Blue Funk

This chapter examines the development of funk as a distinct concept in black vernacular culture, and explains how blues artists, modern jazz musicians, and political attitudes during the civil rights movement combined to establish the foundation for the musical genre of funk as well as the non-conformist aesthetics and attitudes the music expressed. The central argument is therefore two-fold: that blues artists formulated the concept now known as funk, and that funk became the epistemic centerpiece of a broader cultural aesthetics in black working-class environments. As with the previous chapter, “Blue Funk: The Ugly Beauty of Stank ” foregrounds the central role of kinesthesia in blues-oriented approaches to music-making. Using insights and methods from multiple areas of scholarship, including musicology, ethnomusicology, philosophy, literary criticism, dance criticism, and art history, Bolden explains how the concept of funk and/or precepts associated with funk were not only exemplified in several black musical genres but also dancing, literature, and visual art as well. In this way, black artists working in several mediums contributed to the transformation of “funky” from a stigmatizing signification, that is, a negative, stereotypical expression into a metaphor of black cultural affirmation.