innovative theory of groove, exploring the meaning and appeal of funk beyond an African-American/North American audience. Danielsen displays great sensitivity in handling its complex inter-cultural resonances.”

Editorial Reviews

"Not only the first major study of funk, but also a major contribution both to the study of rhythm in American popular music and to the phenomenological analysis of music."—Mitchell Morris, Associate Professor of Musicology, University of CaliforniaLos Angeles

"Not only the first major study of funk, but also a major contribution both to the study of rhythm in American popular music and to the phenomenological analysis of music."—Mitchell Morris, Associate Professor of Musicology, University of California, Los Angeles

"This is an original, well-presented, and innovative theory of groove, exploring the meaning and appeal of funk beyond an African-American/North American audience. Danielsen displays great sensitivity in handling its complex inter-cultural resonances."—David Brackett, author of The Pop, Rock, and Soul Reader

From the Publisher