Reply With QuoteThose are clips from a documentary that aired back in the mid 90s in the US, if I recall correctly. I forget the name of it. It might have been part of the History of Rock and Roll series.
Disco Funk
Acetate [Level 1]
Some interesting videos about Funk and how it relates to disco.It's in japanese but the artists/music is in English.
pt 1)
^^start at about 2:00 mins in.About 3:40 in Fred Wesley basically says that Disco is Funk with a bow tie,which is his way of saying they watered the Funk down to get on white radio
pt 2)
^^about 2:50 mins in you get George Clintons take on disco
Platinum Record [Level 8]
Those are clips from a documentary that aired back in the mid 90s in the US, if I recall correctly. I forget the name of it. It might have been part of the History of Rock and Roll series.
Disco Funk
Indie Release [Level 4]
Very interesting. Thanks so much for your letting me know the nice video. Japanese narration and subtitles were helpful to me.:icon_smile:
Double Platinum Record [Level 9]
These are well worth watching . :icon_cool:Originally Written by FunkMaster
I think you're misrepresenting Wesley's bow tie comment though. Putting on a bow tie has nothing to do with being more white and everything to do with being more classy .
It can be done by any one of any color.:icon_cool:
Fred Wesley's full comment was " The Gamble and Huff style put a bow tie on the funk . It made it more elegant"
I agree with that ..... by putting a thirty piece orchestra behind it, disco took funk and kicked it up a few notches (as opposed to watering it down) ... taking it uptown ....
:icon_biggrin::icon_cool:
******
Last edited by remicks; December 1st, 2007 at 11:16 AM.
Baby, take me
high upon a hillside
high up where the stallion
meets the sun
Acetate [Level 1]
I don't think so for the simple fact that right before that,one guy mentions how funk music really didn't get played on white radio because white stations only played white music (pop and rock).The next guy then says that Gamble and Huff kept the Funk but made it "sweeter".I don't know if you're aware of this but in Jazz and Soul music,to make the music "sweeter" is/was a code for saying to make the music appeal to more whites by making it lush and sweet
An old comparison would be Charlie Parker's Bebop when they watered it down with strings to get more play in the white market..
Watered Down Bop Destroying, Jazz By John S. Wilson
Fred Wesley..the bow tie thing was his way of politely saying that they watered the raw Funk sound down.'s full comment was " The Gamble and Huff style put a bow tie on the funk . It made it more elegant"
I agree with that ..... by putting a thirty piece orchestra behind it, disco took funk and kicked it up a few notches (as opposed to watering it down) ... taking it uptown ....
Last edited by FunkMaster; December 1st, 2007 at 02:21 PM.
Indie Release [Level 4]
oh yeah! i saw that on youtube some time ago. Now i re-watch it i understand many more things!!! maybe because i still didn't know who leon and keneth were even loving so much their sound.
In the first part you put here appear diferent bands that i like so much...i mean that i LOVE Ohio players! and kool and the gang at that period! funk in that time was so HOT!!! my very favourite pieces of funk are from that time! oh yeah!!! and i'm a BIG FAN of GEORGE CLINTON and all his bands and musicians! i really mean i love P-FUNK to DEATH!!! parliament and funkadelic my favorite bands on the top forever!!!!
but sometimes it is so difficult to me to understand why i love so much FUNK and also DISCO, which looks as a contradictory thing! you just have to hear George (oh, he makes me feel bad for being a Disco lover). Ok, i recognize Disco music went to the easy commercial way (like all kinds of music! and more if they'r an explosion like this!), and he tryed to contra-attack that music, and makes me have an internal fight for loving both (separate and together).
I'm always on theside of music with soul and for most of the musicians disco looks like an empty thing (even if they have done disco too), or that's the feeling i get when i hear them talk about it. Why disco music isn't respected as other genres that had "died" : for example, theese are not the days of the funk highlights but everybody respect it and admires it as the "mother" of many other genres (just like what jazz looks to me) but disco music is considered something cheese, as a "bastard son" of the Funk. People is not used to hear those violins, What's the problem with it? and why i have to love it like this!?
