“Make It Funky”: Funk, Live Performance, and the Concept “Genre Works”

Abstract

In the summer of 1971, James Brown and his band went into Rodel Studios in Washington, D.C., and recorded a jam session that resulted in a track entitled “Make It Funky.” The track opens with an exchange between Bobby Byrd, who asks Brown what he plans to play, to which Brown replies that he does not know, but whatever he plays, “it’s got to be funky!” After counting off three beats, Brown and members of the band enter on beat 4 chanting the phrase “make it funky” before the entire band enters on the following downbeat with short horns stabs, a “scratch” guitar line, and what had by this time become Brown’s signature rhythmically dense funk. As the song progresses in a way that feels almost like a live performance, multiple musicians are featured in brief solo sections, and Brown himself interjects lyrics that mention what is considered “traditional” Black southern fare, including grits and gravy, cornbread, and buttermilk. This brief description of Brown’s track highlights many salient aspects of Black popular music in the late 1960s and 1970s, a time period commonly referred to as the post–civil rights era. The evocation of Black southern fare suggests Brown’s roots in South Carolina and Georgia and serves as a reminder of the musical and cultural traditions from which he emerged. At the same time, however, by the 1970s his image and status as a bandleader—as a domineering and athletic performer— helped popularize funk, a form of Black popular music that emphasizes bodily movement, sexuality, and the physicality that both engender.