Psychedelic funk
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Psychedelic funk (or funkadelia) is a music genre that combines funk music with elements of psychedelia. It was pioneered in the late 1960s by acts like Sly and the Family Stone and George Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic collective, and would influence later artists such as Prince, Miles Davis, and Talking Heads.
History
Following the late 1960s work of Jimi Hendrix, psychedelia began to have a widespread impact on African American musicians. Black funk artists such as Sly and the Family Stone borrowed techniques from psychedelic rock music, including wah pedals, fuzz boxes, echo chambers, and vocal distorters, as well as elements of blues rock and jazz. In the following years, groups such as Parliament-Funkadelic continued this sensibility, employing synthesizers and rock-oriented guitar work into open-ended funk jams. Producer Norman Whitfield would draw on this sound on popular Motown recordings such as The Temptations' "Cloud Nine" and Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine."
Subsequent artists would be influenced by the style including Prince. In the early 1970s, jazz artists such as Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock combined elements of psychedelic funk with urban jazz to pioneer jazz fusion. Influenced by George Clinton, new wave band Talking Heads explored psychedelic funk in collaboration with producer Brian Eno on a trilogy of acclaimed albums in the late 1970s. In recent years, examples of psychedelic funk from world music scenes have been collected on compilations issued on the World Psychedelic Funk Classics (World Psychedelic Classics, Vol. 3: Love's a Real Thing) label.
See also
