Parliament Funkedelic

Welcome to station W-E-F-U-N-K, better known as We-Funk

Or deeper still, the Mothership Connection

Home of the extraterrestrial brothers

Dealers of funky music

P.Funk, uncut funk, the bomb

Funk as a synonym for truth to be sought out and held onto tightly. Much of the narrative built by the genius of George Clinton, founder of the Parliament and Funkadelic projects (later merged into the P-Funk collective), stems from this cornerstone. This key term, besides being shorthand for Parliament-Funkadelic and for "pure-funk", gathers under a single banner all the artists linked to Clinton's creations and their parallel outfits, including Bootsy's Rubber Band and the Horny Horns, outlining a psychedelic funk born out of Hendrix's rock, soul and doo-wop, wrapped in surreal aesthetics and concepts that fold together the psychedelia of the late Sixties and early Seventies with Afrofuturism.

The first-ever platinum record for any of Clinton's groups, "Mothership Connection" stands as the actual starting point of the P-Funk mythology (or "funkology"), after a series of seeds had already been planted by earlier works. It's 1975: George had recently revived Parliament, releasing "Up For The Down Stroke" and "Chocolate City" with them, staying in more danceable territory compared to the heavier, acid- and psych-leaning ground of Funkadelic, and in the process developing the idea of pushing toward a more conceptual work. The underlying inspiration drew on perfectly balanced records like the Who's "Tommy" and the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", James Brown-style rhythms and street slang, blending them with the sci-fi scenarios the artist had always loved and a hefty dose of politics, with an eye on the Nation of Islam movement and the revolutionary spirit of the Black Panthers. Funk music, and the imagery the group built around it, thus became the critical voice of a counterculture, reacting to the increasingly tense urban landscape of the Seventies, where African-American communities found themselves confronting the end of the optimism of the civil rights era; a clear-cut response to the American police state.

The record features numerous collaborators, some of them longtime associates, such as bassist Bootsy Collins, keyboard and synth arsenal man Bernie Worrell, guitarists Gary Shider and Glenn Goins, and percussionist Jerome Brailey, alongside others working with Parliament for the first time, namely saxophonist Maceo Parker and trombonist Fred Wesley, both coming from the ranks of the J.B.'s, James Brown's backing band.

The narrative of the surreal funk epic takes shape with the introductory spoken word of “P. Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up)”, enriched by darting call-and-response exchanges between horns and synthesizers, evoking the opening of episodes from the sci-fi TV series “The Outer Limits”. Clinton takes on the guise of DJ Lollipop Man (or The Long-Haired Sucker), a character modeled on early Black radio deejays, broadcasting from his own invented radio station “We-Funk”, busy explaining to his listeners that they're about to witness a special, unexpected show. The inspiration to create a personal radio station stemmed from the record industry's behavior in the Seventies, which, while busy promoting soul and disco, ended up discarding funk tracks — including, of course, those by Parliament and Funkadelic, deemed to have less commercial appeal. Next, we board the dance mothership of “Mothership Connection (Star Child)”, envisioned as a Cadillac ready to speed off and depicted on the album cover, amid lyrics that recall the traditional spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and interweave psych-soul and jazz-funk.

You’ve got all that is really needed

To save a dying world from its funklessness

The irresistible groove of the rhythm section and the choruses of “Unfunky UFO”, a rhythm-and-blues-inflected track that puts Glenn Goins in the lead vocalist role, encourage the listener to find the funk to enrich their own life while also carrying forward the story set up by the concept album, with the arrival of a group of aliens searching for “funk to buy”.

The new forms of language in “Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication (The Bumps Bump)” glide between spacey keyboards and synths, the true stars of the show, and repetitive mantras, a manifesto for the so-called “mothership”, before handing the mic back to Goins — this time joined by Shider — on the shorter, r&b-rooted “Handcuffs”.

We want the funk

Give up the funk

We need the funk

We gotta have that funk

The alien invasion, triggered by desperation over the unavailability of funk, reaches its peak with the choral, cosmic, and irresistible “Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)”, a little gem introduced by Ray Davis's voice and credited to Collins-Clinton-Brailey, later sampled and interpolated by a staggering number of artists, including Temptations, Public Enemy and Kendrick Lamar. Though seemingly harmless given its danceable sound, the song's theme can be read as a metaphor for white oppression of the Black community, in relation to the marginalization of funk music. The closing track, driven by Bootsy's solid bassline, is left to the onomatopoeic “Night Of The Thumpasorus Peoples”, in which the blaring horn parts are gradually overtaken and transformed into liquid synths. It's here that the “Thumpasorus” are named for the first time, later reappearing in subsequent works of P-Funk mythology.

Behind the irony, the irresistible rhythms, and the iconic imagery packed into George Clinton's Parliament on the Afrofuturist landmark “Mothership Connection” lies much more, starting with political and social themes that amount, on one hand, to a genuine call to action, and on the other, to symbols charged with an almost spiritual value, through the creation of a brand-new language addressed to the African American community; all this without forgetting a vast musical and cultural legacy extending to hip-hop, jazz, rock, dance, techno and post-punk, reaching all the way to the present day.

Ride the wave of great music

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05/11/2023