Funk: Black Dance Music in the Age of Liberation

Undergraduate

This survey course race the development of funk , the dominant style of African-American popular dance music during the period roughly spanning 1965 to 1985. The chronologically organized survey begins in 1965 (with the music created by James Brown, his musicians, and his arrangers), continues through the late 1960s and 1970s (surveying the reciprocal influence of funk upon other American popular musics and world musics), and concludes in the early 1980s with the rise of hip-hop. Throughout the semester, we place the music at the epicenter of various concurrent social, political, economic forces, and technological forces: Civil Rights, desegregation and integration, Black Power, cultural nationalism, pan-Africanism, de-industrialization, urban decay, and the rise of “information society.” Assigned readings and listenings are augmented by out-of-class film and video viewings. HU TTh 11:35am-12:50pm