Illustration above, Black Shiva, by Via Davis at Studio Psycherotica The
Apotheosis
of
Funk(Or, Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow) By Lisaann Childress, MA, CHT
Planet Waves Digital Media, in San FranciscoApotheosis: A defined ideal [-ef] <<A full-fledged cultural insurrection was at hand. An awakening consciousness of humankind's responsibility to one another, to the earth, to a spiritualized existence that honored and lived in accordance with the anima mundi (en-souled world) was more than an ideology of the few.>>
The Interview with a Maenad
Two weeks ago, I received a request to partake in a test marketing focus group. For an hour of my time and energy, I was to receive one hundred bucks. The interviewer informed me that this test marketing campaign was targeted towards thirtyish consumer fetishists -- my demographic profile. After the preliminary round of questions, he confirmed that their company employed a rigorous methodology to screen the solid citizen consumers from the posers looking to have a semi-regular gig and pocket the tax-free scratch. I thought to myself, tread lightly. By the final round of questions, it became increasingly apparent that a foreign car manufacturer was designing a new and improved sports utility vehicle aimed at the hipster set. This was to be a "radical departure" and in an effort to rouse some enthusiasm on my part, my opinion could possibly shape the design. His fevered salesmanship was altogether underwhelming. The final question of the interview served to determine whether I had a futurist's aesthetic, and went something like this: "If you were to choose any era in time, and be who ever you could be, who would you be?" Without missing a beat, I blurted out "a maenad -- 400 BC." When asked to define the term, I explained that the maenads -- literally "the raving ones" -- were the earliest priestess-shamans dating back to 700 BCE in Thrace. These women comprised a tribe of Dionysian devotees who gathered together, partook of orgiastic rites and devoured, as myth has it, the body of Dionysus. The maenads were revered and feared as divine midwives. Their particular brand of leaving their senses by way of the music making, dancing, feasting, and the chaos of sacrifice -- had a special appeal to me. For the maenad and her tribe, there was a divine inspiration, justice, and pleasuring in their purpose. These women were instumental in serving a collective unconscious desire to enact the power and pageantry of the death - rebirth spiral. The up-until-that-point dauntless interviewer politely excused himself so he could check with his higher up, returned within a suspiciously short interval and laid out the bad news. I had disqualified myself by what was deemed too abstruse an answer.Disclaimer
The following is a brain blip, a phantasmagorical rant and ramble. Synapses -- parallel, synchronal, concurrent -- firing randomly on the nature of the Funk and why I am an enthralled and dedicated proponent of this movement. The Funk is, I might add, a wave I rode in on as one of hundreds of thousands born as that thoroughly rough-hewn, tumultuous, and anarchic swell broke forth and heaved itself ashore in the promised time of the Uranus Pluto conjunction. This alignment, using a standard eight degree orb for the conjunction, lasted throughout the period 1963 until 1970. So, please be advised before reading any further, my logic was warped by this music at a tender age. It made a deep groove sensation -- with an emphasis on the sensate. As funk often dictates one respond with a feverish stomp and boogie, and even to my preternaturally -informed preschool mind, it spoke to my soul and demanded the call and response from my groove thang. It has proved to be a lasting impression.<<The funk requires you, me and the whole damn lot of us to get up off our collective ass and jam.>> Giving up Food for Funk ( James & the JB's)
So here's the deal, I am a devotee of the old school funk rhythmatists. This is no casual affair, it is a torrent of passion and daggers, there are public screaming scenes and wee morning hour police visitations. I stand accused of disturbing the peace on more than a few occasions. I have passed through the gaping maw of a many a full-on funk thrashdown and like any child who savors that adrenaline bolt delivered by multi-layered syncopations, the sonic bass, and the rhythm that falls on the one, I am compelled to get on that ride again. As an adult, my fascination has grown with just how conscious, tender-hearted, free-thinking, and often outraged folks keep their souls, their spirits intact. How is it possible to keep a politic of resistance alive; what soul-survival tactics shall I employ? Fortunately, I discovered that grooving down into some particularly funky soul was not only good fun, but a heartening mode of musical expression where the lyrics dealt with plurality: We, the People Who are Darker Than Blue by Curtis Mayfield, Everyday People by Sly & the Family Stone. The Funk spoke directly to my desire to climb outside the box, the cell imposed upon me by cultural conditioning, to challenge the hegemonic order.The lyrics and the deep groove sustained and fortified an emergent sense of connection and responsibility to my larger human family, and offered a sense of kinship coalescence. How does one continue to combat the soul-fire extinguishing effects of corporate bottom-line thinking, rapacious avarice, and the infectious invectives perpetrated by those capitalists intoxicated and somnambulent in their exertion of a "power over" mentality? What has been termed the "dominator virus" by Michael Sky and popularized by mystery school activist and astrologer extraordinaire Carolyn Casey is alive and thriving well into this 21st century. To counteract these forces, I found sustenance in the Funk. As a four-year-old, as is true today, the Funk incited a riot in my mind, my heart and gave me a sense of how to live outside the lie as a free woman. I am connected and responsible to my fellow homo sapiens sapiens. I can dance in defiance of the deification of a culture that has become accustomed to the criminalization of poverty, the fetishism of consumer goods, the privitization of healthcare, the corporatization of airwaves, and a nuclearization of space, the colonization of minds, to name a few of the more egregious wholesale exploitations of the last few decades.
