This year’s Charles Seeger Lecture will be presented by George Clinton on Saturday, November 9th, 2019, during the 64th Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Bloomington, Indiana. Clinton, the longtime front man of and mastermind behind two legendary funk bands that transformed the landscape of modern music, Parliament and Funkadelic, ranks alongside James Brown as the most sampled musical artist of all time. His funk innovations and carnivalesque theatricality have spawned a legacy of influence extending from Prince and De La Soul to Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar.
Clinton was born in Kannapolis, North Carolina, in 1941. He formed his first group, a doo-wop unit called The Parliaments, during his early teen years in Plainfield, New Jersey. The group rehearsed in the back room of a local barbershop that young George worked at as a part-time hairdresser.
By the mid-1960s, Clinton had moved on to Detroit, where he became a staff songwriter and producer for Motown. Motown’s “assembly line of sound” approach inspired his gradual formation of a collective of over fifty musicians, with whom he collaborated in myriad configurations to create the bedrock 1970s discographies and touring bands of both Parliament and Funkadelic.
According to georgeclinton.com, the official website of Mr. Clinton, “While Funkadelic pursued band-format psychedelic rock, Parliament engaged in a funk free-for-all, blending influences from the godfathers (James Brown and Sly Stone) with freaky costumes and themes inspired by ’60s acid culture and science fiction” to deliver “the most dazzling, extravagant live show in the business.” And in “an era when Philly soul continued the slick sounds of establishment-approved R&B, Parliament/Funkadelic scared off more white listeners than it courted” (https://georgeclinton.com/bio/).
Clinton’s was a revolutionary vision that twisted soul music into funk under the influence of a plethora of artists ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Frank Zappa. And that vision paid dividends as “the Parliament/Funkadelic machine ruled black music during the 1970s” (ibid.), with more than forty R&B hit singles (including three topping the charts at #1) and three platinum albums: One Nation Under a Groove, Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome, and Uncle Jam Wants You.
In 1982, Clinton released the hit album Computer Games under his own name on Capitol Records. The album yielded the iconic single “Atomic Dog.” He toured and recorded widely during the 1980s with the P-Funk All-Stars, but that decade’s disdain for all things identified with the 1970s (most especially disco), combined with Clinton’s own legal troubles and widely publicized battles with drug addiction, dragged him down together with his entire empire of funk.
The 1990s were kinder to Clinton, as he was lionized by the creators of the new funk-inspired rap styles of Digital Underground and Dr. Dre, as well as by funk rock groups such as Primus and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Through the 2000s to the present, his stature as one of the great American musical artists and popular culture icons of his time has been cemented. From the Mothership to the rainbow dreads to the hits that have both defined generations and spanned across them—“Flashlight,” “We Want the Funk,” “Chocolate City,” “Dr. Funkenstein,” and so many more—George Clinton has funkified our sonic/sensory universe with purpose, power, and profundity. For his contributions he has garnered much recognition: an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music, induction of Parliament/Funkadelic into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a Grammy Award, an MTV Music Award, and lifetime achievement awards from the Grammys, ASCAP, BMI, the NAACP Image Awards, and the Motown Alumni Association.
And the funk goes on. After touring the world almost incessantly over the course of a performing career encompassing more than six decades, George Clinton has finally decided to retire from the road and is on his farewell tour. But the composing, the recording, the producing, the appearances in movies, on TV shows, and in ads for Apple, Nike, and more—these projects will continue. 2018 saw the release of the first new Parliament album in 38 years, Medicaid Fraud Dogg, and in the offing for 2019 is both a follow-up album, One Nation Under Sedation, and an EP featuring two Clinton classics, “Atomic Dog” and “Funkentelechy,” in new arrangements that feature the Florida State University Balinese gamelan and Omnimusica intercultural ensemble.
It’s not just one nation under a groove anymore. Thanks to George Clinton, it’s the whole planet, so who better to speak truth to a bunch of ethnomusicologists than Dr. Funkenstein himself. Join us in Bloomington. We’ll bring the funk!
- Michael Bakan
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