Major artists like Miles Davis, Sly Stone, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, legendary producer Norman Whitfield and, of course, George Clinton and his P Funk brigade, would all play their part in shaping this new sound via their innovative use of electronic instruments during the 70s (and as early as the late 60s in Miles Davis’ case).
It was all about stretching the boundaries that had begun to stifle black music, and its influences lay not only with German Technopop wizards Kraftwerk, the acknowledged forefathers of pure Electro, plus British Futurist acts like the Human League and Gary Numan, but also with a number of pioneering black musicians. There was no set template for this new Dance direction, it just went wherever it went and took you grooving along with it. The tempo of these tracks ranged from under 100 bpm to over 130, covering an entire rhythmic spectrum along the way. It wasn’t one narrow style that never strayed from within the confides of an even narrower BPM range, Electro-Funk was anything goes! The diversity of records released during this period was what made it so magical, you never knew what was coming next. All roads lead back to New York where the level of musical innovation and experimentation throughout the early 80s period was quite staggering. It wouldn’t be until ‘84 that their virtual monopoly of the clubs, radio, and the black music press began to erode as a new order of music replaced the old, laying the foundations not only for Hip-Hop, but also the subsequent UK Techno and House scenes.Īs has often been said, Electro is the missing link of Dance music. The Soul Mafia, with big names like Chris Hill, Robbie Vincent, Froggy, Jeff Young and Pete Tong, continued to concentrate on Jazz-Funk and Soul grooves (later referred to as “80s Groove”). The reason the Electro scene took so long to fully establish itself in the capital was down to the stranglehold the all-powerful Soul Mafia DJs held on the Southern scene.
Despite all the resistance, the movement slowly but surely began to gain momentum, sweeping down from the North, through the Midlands and eventually into London and the South. However, as time went on and audience tastes began to change, even the most hostile DJs were forced to play at least some Electro-Funk. The purists regarded electronic or electric (as they called it) with total contempt, rejecting its validity on the grounds that it was, in their opinion, not real music due to its technological nature (although Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” would put paid to that theory). In the UK scheme of things Electro-Funk eventually took over from Jazz-Funk as the dominant force on the club scene, but not without major controversy and upheaval. To keep up to date with what was happening on the British black music scene in 82/83 you’d have had to have been a reader of a specialist publication like Blues & Soul or Black Echoes.
Perhaps the main reason that Electro-Funk remains a mystery to so many people is because its audience was predominantly black at a time when cutting-edge black music (and black culture in general) was very much marginalized in the UK, and as a result essentially underground. Just as Northern Soul was a British term for a style (or group of styles) of American black music, so was Electro-Funk, and, like Northern, the roots of the scene are planted firmly in the North-West of England.Īlthough this has been documented in a number of books and publications down the years, often with a fair degree of insight, the subject is rarely approached with any true depth and attention to detail, the information all in fragments. From a US perspective this music would come under a variety of headings (including Hip-Hop, Dance, Disco, Electric Boogie and Freestyle), arriving on import here in the UK mainly on New York labels like West End, Prelude, Sugarhill, Emergency, Profile, Tommy Boy, Streetwise, plus numerous others. Central to the confusion is the term itself, which during 82/83 (before it was shortened to Electro) was specific to the UK.
Huddersfield Crew, Stars Bar 1982 (Photo by Greg Wilson – taken from the DJ booth)Įlectro-Funk is undoubtedly the most misunderstood of all UK Dance genres, yet probably the most vital with regards to its overall influence.