Prince of Darkness Wrote:
I don't, although I took more umbrage at "all modern music".
How are you going to define funk? Who would you say is the father of funk, or the progenitors of funk?
Who would those progenitors list as influences?
It's not like funk, or any genre of music for that matter, just magically appears, completely uninformed of any music before it.
And why do some white people feel guilty about their contributions to music, or their enjoyment of music that they FEEL doesn't belong to them? And why do some black (or other ethnic groups) FEEL that the music DOES belong to them and yet gladly take the paycheck from consumers who most assuredly are not completely black?
We ought to be so far past this. You think motown would have had it's golden era if it didn't borrow from jazz sidemen of all ethnicities, string parts inspired by Phil Spector, hits written by the black team of Holland/Dozier/Holland AND the white jewish team of Goffin/King? What about Gershwin? He melded Jazz, classical AND pop when everyone told him he was sick in the head. Of course, he did die at an early age of that unfortunate brain tumor.
My point is that there's good music, which is informed by other good music. Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, and others adored The Beatles, who adored Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson, and it's all a big circle.
It's diatonic 12-tone harmony, and in 4/4 you've only got so many divisions/combinations of basic beats, and if you think funk arranged them in a novel way that had never been dreamt of before, because they used syncopation or hemiolas, classical music did it first, but it's big picture vs. little picture, and both are valid.
So if you want to say black people invented funk, you go ahead. I'm gonna disagree.
i mean, you're right. you have the facts.
honestly, when i typed "modern music" iseriously thought about editing it outbecause i know that's wrong. that was just some ofthat hyperbole i like touse todiminish the accomplishments of whitey.