How does the work of Curtis Mayfield, James Brown, Maceo Parker, Jimi Hendrix, Parliament / Funkadelic, and Stevie Wonder inform the collective vibe that supported, affixed itself, and propelled an inchoate moment in history? These good people and their voices have yet to be acknowledged for supporting the last great socio-cultural and political revolution in the US. These artists, to name just a few greats of that era, authored a new music that addressed the dispossessed, the underclass. Within the varied syncopations and tight structure of what was originally a music of the street, the architects of the Funk voiced a positivity, a nascent consciousness that spiritualized the gritty realism of those same streets. This music was the illegitimate child born of rhythm & blues, jazz, and rock that tore ass up and down the street screaming that something devastating, pure, and altogether completely transformative-- was approaching critical mass. The Change Gods were in and at play, teaming up in an alignment of colossal magnitude: Uranus and Pluto conjoined -- dancing and entrancing, destroying and conjuring a new order at the periphery of a generation's chaotic vision.
<<What originated as soul music came to express more explicit themes of protest, and by the time Uranus conjoined Pluto in Virgo, sextiling Neptune in Scorpio, and opposing as-yet undiscovered Chiron in Pisces, this music emerged as an answer and a promise.>> What if that child had a chart cast? It would likely be for a time in the mid-sixties. Many well-informed funkateers would place the approximate birth time in the general vicinity of James Brown's and JB's recording of Papa's Got a Brand New Bag (recorded in February 1965, the same month as Malcolm X's assassination) and the stylings of Jimi Hendrix playing with the Brothers Isley on Testify Parts I & II (early 1966). The exact birth time is debatable, but it is safe to say that black rock, rhythm and blues, soul and PRIDE fused into what would be referred to the Funk of the mid to late sixties and concurred with the conjunction Uranus and Pluto. Undoubtedly, there were other forms of music that informed those turbulent times, but for the purposes of this piece, I am focused on what Rickey Vincent, in his excellent work Funk, termed the First Funk Dynasty of the mid-sixties to early-seventies. What originated as soul music came to express more explicit themes of protest, and by the time Uranus conjoined Pluto in Virgo, sextiling Neptune in Scorpio, opposing as-yet undiscovered Chiron in Pisces, this music emerged as an answer and a promise.
