Featuring explosive performances by James Brown, Parliament Funkadelic, Fela Kuti, Labelle, and many others, Stanley Nelson’s syncopated history of the worldwide cultural phenomenon is of a piece with all his films, among them Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution and Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, interrogating the intersection between culture and politics. Tracing the roots of this underappreciated music genre to West Africa and American folk, gospel, and jazz, and quite significantly to the Black Power movement, Nelson finds a powerful strain of Black independence that sets funk apart from more assimilationist traditions like doo-wop and Motown soul. Indeed, had it not been for funk’s infectiously danceable, bass-driven rhythms and intricate chord changes—to say nothing of the spellbindingly sweat-inducing, occasionally even otherworldly onstage presence of a George Clinton or a Sly Stone—we may well not have had Prince, David Byrne, Rakim, or entire musical movements since.
