Taking Sides: Soul vs Funk

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It's so hard to choose. On the one hand, soul is more soulful, but on the other hand funk is more funky.

― man, Tuesday, 11 March 2003 22:15 (twenty-three years ago)

sunk

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 22:19 (twenty-three years ago)

Sly Stone to thread (cause he had the best of both worlds goin' on from '67-'73. Even JB's fusion wasn't as all-inclusive as Sly's).

― Charles McCain, Tuesday, 11 March 2003 22:22 (twenty-three years ago)

soul! funk is prog.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 22:26 (twenty-three years ago)

fritz that's totally backwards

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 22:27 (twenty-three years ago)

is not

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 22:28 (twenty-three years ago)

taking sides: "it's a man's world" vs. "sex machine"

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 22:38 (twenty-three years ago)

Soul has all the emotion - funk has all the boogie

Soul wins my heart

― mauve, Tuesday, 11 March 2003 22:39 (twenty-three years ago)

ah man funk has emotion too!

― hstencil, Tuesday, 11 March 2003 22:40 (twenty-three years ago)

soul to get her in bed, funk to keep her there

― oops (Oops), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 22:43 (twenty-three years ago)

what if she has to go pee pee?

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 22:46 (twenty-three years ago)

that will just make the bed funkier

― gaz (gaz), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 22:48 (twenty-three years ago)

Nah, baby, not on the silk sheets
Here:
http://www.atlantareiki.com/images/cuppedhands.jpg

― oops (Oops), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 23:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Soul. "Make It Funky" makes me want to dance, but "I Don't Know What You've Got (But It's Got Me)" makes me want to crawl around on the floor and beg for mercy.

― Burr, Tuesday, 11 March 2003 23:41 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't really see what the difference is. Aren't they just slow and fast songs of pretty much the same genre?

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 23:44 (twenty-three years ago)

soul. funk just makes me think of slap bass, which makes me think of poking my eardrums with skewers

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 23:47 (twenty-three years ago)

you are all insane!

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 23:49 (twenty-three years ago)

What about Betty Daivs??
http://www.milesdavis.com/images/covers/099%20Betty%20Davis.jpg

― brg30 (brg30), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 00:05 (twenty-three years ago)

"You can't be FUNKy if you haven't got SOUL" (Bush Tetras)

― Sami (Sami), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 00:07 (twenty-three years ago)

Soul, definitely. While all funk sucks bigtime, there has actually been some really great soul acts, such as 60s Motown, early Sam Cooke, 70s Stevie Wonder and 70s Marvin Gaye.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 00:09 (twenty-three years ago)

The thing with funk is that all of it that most people hear isn't any good, but the stuff that you usually don't hear is FANTASTIC.

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 04:06 (twenty-three years ago)

The bush tetras, ironically, were neither.

though they were obv. great.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 04:52 (twenty-three years ago)

sunk
Foul? (rhymes with "Bowl")

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 05:00 (twenty-three years ago)

oh you bastard for making me choose
I wanna say 'soul' but I just can't
funk rulez u r all geir

― Neudonym, Wednesday, 12 March 2003 05:33 (twenty-three years ago)

You can't take sides, I don't think, if you like one or the other then you like 'em both. Howard Tate on Atlantic is "soul" but the backing is totally "funk." Otis Redding doing "Tramp" is "soulful" but it's pretty funky. Ditto Al Green. As Albert Murray amusingly points out in his "Stompin' the Blues," a classic black American neo-con tract with, nonetheless, some nice moments of insight, "funk" is one over-used word, it didn't used to be a compliment, unless you think stinky poot-stained drawers are nice things (Geir, I'm sure you'll disagree with me here). As a musical style/way of playing it used to refer to Ray Charles, Cannonball Addlerley and those early-'60s guys who did their thing long before George Clinton cut his process yet. The 6/8 soul ballad style doesn't have a lot to do with "funk" as it's known today but even when James Brown plays his earlier shit on some of his 1970 tracks, he plays it funky...which refers to a style of pitting drums/bass against each other in broken-up patterns, mainly, as again I'm sure Geir can enlighten us on, since he's listened to XTC's attempts to do the same on "Black Sea" and other Masterpieces of Wholly European Music. And Geir, since I can't resist evoking your shade here at every opportunity, it's just too juicy, please elucidate for all of us how Marvin Gaye's '70s work like "Got to Give It Up" and "Here, My Dear" are not funk but soulful funk...come on, give it a shot.

So--they're really, in the final analysis, inseparable.

― Jess Hill (jesshill), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 14:44 (twenty-three years ago)

Soul is funky, funk is soulful. how can one choose?

― rex jr., Wednesday, 12 March 2003 14:47 (twenty-three years ago)

all funk sucks bigtime

That's okay, cause all britpop sucks GIGANTICtime. ;-)

Funk music, it seems to me, is actually a continuation of soul music, but after incorporating the balls-out energy of rock music. Like...Marvin Gaye + The Who = Sly and the Family Stone. That's what I think anyway.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 14:54 (twenty-three years ago)

Bad soul pisses all over bad funk.