The Infrastructure
There are several qualities that differentiate the Funk from other forms of music. In short they include most of the following qualites: a tight polyrhythmic structure where all the instruments, including the voice, are played in a percussive manner; a high density of musical events fill up the space; "antiphony" or call-and-response which allows for collective participation; and improvization is central to the overall structure. All these elements formulated a massive frontal assualt, a rhythmic bombardment of the senses, that was parlayed into the Rhythm of the One. To be "on the one"in the musical performance is not only emphasizing an ancient African rhythmic pattern, it is emphasizing the essential openness toward all participants to the groove. Vincent writes, "Locked, yet fluid, when everything is on the one, a harmony among all people is achieved." The music communicates a hard-driving playfulness while raw emotionalism is expressed by the lyrics. The repetitive groove builds on the energy, it takes hold of your hips and ass, and the ensuing commotion is the funk alive in your very being. It provides joy, hope, and an affirmation of sexuality and sensuality. The funk requires you, me and the whole damn lot of us to get up off our collective ass and jam.Uranus / Pluto & the Birth of the First Funk Dynasty
And it all comes down to this -- why was the apotheosis of the First Funk Dynasty realized at an epoch in time that coicided with the anarchy of the last memorable cultural revolution? Hardly a coincidence, but a synchronicity. And where this a-causal connecting principle is at work, magick is in our midst. The Uranus / Pluto conjunction in the early to later degrees of Virgo were the tranpersonal planetary catalysts that synchronized a collective double-whammy which zapped the jesusmary&joseph out of a rather complacent, heavily insulated baby boomer breeder generation. In the elegant, mytho-poetic symbol system that astrology provides, the archetypal had the underworld god, Pluto, god of death, rebirth and transformation wed to Uranus, the god of upheaval, chaos and revolution. Both these planets exert an influence that effects the higher social mind of a generation. Collective revolutionary forces were at a peak. We humans certainly feel the power of these Gods but often only on an unconscious level. In order to assist in embodying these often times impersonal, trans-Saturnian planets, consider an earthquake. Uranus is the initial shock of the seismic snap. The after effects of the upheaval often times results in anarchy reigning after a disaster of immense proportion. Pluto is eruptive, best described as the force behind the earthquake- the magma that keeps those tectonic plates crashing up against and over one other for time immemorial. Uranian energies require truth and freedom no matter what the cost, often manifesting in shocking, sudden change characterized by frenzied, chaotic violence reminiscent of the bloodletting of the maenads. The opportunity for total liberation nspired the violence that replicated the maenad's fury, and as in the times when matriarchy held sway, there was a divinity, a justice, and an exaltation it. Just as chaos always precedes creation, this era was ushered in by thewrithing throes of the first stage of clinical delivery.<<People came together for a common purpose, to stand together as midwives at the crowning moment, throughout the labored torment and triumph of parthogenesis, collectively dreaming-conjuring-birthing a world order into existence. The counterculture ground forces swelled in tribal gatherings, a show of strength and solidarity.>> Propulsive contractions came wave upon successive wave. Political figures arose to embody the promise of the time, some of the leaders who inspired hope were slain, yet gained symbolic power in their martyrdom a very Plutonian construct.The outer planetary alignment, which comes once approximately every 400 years, turned on the higher mind center of the generation that were born into and lived through this era in extremis. The turbulent mid-sixties in this nation played to the audience in the balcony. More ground was broken in the name of personal, racial, social, and sexual freedoms. Funk found it's voice and was born by and through the Uranus Pluto conjuntion, the co-mingling of outer planetary energies and the music mutually informed an inflamed the collective social mind. The Funk was the heraldic call-and-response, the musical equivalent of war drums reverberating through deep earth. From this confluence of earthy, nastay music sprung a dangerous commotion. And for for those who responded to this commotion, a courage arose for those willing to trespass against their trespassors and to Fight the Powers (Isley Brothers) and lay claim to an actualized ideal.
A full-fledged cultural insurrection was at hand. An awakening consciousness of humankind's responsibility to one another, to the Earth, to a spiritualized existence that honored and lived in accordance with the anima mundi (en-souled world) was more than an ideology of the few. The conjunction of Uranus Pluto gave rise to an evolutionary leap in consciousness. At the center of the tidal change was the civil rights movement. Later, Black Pride, the sexual revolution, the awakening of the feminist movement, gay rights, and the environmental awareness. There was an awareness of various levels of consciousness itself, and a resulting experimentation with these levels, through meditation, mind-altering music, but mostly sacramental herbs and other psychoactive drugs. Throughout this rare moment in time was a confluence of music, which underscored, gave a collective voice to this longing for belonging to a universal family that had a social justice, brother/sisterhood, and a vision of peace by any means necessary (again, shades of the utopian idealism of Uranus wed to the death-dealing transformer Pluto).