sorry if i extended too much but i hope you get the idea of what i mean. I wanted to tell you my feelings and doubts about it some time ago. thanx for reading!:icon_biggrin:
Platinum Record [Level 8]
I don't think he was saying it as a put down. The philly guys, while essentially creating the blueprint for disco, were also very funky. There's a CD compilation out there called Muthafunkinsonsofbitches or something like that (it's got MFSB on the cover) and it's by Funkadelphia and features some awesome slices of funk by baker harris young, et al. Earl Young's Philly drums were sampled from various tracks like Get Me Back On Time by Wilson Pickett; Chinese Chicken by Duke Williams; and Give The People What They Want by The OJays. The last half of Love Is The Message, a track recorded in '73 by MFSB, features some great funky disco grooves. Granted, the philly sound was somewhat formulaic, but not in a bad way. It was just that all of the musicians, writers and producers had worked with each other for so long they had a common sound, which was a mixture of funk and jazz, with a bit of blues and latin.
Here's Chinese Chicken (I hope the link works):
Chinese Chicken
Disco Funk
Double Platinum Record [Level 9]
******
well ... only if you think "more elegant' means "watered down" .
The next commentator after the "elegant/ bow-tie " one in this documentary goes on to say :
Gamble and Huff's music came with really strong sing-along melodies and the lush treatment , this step beyond with the full orchestration really took it to a new dimension , took R&B to a new dimension.
I agree with his "step beyond" and " new dimension" "assessments... I submit that disco is not about watering down any sound ... but about embellishing and elaborating and building upon several including funk.
one other point ... in the AM radio days of the early seventies I am not familiar with any Top 40 stations that played only white music/ white acts and there were commonly many many high charting funk songs on the corresponding Billboard Hot 100 so I don't know how they derived this assertion .....
*****
Last edited by remicks; December 2nd, 2007 at 05:04 AM.
Baby, take me
high upon a hillside
high up where the stallion
meets the sun
Acetate [Level 1]
Here goes that clip in English.It's pretty much clear as day that they're saying Disco music is a watered down/poppy version of Funk
Check this video where Gloria Gaynor basically says that the Disco sound/beat was created to appeal to mainstream because soul/funk grooves were too complex for white americans to dance to.It also has some of the Rocker backlash against disco
Double Platinum Record [Level 9]
I share your feeling remicks. I try and take these artist commentary with a grain of salt.
I remember an interview with John Barry, the guy who did the music for James Bond. He talked about how much Shirley Bassey hated the Goldfinger theme. Needless to say, it became her claim to fame.
The artist may view a music in a certain light in at conception but the public reaction may be entirely different.
I guess what I'm saying is if disco music was reworked funk to please a white audience then it far exceeded it's expectations.
Find them and destroy them!
Platinum Record [Level 8]
I don't understand why some of these artists were so down on disco, and the fact that it was soul and funk turned into a more accessible pop sound. I mean, they don't bash Motown music, and it totally was geared towards crossover audiences. And when they bash disco as being monotonous and repetitive, they don't attack James Brown or reggae music, which could also be accused of the same problem.
In the end, they just have to realize that we are all consumers. We consume whatever makes us feel good for the moment. So when we are introduced to something we like, we eat it up like there's no tomorrow. What we used to like before is no longer relevant because we'd moved on with our new tastes. Eventually, we get tired of that, and we might move on to newer things, or go back to the old stuff we used to enjoy. Disco music was the new flavour because it was important for that moment, and good old rock and roll was no longer relevant. The people who couldn't adapt just became bitter because they couldn't make money the way they used to. Nevermind the people they put out of business when THEIR music was the top selling flavour of the day. So I really wouldn't get too defensive over the people who bash or bashed disco back in the day because in the end, they are kind of hypocritical.
Disco Funk
Acetate [Level 1]
Most people that I see bash Disco think it was too poppy and many others complain about being produced on machines although that wasn't true for all Disco music.
Platinum Record [Level 8]
True. People tend to stereotype and paint everything with the same brush when they don't like something. I still have to wonder though if it didn't just boil down to either not being able to make money in their genre of music (in the case of rock artists) or feeling marginalized and not 'cool' (as in fans of rock music), unlike during the previous two decades when rock & roll dominated and R&B/dance was trying to get a better market share in the music industry. I do agree though that by the late 70s, the genre had gone a little stale with the over-saturation of repetitive cookie-cutter type grooves. That's why my collection is either heavy on Philly or heavy on stuff from '77 and earlier. Everyone seemed to lose their ballsyness by the late 70s. Music from great funk and R&B disco producers like Van McCoy and Warren Schatz (sorry Warren, nothing personal) seemed to move over to more generic pop sounds with their late 70s projects.
