Who got da funk? An etymophony of funk music from the 1950s to 1979

The codification of music into categories of style or genre is an activity that fans, musicians, journalists, producers and academics engage in on a daily basis. Over the years a significant body of literature has been created theorising genre formations. While we are able to identify, understand and problematize general terms such as rock, jazz, funk, disco and metal, there has been relatively little musicological discourse to investigate the musical basis for this vocabulary. The consequence of the lack of musicological discourse is that genre formations are often created around personality, politics, fashion or socio-cultural activity rather than the sonic experience. Existing musicological discourse on genre suggests a hierarchical approach has developed which privileges writing on jazz and rock leaving 'minor' genres such as funk relatively ignored.

The aim of this thesis is to present an etymophony of funk which traces the development of the genre through an investigation of the sonic text. To facilitate the discussion I have created a conceptual framework for understanding the process of genre formation. The framework provides a basis for understanding how the network of intertextual musical relationships, within their socio-cultural context, act as points of departure for stylistic and genre formations. These stylistic formations are traced through musematic analysis of a representative body of works created around existing literature on funk.

The thesis begins by discussing the current literature and meanings that circulate around the music of funk. Once these preliminaries have been dealt with, the main body of the argument traces the development of funk from the 1950s until 1979. The thesis is subdivided into three distinct sections. The first section discusses the early formation of the genre from the 1950s until the end of the 1960s. The second section argues that between 1970 and 1974, intertextual ideas began to be redefined and a clear understanding of the genre emerged. The third section examines the diffusion of funk styles through the mid to late 1970s as musicians formed other traditions and began to experiment with stylistic characteristics of funk with some of these acting as a point of departure for new stylistic formations such as disco.

I argue that without musicological investigation of the sonic text, descriptions of genre formation will continue to construct a mythological past around personality and socio-cultural constructs that have little relation to the complexity of the intertextual process. I will argue that an etymphonic investigation of this kind invites us to re-examine the often neglected contribution made by individual musicians and the social framework that sustains music making. Finally, I suggest that if we are to understand the meanings that circulate around terms like funk, we must investigate primary sources by foregrounding the sonic text. It is only by undertaking scholarly activity of this kind that we will be able to critique essentialist and ideological genre formations and gain a clearer understanding of our musical world.

Keywords. Etymophony, semiotics, museme, funk, groove, feel, Musicology, analysis, style, genre.