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The funky-music mailing list is about the business of discussing THE FUNK(tm). This includes everything from George Clinton to Prince (excuse us, "0+>")⁽¹⁾: soul, r&b, zydeco, reggae⁽²⁾, salsa, soca, hip hop⁽³⁾ and similar gutsy street music and their related varieties.

Funky music is based on the rhythmic innovations pioneered by James Brown. Someone once described the basic funk to me as the religion of The ONE(tm): "The ONE of four beats per bar. The heavy DOWNbeat. It's gotta be BIG. It's gotta be HEAVY. It's gotta be FAT."

That's not a bad start.

Other notable artists in the genre are Parliament, Funkadelic, War, The Ohio Players, Earth Wind and Fire, the Meters, and Mandrill. Of course, as others have pointed out, some jazz from the forties and fifties is loaded with The Funk; they just didn't know what to call it. Surely, The Funk is as old as time itself and exists in us all. Some of us are just lucky enough to have discovered it.

In short, funky music has a danceable beat to it, a soulful feel, and an underlying intelligence. All the varieties of music mentioned above are, therefore, funky. If you aren't sure about a topic, you might want to give it a try anyway. Worst that can happen is that no one will talk about it.

As a mailing list, we enjoy moderate traffic and a high S/N ratio. Aside from normal discussion there are frequent posts about news, concert information and reviews. It's also a good source to get obscure questions answered.

We like it anyway.

For those of you who love your funk but want it in manageable chunks, there is a DIGEST option. Simply ask to be put on the digest and you will receive one big chunk-o-funk over each weekend.

Any particular questions?

1. The Artist Often Still Called Prince is discussed on this list. He is funky, after all, but real fans of his royal badness might want to join the Paisley Park mailing list. I'm told that if you put "subscribe ppl" in the subject line of a message sent to "cckevin@stem.indstate.edu", you'll get added to the list.

2. Actually, we almost never seem to discuss it. On the other hand, chrisone@sequel.net has started a reggae mailing list. They cover reggae, ska, dub & dancehall. Send a blank message to reggae-subscribe@egroups.com to join.

3. If you're particularly interested in Hip Hop, there is a sister list: hiphop@ai.mit.edu (send requests to hiphop-request@ai.mit.edu).