REBECCA BAUGH
WE GOT THE FUNK Image 1: The emphasis was on dancing
Image 2: The crowd were originally predominantly black, but as time went by, it became increasingly multicultural.
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Dedicated to my beloved Grandparents, Mavis and Fred This is a title of a major 70s hit created by Positive Force. This article explores the funk scene in London during its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s. Inquiring into the cultural significance of funk, how it was represented in fashion and how the sociopolitical context was reflected in the spaces in which it was celebrated. Afterall, design does not exist in a vacuum. Interviews with Fitzroy Facey, a DJ and current editor and director of the Soul Survivors Magazine, Barrie Sharpe, a creative extraordinaire (DJ, designer, musician, and author), and Karen Herron, a dancer and partygoer during the 1970s and 80s shed light onto the topic.
First, however, we have to go back in time, back to London just after World War II in 1948. Britain was short of workers who were needed to rebuild the UK’s weakened economy as a result of the war years. Many of these workers, who were invited from former British colonies in the Caribbean, were employed in the public transport sector or in the newly established National Health Service. Both were salient in the reconstruction plans for the country. Nevertheless, newly arrived immigrants were met with hostility founded on deep-rooted prejudice. They faced racism on a daily basis, an example of which is presented in their search to find housing when several landlords posted signs reading, “No dogs, no blacks, no Irish”. Members of this group of migrants, known as the Windrush generation, were ostracised from white British culture and society. Nonetheless, this lead to development of closely-knit communities throughout Britain. They would come together at parties, listening to reggae music in church and town halls, and each other’s homes to feel a sense of belonging in a place where they were repeatedly spurned. Fast-forward a few years later to the early to mid-1970s, and a new wave of music, headlined by the undisputed king of the genre, the great James Brown, has captured the attention of many children of the Windrush generation, welcoming funk into Britain. It offered a new, looser alternative to the already popular reggae. Funk has been described as a platform in which listeners are inspired to form a connection with ourselves, those around us and the earth and our environment. These are all themes that artists, such as James Brown, wanted to translate into their music. Funk music could sometimes be about the ‘get down’, sometimes it was about the struggle, and sometimes it was simultaneously about both. Nonetheless, it presented an instance of Man.