Great soul and great funk are equally great.

― Jacob (Jacob), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 16:13 (twenty-three years ago)

Taking Sides: Paul Young vs Red Hot Chili Peppers!

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 16:14 (twenty-three years ago)

While all funk sucks bigtime...
Dr Funkenstein to Laboratory 1 for immediate vivesection duty. Stat!

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 16:30 (twenty-three years ago)

I take second place to no one in my love of James Brown or Dyke & the Blazers or George Clinton, but there is nothing I love better than the best old soul, Al Green in the early '70s, early James Carr, the Stax/Atlantic peak in the mid-late-'60s including Otis and Aretha, and lots more. Soul for me, much as I love funk.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 20:44 (twenty-three years ago)

but how do you tell the difference on say any Al Green single of that period between soul and funk? or Ann Peebles? that's why that music rocked so hard: there WAS no difference, it's a false dichotomy

which is of course the best kind

― Neudonym, Wednesday, 12 March 2003 20:49 (twenty-three years ago)

Many of my favourite Al Green tunes have little funky about them - How Can You Mend A Broken Heart is a great example. Nonetheless, it's true that these are very tightly related genres, and there is a big grey area. Nonetheless, Sex Machine or Funky Broadway are funk not soul, and the above and Dock Of The Bay are soul and not funk.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 22:33 (twenty-three years ago)

Whenever I go searching for records on the south side of Chicago basically all the above-mentioned artists get lumped together under "soul".

Then they'll usually have a separate section called "r&b" which has stuff like Lattimore, Bobby Bland, Johnny "Guitar" Watson and so forth.

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 22:38 (twenty-three years ago)

ah yes Martin but JBrown comes out of soul, and AGreen kept slipping back and forth betwixt the two, and while "Dock of the Bay" isn't very "funk" it was a very atypical Stax track for that time and Otis Redding was bringing the big beats and...well, it's really the same argument and we essentially agree. Which means we're smart and nice. Yay us.

― Neudonym, Wednesday, 12 March 2003 22:48 (twenty-three years ago)

JB's "It's A Man's World" and "Please Please" are soul as fuck.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 22:49 (twenty-three years ago)

We could argue that Please Please Please is pre-soul, or proto-soul or something. Except I'm not quite that mad. I wish I could pin down why I still think there is a distinction between funk and the really fast and punchy Stax stuff, but I can't. Maybe the fact that I can't means I'm talking nonsense.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 22:55 (twenty-three years ago)

Then they'll usually have a separate section called "r&b" which has stuff like Lattimore, Bobby Bland, Johnny "Guitar" Watson and so forth.

-- Mr. Diamond

Bobby Bland, to me, is really a blues singer. Like Junior Parker. Latimore is greasy southern soul, like Bobby Rush or Marvin Sease. Johnny Guitar Watson is something inbetween, like a lot of New Orleans guys. I mean is Earl King a blues artist? R&B? Soul? Funk? Snooks Eaglin? You can go nuts trying to figure out where to put it, when I worked in the obligatory record store I used to sneak the Tyrone Davis out of "blues" and put it back into pop/rock, I mean if Marvin Gaye is in that section then why not Tyrone Davis?

Down south those categories really don't matter. If you ever travel down I-55 between Memphis and Jackson, Miss. and listen to the radio, you'll hear all that stuff mixed together...gospel, rap, "blues," "soul," "funk." It really is one big thing, in my opinion. R&B is the best overall term for the whole scene. Funk really means, these days, post-James-Brown music...Parliament/Funkadelic, Zapp, Gap Band, Twennynine, Slave, Fatback...a lot of people put Lee Dorsey and the Meters, whom someone on some thread a while back dissed stupidly, into the funk category, but I think New Orleans music is sui generis and really stands apart from the productions of any other locale in the United States.

As far as the distinctions go, Martin S., you're not wrong, there is a big difference in how you play soul and funk. Soul is generally more relaxed, funk is a little tenser. Good example of how terms mean one thing to listeners and quite another to those who actually play the music and know how important those little things like being ahead/behind the beat, etc., are to genres. As I always say, and I'm sure I'm just a bore, once you divorce these genres--soul, funk, r&b, etc.--from their natural audience, which is dancers, you are less and less able to perceive what makes them distinct. Not that there's anything wrong with mixing "genres" and all that, just that we ought to preserve the idiomatic in some small way, don't you think?

The Stax stuff is soul music but there are times when they play funk. The later Stax music, post-'68, is more like funk music, because a lot of it wasn't recorded in Memphis to begin with...like "Mr. Big Stuff" for example.

― Jess Hill (jesshill), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 23:55 (twenty-three years ago)

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