Assassins and big business teamed up to give us the military industries version of a profiteers ideological war on Vietnam. The CIA was responsible for US complicity in the little known holocaust of communists and so-called communist sympathizers totalling 3/4 of a million people in the nation of Indonesia. It was open season on leaders who inspired further revolutionary thinking and action. The Funk gathered momentum as a definitive music of protest that revolved around critical social issues. Most importantly, the potent combination of Uranus Pluto conjunction, affirmed by Funk's Rhythm of the One, compelled an era of hope and promise, rage and revolution to create a change for an egalitarian and humankind-ly home. People came together for a common purpose, to stand together as midwives at the crowning moment, throughout the labored torment and triumph of parthogenesis, collectively dreaming-conjuring-birthing a world order into existence. The counterculture ground forces swelled in tribal gatherings, a show of strength and solidarity. Arguably, some of these ideals of these various movements came to be realized, many are still being incubated and some were aborted altogether. And the Funk was the groove that drove that point home.
<<A full-fledged cultural insurrection was at hand. An awakening consciousness of humankind's responsibility to one another, to the earth, to a spiritualized existence that honored and lived in accordance with the anima mundi (en-souled world) was more than an ideology of the few. >> Music of Trance-Send-Dance
Funk strums the ethereal aorta. It has a way of extending between every person through a sonic thrust and the not-so-subtle thump and provides transportive transcendence. It is a conscious means of feeling turned on, and to borrow from horseperson's parlance, of riding that soulful, funked-out vibe hard and being put away wet. The music is co-axial movement -- earthbound and skywards simultaneously. The multi-layered polyrhythms and bottom-heavy syncopations induce deep trance states. The Funk articulates a kinetic epiphany, a crescendoed awareness of oneself connected to the whole. The mytho-poetic dynamism of the Uranus and Pluto factors into the dance as well. These two gods ruled from the spheres of heaven and earth: Uranus/ Ouranos, the traditional skygod and Pluto/ Hades, the traditional underworld god. There are few other forms of music where I can feel that by getting down with the thump with my hips, feet, and thighs becoming one with the groove --I am released, liberated, and transported skywards -- deliverance through soul ecstacy. The image of the Egyptian goddess Nuit comes to mind. Her feet and hands are rooted in the earth while her azure, star-spangled body arches skywards, tapping terrestrial and cosmic energy currents, governing infinite space and time. Writer LeRoi Jones wrote;"The energy released (by the Funk) . . .is one where everybody is on a trip. That is, they visit another place. . . .But dig, not only is it a place where black people live, it is a place, in the spiritual precincts of its emotional telling, where black people move in almost absolute
openness and strength."Funk hits a groove and we are moved out beyond it, there is not one more limb available to flail or gyrate.You find yourself down inside that very nastay groove and time collapses, flying across a speedbump in the stratosphere of origins unknown. As George stated so succinctly -- Free your mind and your ass will follow (George Clinton & Parliament/ Funkadelic).
Aftermath
Oh say yeah . . . can you testify to the consuming crush, the bottom portion of the wave gathering momentum before it rises up and rolls onto an inevitable home. The transpersonal planetary alignment of Uranus and Pluto broke on the shore of human consciousness. A torch ignited an impassioned chaos, madness, reverie, and dismemberment (the maenad's re-visitation ) of the social fabric of that era. What survived was an indefatigable joy, specifically a joy born of a common struggle for justice. There was the aperture, a looking glass moment to know the possibility of soul communion with others in a community of like-minded people. For that burning season, a moment of radical transformation devastated and subsequently consecrated a new age -- and there was a divinity, a jusitice in it. The music of that time was a binding agent that united that front, and each one of us to one another. The Funk continues to deliver on that original promise -- alive in second and third generations of funk players, positive rap, hip-hop, acid jazz and all the varied permutations that have filtered down from the source over the last three decades. The Funk engenders camaraderie -- to dance alive and join in what has been my favorite expression of solidarity, translated from the Spanish -- "the tenderness underneath" fostering soulful brother and sisterhood that shapes the politic of resistance, engendering a feeling of kinship coalescence, extending to the larger whole of humanity, for the earth and all the wilderness, wild creatures. So, the very next time you have the good fortune to listen to James Brown deadly medley, "It's a Mans, Mans, Mans World" and "Get Up, Get Into It, and Get involved," or Curtis Mayfield's rapturous, "Don't Worry, if There's a Hell Below, We are All Gonna Go," take the opportunity to get on the train and funk yall.++
_________________________________Bibliography
Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality (1963)
Rickey Vincent, Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One (1996)
Carolyn Casey, Making the Gods Work for You, (1998)May Horoscope | Taurus Thunder | How To Be Your Own Lover | What's New About Planet Waves Digital Media
