Presence And Pleasure: The Funk Grooves Of James Brown And Parliament (music / Culture)

In this exploration of the funk groove and its unique sounds, author Anne Danielsen takes an in-depth look at this under-explored genre. Danielsen concentrates on the golden age of funk in the late 1960s and the 1970s, focusing on two of the era's artists who made a substantial impact on the landscape of popular music: James Brown and George Clinton/Parliament. Aiming to understand funk not only as objectified musical meaning but also as lived experience, she begins with the musical events themselves and draws on her experiences as both a fan and a scholar to capture how their particular organization creates the funk listener's pleasure. Danielsen further examines issues surrounding race in the construction and consumption of this music, focusing her study with how white listeners responded to funk in the 1970s, and arguing that African American music has remained a means of catharsis and of dealing with pleasures of the body. Funk's crossover to international success among listeners of pop and rock music affected both the music itself and audiences' understanding of it. Presence and Pleasure shows us how. What does it mean to be in the groove? Winner of the 2007 Irving Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music Winner of IASPM's 2007 International Book Award In this exploration of the funk groove and its unique sounds, author Anne Danielsen takes an in-depth look at this under-explored genre. Danielsen concentrates on the golden age of funk in the late 1960s and the 1970s, focusing on two of the era's artists who made a substantial impact on the landscape of popular James Brown and George Clinton/Parliament. Aiming to understand funk not only as objectified musical meaning but also as lived experience, she begins with the musical events themselves and draws on her experiences as both a fan and a scholar to capture how their particular organization creates the funk listener's pleasure. Danielsen further examines issues surrounding race in the construction and consumption of this music, focusing her study with how white listeners responded to funk in the 1970s, and arguing that African American music has remained a means of catharsis and of dealing with pleasures of the body. Funk's crossover to international success among listeners of pop and rock music affected both the music itself and audiences' understanding of it. Presence and Pleasure shows us how. In this exploration of the funk groove and its unique sounds, author Anne Danielsen takes and in-depth look at this underexplored genre. Danielsen concentrates on the golden age of funk in the late 1960s and the 1970s, focusing on two of the era's artists who made a substantial impact on the landscape of popular music: James Brown and George Clinton/Parliament. Aiming to understand funk not only as objectified musical meaning but also as lived experience, she begins with the musical events themselves and draws on her experiences as both a fan and a scholar to capture how their particular organization creates the funk listener's pleasure. Danielsen further examines issues surrounding race in the construction and consumption of this music, focusing her study on how white listeners responded to funk in the 1970s, and arguing that African American music has remained a means of catharsis and of dealing with pleasures of the body. Funk's crossover to international success among listeners of pop and rock music affected both the music itself and audiences' understanding of it Frontmatter Preface (page xi) Acknowledgments (page xiii) I. Black and/or White: Introductory Perspectives 1. Whose Funk? (page 3) 2. Two Discourses on Blackness (page 20) II A Brand New Bag: Analytical Investigations 3. A Fabric of Rhythm (page 43) 4. Rhythm and Counter-Rhythm (page 61) 5. "The Downbeat, in Anticipation" (page 73) III Funk in the Crossover Era 6. A Brand(ed) New Fad (page 95) 7. "Some Say It's Funk after Death" (page 113) IV "Once Upon a Time Called Now!": Temporalities and Experience 8. Time and Again (page 150) 9. Between Song and Groove (page 172) 10. Feeling, Intensity, and the Sublimity of the Event (page 192) 11. Presence and Pleasure (page 204) Notes (page 219) Bibliography (page 245) Index (page 253) Anne Danielsen. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 245-251) And Index.