Funkier Than A Mosquito’s Tweeter
[This week's Sunday Supplement has been very kindly written by perhaps my oldest (and oldest) reader, Campfires & Battlefields. C&B has emailed me more good music suggestions than pretty much anyone, being the first to alert me to Samamidon, O'Death, Fleet Foxes (okay, we'll forgive him that one) The Felice Brothers and quite a few more, so hopefully we can persuade him to do a monthly column - sort of a Letter From America sort of thing. Thanks C&B.]
A few weeks back these hallowed pages were given over to iniquity in the form of The Funkcast, where Callum from Meursault faced the unenviable task of persuading Matthew to relax and shake his clenched boo-tay, if only for an hour or so. I, for one, was inspired, because I really like funk. I’m not an expert or anything, but I have listened to a lot of this type of music, and I’ve been listening to it a great deal lately. So I thought I’d take this opportunity to explore the genre a little bit, with an eye to spreading the word about some of the newer stuff that’s out there.
There’s actually quite a global neo-funk “movement” going on at present, and its purveyors have been coming out with some remarkable stuff over the last few years. In my opinion some of these records tread dangerously close to Acid Jazz or Trip-Hop. But at its best, the funk renaissance hearkens back to the Afro-beat assault of Fela Kuti, the dark heavy funk of Miles Davis’ early ‘70s output, or the Ethio Jazz arrangements of Mulatu Astatqe, whose recordings from the late 1960s and early 1970s have recently come to prominence after being featured on the brilliant Ethiopiques series from Buda Musique.
It seems like the center of the universe for modern funk is in New York City, where Daptone Records has its headquarters. Daptone is home to Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings, who even some of you poor pallid Scotsmen might have heard of, as well as other great groups like Budos Band, Sugarman 3, and the Menahan Street Band , whose tune Make the Road by Walking was heavily sampled by Jay-Z on Roc Boys (And the Winner Is) from the American Gangster album.
The movement extends far beyond New York, though, and far beyond the States for that matter. The UK’s Freestyle Records produces solid funk by artists from as far afield as New Zealand (Nathan Haines), Australia (Cookin’ On 3 Burners), and Israel (The Apples), while also providing a home for good English groups like Lack of Afro. Actually, some of my favorite neo-funk records have been made in Germany by outfits like The Poets of Rhythm and Karl Hector & The Malcouns, and Holland has also made a great deal of noise with the Lefties Soul Connection.
It’s not indie rock, that’s for damn sure, and it’s not folk rock. Actually, it’s not really the sort of thing that I hear on music blogs very often at all, although I haven’t done much digging to be honest, so there may well be good blogs out there that feature this stuff. But I thought it might be a nice change of pace, and I think there’s a rich seam of mucis being made in this style right now. So explore if you want to. Here’s a couple of new tunes that I particularly like, and also a couple of old tunes that show where this music gets its roots.
Budos Band – Chicago Falcon
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Karl Hector & The Malcouns – Sahara Swing
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The Apples — Kol Hayom Bahalal
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