Hip hop, new wave, techno, and house are inseparable from funk history – and any discussion of funk in the 1970s demands a conversation about Black liberation. Emmy winner and MacArthur Fellow Stanley Nelson and Grammy-nominated producer Nicole London have produced a full-length history.
The feature-length video is viewable worldwide, released via PBS, the viewer-supported public broadcaster from the USA. Here’s the embedded full-length film, also available on PBS’ site:
WE WANT THE FUNK! [PBS Independent Lens]
Don’t wait forever; it’s streaming through July 7.
From the opening licks on Marcus’ Miller’s bass, this is a story interwoven with the music. The co-director explains how they pieced this together to National Public Radio:
“We spent a lot of time in the edit room, because we had to kind of make up a story,” adds the co-director, an Emmy winner and National Humanities Medal recipient whose past work includes the PBS documentaries Freedom Riders and Miles Davis: The Birth of the Cool.
“When we did Miles Davis … he was born in a certain year, he picked up the trumpet in a certain year … so there was a story,” Nelson adds. “But with funk [we wondered] ‘what are we going to do?’ … We wanted it to be funky. We wanted it to reflect the funk.”
The timing is significant: as the current US administration works to erase Black identity, the contributions to the USA, and institutionalized oppression and inequality, knowing the history of funk is as essential as algebra.
As Black Enterprise writes about the documentary:
Funk was a genre of sonic color, a genre that crossed oceans, a genre rooted in radical joy and inclusivity. We Want The Funk! makes clear that Black art is not just expression — it’s liberation.
It’s worth reading their full interview with Nelson and London – I was thinking of pulling a quote but you really need the whole context:
From Bassline to Black Liberation: ‘We Want The Funk!’ Drops Truth Bombs In New Documentary
By the way, looking for this on PBS website, I came across this – a Swedish documentary. Might be a double feature here: