The Role Parliament-Funkadelic Played in Saving Me

I have spent the last 40 years understanding that my spiritual father was Malcolm X.  It was reading about him at age 17 that initially helped me understand the problems I'd experienced in my short life at that time.  In those early years I saw the courageous warriors of the Black Panther Party, who evolved just minutes from where I myself grew up, as my older siblings.  Women like Ms. Shirley Graham DuBois and Amy Garvey(s) were my mothers and from those associations I eventually began to appreciate the massive contributions of people like Kwame Nkrumah, Seku Ture, Amilcar Cabral, etc.  Thus, my decision to dedicate my life to helping build capacity for those ideas to come into practical reality.

On a separate level all to itself, there were other people who played a major role in my early development as a human being.  And, although those people were certainly far and away different in making their contribution than the people I named in the first paragraph, their contribution to my life was and is no less significant.

George Clinton and the 60+ musicians who make up the collective band Parliament-Funkadelic are those other people.  And, for the last 44 years, that musical group has played a varying role in helping wake me up and keep me balanced.  For some people familiar with this group, that may sound strange.  Parliament-Funkadelic in general, and George Clinton in particular, are known in many circles as being on the strange end of African soul/funk music.  In fact, during my teen years, they were the cultural equivalent of how gangsta rap is viewed by many people with more "conservative" tastes.  They were the outlaws of popular music in the 70s and that was of course the reason they appealed so strongly to me.

I, like many youth (especially Africans) at that time, having missed the culturally vibrant 1960s, growing up in the balancing out decade of the 70s, into the individualistic period of the 1980s, felt alienated on every level growing up.  Before I could appreciate the uplifting messages of people like Malcolm, I needed something that would connect to my emotional need to feel validated as a human being.  The semi-serious messages of Parliament-Funkadelic, or PFunk as we affectionately call them, made that contribution into my life.  Their drug induced visual presence didn't bother this never touched a drug in my life person because I saw them as rebels and I've always been one of those.  The diapers (guitarist Gary Shider wore a diaper on albums and in concert, prompting PFunk loyalists to label him "diaper man), far out costumes, and unique and unusual stage shows established PFunk as a group that was unwilling to conform to the uniform standards of the generational groups during those years like the Temptations, Commodores, Isley Brothers, and even the Jackson 5.  Still, it was much more than their visual appearance that appealed to me.  It was that semi-serious stuff.  As a young African searching for pride and respect in a society that was determined to convince me I wasn't worth receiving those things, PFunk's insistence that "we are coming to reclaim the pyramids! ("Mothership Connection"), "Think it Ain't Illegal Yet (Lunchmeataphobia), "Everybody has a little light under the sun" (Flashlight), etc., spoke directly to me.  While other people may have seen "One Nation Under Groove" as a funky dance song, I saw it as a call to action for African people everywhere to do our own thing, regardless of what this backward society was demanding of us.  "Here's our chance to dance our way, out of our constrictions."  I felt like PFunk was talking directly to me in code language and I drank it all up.  And, the fact no adults seemed to understand or respect their music made them all the more attractive to me.

Another element that was extremely gripping for me was PFunk's innovative ability to play extremely popular dance music (Parliament) and grooving lead guitar rock infused music (Funkadelic), using the same people to form two groups with different names on different record labels, was another important signal to me that these Africans refused to play by the system's rules.  The impact this had on me can never be underestimated.  And, the fact PFunk was the first commercial entity that used the African red, black, and green flag on their album covers while always featuring artwork of African women, was a major impact as well.  Especially on 1978's "One Nation" Funkadelic album where the entire cover was filled with insults against Mick Jaggar for his song "Some Girls" which PFunk interpreted as disrespectful to African women.  I loved it.  I needed it.

I'm forever thankful to PFunk for helping me learn how to unleash my creative African spirit.  I was able to vibe to them in a way that was personal.  For example, when they released the fifteen minute and twenty-one second "Not Just Knee Deep" in the summer/fall of 1979 it was medicine for me.  I had just moved out of my parents house.  I had my first real job and was attending community college.  I was full of self doubt and really had absolutely no one to talk to about all the insecurities that dominated my life at that time.  Racist and inhuman treatment was so common I thought that those experiences were my destiny.  I played that song thousands of times.  In truth, I spent a large portion of my financial aide and wages from my restaurant job to buy a car stereo system with Pioneer speakers, just so I could hear that song in its best presentation.  You may have listened to that song and heard "when she did the freak with me", but I heard the anger in Mike Hampton's guitar licks during that legendary solo in the middle of that long song.  An anger that to me meant we were sick and tired of being abused by this society as a people.  No one had to say it in the lyrics.  I know that's what that guitar was communicating and I felt it as clearly as I felt my mother speaking me while I was in her womb. Forty years later, and twelve times and counting that I've heard Hampton play that solo electronically and in person (as recently as last year) and I still feel exactly the same.  Hearing it inspires me to believe there is absolutely nothing I cannot do.  That song permitted me to channel my anger and energy in the direction of forward progress.  I still listen to it when I need a boost, especially that guitar solo portion.

The point here is African people have had to spend the last 500+ years learning a myriad of ways to articulate our frustration and anger at the conditions we have been faced to endure.  I'm forever thankful for George Clinton and PFunk.  George, Hampton, Bernie Worrell, Junie Morrison, Shider, Eddie Hazel, Lynn Mabry, Maceo and Fred, etc.  Thank you to all of them.  To many people, what they did musically may just seem like the mindless ramblings of a bunch of acid inducing addicts.  To me, it was the language of a people struggling to find their freedom and dignity.  But then, weren't most of our slave communications designed to sound one way on the outside while having a completely different message for those who were intended to understand it?