Disco Funk
Chart Hit [Level 6]
I don't think that those artists say something actually very relevant :) They just express their feeling of the moment but the concepts they seem to use are rather blurry.
What are white music and white market? I understand it's an important notion in the debate but from the outside it's not clear.
What makes disco «white music»? Strings are white instruments?? A guitar is on the white or the black side??? What is the limit between white and black music? For instance B. Edwards and Nile Rodgers make white music when they produce Carly Simon, Madonna or Rod Stewart and black music when they produce Diana Ross, Nona Hendryx or Al Jarreau?
I always heard this accusation of black acts whitening their sound -more or less Motown acts- but never understood why they had to face that.
Why disco as «funk with a bow tie», a definition that seems by itself rather elegant, would mean «whitened funk» when some big sellers of the disco era were black, like Chic, Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, Amii Stewart or Thelma Houston? And what is the colour of Lipps Inc.? Look at Lorraine Johnson: a white model poses on the sleeve of her lp «Learning to dance all over again», reason why many thought Johnson was a white singer when she's in fact black. And where is the colour line separating France Joli's music from Freddie James's music? In 2008, Whitney Houston, Anastacia, Eric Clapton, Madonna, Justin Timberlake etc. white? black? Michael Jackson?
It's all rock music (when it means all popular music genres born in the US).
That is not even specific to rock: when I listen to Ella Fitzgerald produced by Norman Granz singing Cole Porter, it's black music or white music?
As for the radio I was surprised that the concepts of white and black radios existed. When I used to go to NY in the 90s I listened to Kiss FM and now I wonder if it is a black or a white radio...
Actually, music in the US is much more integrated than the concepts still used by many people (what Nelson George says more or less in «The Death of Rhythm and Blues», but in a different way). With just the judgement provided by our two ears, it's quite impossible to tell the colour of the singer. I don't quite understand why the black/white separation is still used when we talk about rock music when it's not effective in the world of classical music since decades: Leontyne Price would sing black music just because she's a black woman?
Test Pressing [Level 2]
There is indeed difference between "black" and "white" music.
But it isn't anything you can easily describe in technical terms...
In fact it is all about FEELING of music. How would you describe funkiness?
Soulfulness? It is like a dish which comes alive with just right proportions of right spices... It really doesn't matter if singer is "black"(or latin or mestizo...). It's all about emotions and groove which flows out of the song. There are no "white" or "black" instruments. The black music feels "warm" against white music which sounds "cold" or "colder" ( not necessary in the negative sense...). The Rock music is often described as agressive - the same as their club counterpart Techno. This is also one of reasons why Disco was dissed from Rock establishment - because of having that emotional non macho feeling which was always stamped with "feminine" mark.:icon_lol:
Acetate [Level 1]
By the way,there were many black Motown artists were saying that Bary Gordy (sp) wanted to make music where it would cross all lines and this why the classic Motown stuff wasn't pure hardcore Soul music like Stax records.
Double Platinum Record [Level 9]
:icon_confused::icon_confused::icon_rolleyes:
I doubt STAX lost any sleep with concerns that their records maintain a certain sound that wouldn't escape certain markets and suffer the terrible fate of crossing over.:icon_mrgreen:
Have you checked out the folks behind that great "pure hardcore Soul music" that came out of the Stax studios FM ?? Lotsa white folk there at all levels involved in creating that sound . Much more than Motown if we're comparing the two. It's a curious thing really ...
*****
Baby, take me
high upon a hillside
high up where the stallion
meets the sun
Acetate [Level 1]
Well obviously the people at Stax weren't going to lose sleep if the music they made eventually reached larger audiences but that's not the point.The point is that they never intentionally polished or watered down the sound to reach the masses.Stax left in the pure raw churchiness/funk that Motown looked to somewhat minimize for commercial reasons.The "polish" factor in Motown Soul is the same thing Fred Wesley is talking about when he talks about Gamble & Huff in regards to Funk-->Disco.Of course,Motown didn't overdo the watering down because most of their songs still keep the Black Gospel influence in the music.
Check out this quick video where they mention a little about this Motown/Stax difference..
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