A new Independent Lens PBS documentary titled WE WANT THE FUNK! explores the lifespan of funk and its continuing cultural influence.The film explores funk’s early roots in jazz and soul, touching on trailblazers like James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, and George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic. It also examines how funk became a form of joyful resistance to the racial and political repression of the time. WE WANT THE FUNK! premieres April 8 and will be available to stream on PBS, PBS app and YouTube.
Among the topics explored in WE WANT THE FUNK! are the music’s relationship with gospel, Black expression, and the impact of TV dance shows like Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, which ran from 1956 to 1989 and increased the visibility of pop music and dance moves for a national audience. The movie also explores funk’s impact on different genres, from Afrobeat to hip-hop to new wave, and features interviews with P-Funk’s George Clinton, gospel artist Kirk Franklin, The Roots’ Questlove, guitarist and David Bowie collaborator Carlos Alomar, former James Brown trombone player Fred Wesley, David Byrne of the Talking Heads, and Prince Paul, DJ and producer for De La Soul.
The film was directed and produced by the Emmy Award-winning filmmakers Stanley Nelson and Nicole London. “Funk music—and the larger aesthetic culture that surrounds it—is of course vital cultural history and it is important to look back at the historical record and the archival footage that tracks its wildly entertaining evolution,” Nelson wrote in an accompanying guide. “But funk is no cultural artifact. It is a living and breathing art form that continues to transcend the concepts of genre and of time itself. Now and forever funk is always going to fulfill its ultimate purpose for the people: to make us dance.”
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