Three steps to Funk...

As you can probably tell, this blog is all about Funky music, and the majority (but by no means the entirety) of what I listen to nowadays would fall within that bracket. I didn’t get into Funk overnight, it’s been bubbling along for several years - although it was a conscious decision to start listening to and collecting more, and to make all things funky the centre of my DJ sets.

 I like to think I’ve got a pretty wide ranging taste in music, and I thought it would be fun to have a look back at the various types of music I’ve been into over the years. Interesting to see that my interest in music can be roughly divided into three distinct stages based on age - teenage, twenties, and thirties (I’m ‘only’ 30, by the way!) I was always a bit of a rocker in my teenage years, but always had a bit of a soft spot for electronic music, secretly listening to Aphex Twin and Squarepusher in between Nirvana albums. My interest in electronica remained when my enthusiasm for Rock faded, and it soon broadened out to include more - first Hip Hop and Drum and Bass and then as I started to get more into DJing I found House, first as necessity to learn to beatmatch and then as a passion. House opened up a whole new world for me as it’s one of the most diverse and versatile forms of music out there, so for years I immersed myself in House, and I still love it today. I have become a lot more selective though, and I prefer the warmer side of it these days, rather than anything too mechanical.

I think this unscientific and hastily drawn diagram neatly (!?) sums up what I've been into over the years... Although it's worth mentioning that I don’t like to be restricted by genre... If I like it, I like it, regardless of what it's been pigeonholed into. And a lot of stuff I like I have no idea what genre it even is! I could keep on adding lines and genres to this diagram all day but it’s complicated enough as it is.

 So how did I end up addicted to funk? Well, a couple of years ago my interest in DJing was waning a bit, and a lot of the music I used to love just wasn’t doing it for me any more. Instead of trying to mix anything and everything I love (not impossible, and some people do it really well, but I don’t have the time or the money to dedicate to that!), I focused on what I loved about the music that still did do it for me, and the common theme that emerged was ‘funkiness’... whatever that is (more on that in a future blog post, perhaps?). I guess it’s just music with soul and feeling, which a lot of electronic music can often be lacking. Music with a good bassline and that intangible groove that makes you want to dance. So funk doesn’t represent the entirety of what I listen to and like, but rather the side of what I’m into that I want to share with the world.