The Funk Era and Beyond is the first scholarly collection to discuss the significance of funk music in America. Contributors employ a multitude of methodologies to examine this unique musical genre's relationship to African American culture and to music, literature, and visual art as a whole.PART I: PRELUDE FROM THE FUNKMASTER Sly Stone and the Sanctified Church; M. A. Neal PART II. INTRODUCTION Theorizing the Funk: An Introduction; T. Bolden PART III. INSIDE THE FUNK SHOP: WRITINGS ON THE FUNK BAND ERA A Philosophy of Funk: The Politics and Pleasure of a Parliafunkadelicment Thang!; A. Nathan Wright James Brown: Icon of Black Power; Rickey Vincent 'The Land of Funk': Dayton, Ohio; S. Brown From the Crib to the Coliseum: An Interview with Bootsy Collins; T. Sayers Ellis PART IV. IMPRESSIONS: FUNKATIVITY AND VISUAL ART Cane Fields, Blues Text-ure: An Improvisational; K. Ohnesorge Good Morning Blues; M. BryanShine2.0: Aaron McGruder's Huey Freeman as Contemporary Folk Hero; H. Rambsy II PART V. FUNKINTELECHY: (RE)COGNIZING BLACK WRITING Alabama; A. Nielsen Jazz Aesthetics and the Revision of Myth in Leon Forrest's There Is a Tree More Ancient than Eden; D. Williams Living the Funk: Lifestyle, Lyricism, and Lessons in; C. Phelps Modern and Contemporary Art of Black Women Cultural Memory in Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men ; O. Krouse Dismukes PART VI. IMAGINE THAT: FONKY BLUES ROCKIN AND ROLLIN Funkin' with Bach: The Impact of Professor Longhair on Rock'n'Roll; C. L. Keys Blue/Funk as Political Philosophy: The Poetry of Gil Scott-Heron; T. Bolden
'Paying homage to the ancestors (Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Professor Longhair), sitting at the feat of the elders (George Clinton, Sly Stone, James Brown) and welcoming a brand new generation of griots headed by funkmaster Aaron McGruder, The Funk Era and Beyond fills the largest remaining gap in the conversation on African-American music. Bolden's collection is theoretically sophisticated, endlessly provocatilҬ