A friend, John Nielsen, who is a poet and was a DJ for twenty years for the Rock station Z 106 in Mississippi, sent me an email with the subject heading "Funk Ain’t Dead." When I opened it, there was a link to a YouTube performance by Robert Randolph with the statement, "--it just got a re-tooling using pedal steel guitar out of the east coast African American 'sacred steel' tradition in churches." Below is my response to John. I’m sure it will piss off people who love Hip Hop.
=====

John,

I love Robert Randolph. Sadly, my favorite song of his is with Sawyer Brown, "Mission Temple Fireworks Stand." But you are right. With Hip Hop/Rap having colonized, if not destroyed, black (African American) music, the only place that traditional R&B and Funk is being played is in small clubs and churches. Now, let me be clear. Hip Hop, the aesthetic, has been good for Hip Hop, but it has been bad for all other forms of African American music that has limited, narrowed, and pretzelized itself to be heard on radio or gain a mass audience. Thus, most African American artists creating music after 1990 are so influenced by Hip Hop and trying to wear the aesthetics of Hip Hop that traditional singing and playing of R&B and Funk is non-existent in a commercial sense. So, you can have a decent artist like a Jaheim, whose voice invokes Teddy Pendergrass, but there is no decent material to sing/perform, especially when Jaheim is trying to look like and sound like a rapper. The same is true for someone like Lyfe Jennings whose first two albums I love, but I just got tired of hearing him discuss that he was just released from jail after every song on the album. Okay, I get it, you’re a thug. Now shut up and play the damn guitar. And yes, there were many blues men who were hoodlums, gangsters, and thugs, but that was manifested in the actual music/lyrics, and it never limited what types of chords or progressions that could be played on a record. At best, what is considered as traditional R&B/Soul is kept alive mostly by female acts, such as Jill Scott, India Arie, Alicia Keys, Jazmine Sullivan, Melanie Fiona, or others, while male singers like John Legend and Anthony Hamilton are overshadowed by the Hip Hop hurricane, often having to tap dance to a Hip Hop groove just to get some recognition.

Carlos Santana once said that "Prince is one of the most talented guitar players ever, but he has to get naked to get noticed." Sadly, Erykah Badu is proving that is true today of any African American artist not producing Hip Hop though she is an product of an equal combination of Hip Hop and traditional R&B/Funk. So, again, Hip Hop has been good for Hip Hop, but bad for the rest of African American music. Two of the most popular local Jackson DJs are in their mid-twenties and were both trained as drummers. One even played for the band of Southern University in Baton Rogue. When I asked them why they didn’t pursue drumming, they both said that there were no real outlets for musicians of their age group. Two drummers--one from Mississippi and one from Louisiana--could not find a place to play. That is a sad commentary. (Even local Hip Hop artists like M.U.G.A.B.E.E, 7:30, 5th Child, AJC, PyInfamous, and Skipp Coon suffer because their work is too musical or too introspective. I’ve even heard college students say, "Skipp Coon is good, but I was there to dance. I didn’t want to hear all that other stuff." Or, I’ve heard people be critical of 7:30 and AJC for being too experimental or different. And, M.U.G.A.B.E.E suffers because their well-crafted lyrics and music are too intellectual/complex or sophisticated for the radio or today’s college and high school listener, and older audiences can’t embrace their Hip Hop sensibility nor do they purchase enough music to be a viable audience for M.U.G.A.B.E.E.) So, yes, when individuality and creativity are liabilities, that is a sad commentary on the ability of African Americans to recognize African American genius. (And I do understand that the Hip Hop lovers can claim that I don’t have the intellectual ability to recognize the genius of Hip Hop.) As early as 1987 a music critic wrote in a so-called reputable magazine that "Sign ‘O’ the Times has too many different styles of music on it. It is too busy and experimental." Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life or Secret Life of Plants or anything by Parliament/Funkadelic would have given that fool a stroke. And we wonder why music is so limited today. It is because we have hack journalist like Toure’ who can only exist because elders, such as Nelson George and Greg Tate, sold out the Funk to be down with Hip Hop.

I can only guess what type of contribution would have been made if Andre 3000 seriously engaged learning how the play the guitar. Even a fabulously talented person like Wyclef Jean, who I think is as talented as Andree 3000 but not as creative, has suffered because the aesthetic, or what the masses that purchase it embrace, does not allow for musical experimentation because instrumentation is a non-factor for Hip Hop, which forces most African American musicians to quilt a living in smalls clubs, touring jazz bands of small financial rewards, or the church. (With all of her talent, Me’Shell NdegeOcello can’t get arrested let alone played on the radio, which is why I have not listed to the radio since 1988 except for the Saturday morning blues workshop.) Yet, these scenes (small black clubs and churches) are so far removed from what the mass American audience sees that R&B and Funk have been exiled as long-forgotten ancestors--people whose faces are in the portraits in family homes, but we don’t really recognize who they are or why they are important or significant to the family. And as long as Robin Thicke keeps writing the slow jams that Prince is no longer interested in writing, it does not seem that R&B and Funk will ever be anything other than a marginal genre. But, I hope that I’m wrong. Until then, I’ll keep attending church to hear some quality R&B and Funk.

1725topp

1725topp said:

Good point! Me too !!!

I like this article.