Soul and Funk at the Keyboard

Abstract This chapter explores embodied gesture and agency in soul and funk music, focusing on keyboard-based songs by Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and Stevie Wonder. The study traces elements of African American gospel style that shape approaches in singing and keyboard playing while also providing a rhetorical approach that contributes to the staging of virtual agency, showing how keyboard-based soul and funk emerged as an artistic platform capable of staging virtual locations of autonomy and creativity. Ray Charles’s R&B breakthrough hit from 1959, “What’d I Say” provides an exemplar as a precursor to keyboard-based funk. The study then examines Aretha Franklin’s creative strategies as singer, songwriter, and pianist, particularly in her Atlantic recordings with Muscle Shoals musicians. Turning to the music of Stevie Wonder, the study focuses on his songs with clavinet, a keyboard instrument that Wonder utilized in developing a unique performance approach and definitive signature sound.