The Godfather of Soul, 1933-2006

James Brown, the legend, the creative force, the abuser, the musician, the cat, the polemicist, the rights activist, the addict, the eternal spirit beyond good and evil, passed away this morning at the age of 73. There is a great deal of "James Brown" that cannot be fully understood by a modern audience, the nature of the beast being such that you either had to "be there" to see Brown in action, or you had to be part of Brown's action proper. James Brown went beyond simple grooves and beats; he was part-and-parcel of the entire American experience, the human experience, from the 1960s and onward. His music is inseparable from race relations in post-War America, and the mark he left on American popular is, to be blunt, immense.

I never bowed into the depths of soul very far; my ears stop, on one side of the artistic spectrum, at Miles Davis' 1970s funk-jazz experiments; on the other, at Ray Charles and the Parliament Funkadellic. Back when I was fortunate enough to play in a few bands that covered the standards of soul, funk, R&B and gospel music, however, the figure of James Brown was monolithic; his image, his sound, his vibes; the texture and smell of his rhythms, his basslines, his beats, his shouts — his problems, his triumphs. Soul and funk are not my "safe" idioms, and from a musical standpoint many of my expeditions into this new realm failed miserably (one of these actually had me dug in at Halifax's own Thirsty Duck Pub & Eatery several times a month for nearly a year, until I was replaced by a better trumpeter. That better trumpeter was Rick Waychesko of Tower of Power, thankfully, so my ego survived).

Worse, my relationship with Mr. Brown's music has been necessarily limited to no more than technical voyeurism. Like many of the readers of this blog, I was not alive during the 1960s and 1970s; I was not there to see James Brown in action.

Nor am I part of that action. I am not black, and I am not underprivileged because of the colour of my skin or my socioeconomic background. My "generation" may possess an immense appreciation for the Godfather's art, but, as years pass, there are fewer and fewer individuals with any deep or lasting personal connection to the social context that spewed Brown and his great music forth — the maw of 1960s/1970s American counter-culture and civil activism. Perhaps all we can realistically do to understand this era, all we can do as a human beings born post-hoc, is read about it, find the remnants of it, look at pictures of it, remember it, and think about it, long and hard.

Were he somehow able communicate with us from beyond the pale, though, I think the Godfather would sing a different tune. Despite the passing of the year 1972, racism and racist beliefs are widespread; poverty lies none too far from any doorstep, first world or third; and social injustice, the media tells us, our eyes and ears tell us, and our heart/gut/irrational-human mechanism tells us, is just about everywhere one can look. The world of James Brown still exists, outside of photographs and newsreels; we're a work in progress, a first-draft civilization, and Mr. Brown knew this, to the core, in his bones, in death, everywhere.

"You," he might say, "have a lot to do with my music."

And what music! It cuts and swings, always chasing after that "pure hard-flat-jazz-funk" that Brown once "heard in his dreams," perhaps never quite getting there, but achieving glory along the way, regardless. If all the historical and sociological cleavages that surround Mr. Brown's music are stripped away, we are still left with James Brown's music, the best funk in all the land.

And if all that shit gets thrown back on — dates, rallies, statements, influence, life stories, social threads, the first-draft of all being, all of that — we're still left with James Brown's music, the best funk in all the land.

As the Godfather might have said, Amen to that.

* * *

I've read a few articles on James Brown in my short days, though I cannot pretend to be encyclopedic or even offer a comprehensive opinion on the matter. Still, this is the best piece on Mr. Brown I've ever read. It captures James Brown no less than a year ago, at his most incoherent, at his most prescient, cryptic and/or profound, still having fun, and still going after that pure hard-flat-jazz-funk (the quoted bits in the preceding paragraph are actually pulled from this story).

Being an acolyte of Kurt Vonnegut Jr, I can't help but cite this...

For my part as a witness, if I could convey only one thing about James Brown it would be this: James Brown is, like Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, a man unstuck in time. He's a time traveler, but unlike the HG Wells-ian variety, he lacks any control over his migrations in time, which also seem to be circumscribed to the period of his own allotted lifespan. Indeed, it may be the case that James Brown is often confused as to what moment in time he occupies at any given moment.

Happy Holidays, everyone. May Mr. Brown continue chasing his dream, wherever he ended up.