What happened to the funk?

For more than four decades, the Grammy-winning bass player has inspired countless listeners around the globe to Get Up Off That Thing. He has created some of funk music’s most infectious bass grooves, and his muscular bass lines can be heard on records by Michael Jackson, Chaka Khan and Luther Vandross. His blistering live version of “Run for Cover” is a textbook example of playing “in the pocket”— that magical moment when a band’s rhythm section locks into a groove that’s so tight that the musicians can’t help but nod and smile at one another.

Miller honed his musical chops during funk’s ‘70s golden age when songs from groups like the Ohio Players and Parliament pumped from speakers in dorm rooms, high school dances and “blue light in the basement” house parties. It was a time when funk music became “the chocolate-colored soundtrack to a golden age of music,” the cultural critic Michael A. Gonzales once wrote.

“There’s no sad funk songs,” says Miller, now 65. “Funk’s primary purpose is to get people moving, dancing and shaking their behinds.”

 

Funk music’s purpose is likely not high on the list of concerns for most Americans in 2025. Most people are worrying more about the plunging stock market, rising egg prices, job layoffs and political polarization. But when I think about what ails contemporary America, I consider this question:

What happened to the funk?

I ask this because I also grew up during funk’s golden era. I watched live performances of groups like Earth Wind & Fire as they drove crowds to a funk frenzy. I studied “Soul Train” every weekend to catch the latest dance moves that I could never learn. I never purchased an Afro-Sheen blowout kit to look like my favorite funk performers, but I proudly carried an Afro pick with a handle shaped like a clenched Black fist to capture their defiant “Get the Funk Out Ma Face” attitude.

For my family and friends, funk wasn’t just a musical genre — it was a lifestyle and attitude built around what one music critic called “sweat and sociability.”

And then the music lost its groove. The ‘80s and ‘90s brought hip hop, grunge, rap and alternative rock. Today’s charts are dominated by plastic dance pop that feels like it’s been assembled by an AI bot.

I can’t help but wonder: Why did funk music lose its popularity? And did we lose something more than danceable rhythms when it went away?

Funk is all about community

That’s the unspoken question that hovers in the background of a new documentary: “We Want the Funk!,” premiering tonight on PBS, which takes listeners on a fantastic voyage to trace the birth and evolution of funk. Directed by two Emmy-award-winning filmmakers, Stanley Nelson and Nicole London, the film features Miller and other funk royalty such as George Clinton, leader of the Parliament and Funkadelic groups, plus members of classic funk groups like the Ohio Players, famous for their erotic album covers.

The film traces the birth of funk music to one person: James Brown. The Godfather of Soul, who once said, “I’ve only got a seventh-grade education, but I have a doctorate in funk,” pioneered the genre in the mid-1960s with songs like “I Got You (I Feel Good),” and “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.” Brown’s stripped-down music was filled with syncopated drums, propulsive bass lines and fiery horn sections that seemed to spit fire.

 

Brown’s funkiness was irrepressible, Clinton says in the film.

“Even if he sang the Star-Spangled Banner, it was going to be funky,” Clinton says.

But while funk may have started with an individual performer, its sound was all about community. Funk’s biggest acts were ensembles. As a kid, I sometimes wondered how funk groups like Lakeside even fit all their members on their album covers. Miller, whose comment about no sad funk songs appears in the film, tells me that he grew up in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, New York, where every block seemed to have a funk band.

Making a band click took work, he says. Rehearsal was constant, and so were the arguments. The goal was to sound “tight,” Miller says, meaning that all the vocal harmonizations, dance moves and instruments meshed seamlessly.

When it all came together during a live performance, the struggle was worth it, Miller says.

“There’s nothing like seeing human beings come together to work something out as a group,” Miller tells me. “It’s like a championship basketball team. Everybody plays the hell out of their role. They’ve figured out how to work together and resolve their disagreements.”

That communal bliss was transmitted to the audience. When I watch vintage concert footage today of groups like the Brothers Johnson performing songs like “Stomp,” I’m struck by the camaraderie instilled in the audience. It reminds me of that warm glow I experienced in the Charismatic Christian church I attended as a kid, when the songs reached a fever pitch and Black folks stood, sang and shouted together. The lyrical emphasis in funk songs like “Stomp” was often on “we,” not “I.” (“Everybody take it to the top/We’re gonna’ stomp all night/In the neighborhood/Don’t it feel alright?”)

 

Dancers Jermaine Stewart & Sheri on a 1976 episode of "Soul Train." Stewart later scored a hit single in 1986 with "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off." 

Soul Train/Getty Images

Funk music is not meant to be listened to alone, London, co-director of “We Want the Funk,” tells me.

“It’s like a religious experience that has to be shared with others,” she says. “It’s a channeling that happens when people are together in a groove. There’s something that, as Sly and the Family Stone sings, ‘takes you higher.’ ’’

Play that funky music, White boy

Funk music also took us higher back then because of a quality that’s missing today from popular music — a sense of racial optimism.

Because many of the biggest funk bands were interracial ensembles, that optimism was reflected in groups like Sly & the Family Stone, which presented a stage full of White, Black and Brown musicians all moving together in harmony.

Funk music brought White and Black America together in a way that our politics never could.

“Sly & the Family Stone was the musical equivalent of ‘I Have a Dream,’ ” the drummer and producer Questlove says in the PBS film.

As a young man, seeing interracial funk groups meant more to me than I realized. I grew up in a segregated Black community in West Baltimore where most people viewed White people with hostility. I also came from a family where all my White relatives, except my mom, disowned me at birth because my father was Black. It’s hard not to develop stereotypes about White people in such a setting.

But when I saw Black and White people shaking their rumps together to songs like KC and the Sunshine Band’s “(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty,” it gave me my first glimpse of a larger world where we could work out our racial differences. Not all White people are the same, I thought. Funk music did what DEI is supposed to do today: It broke down racial walls.

Sometimes those walls didn’t fall so easy. That was the case when it came to a perennial debate in music: Do White people have as much soul and funk as Black people? I used to believe they didn’t. But then in junior high school my world was rocked by one man: Bobby Caldwell.

 

In 1978, Caldwell released a slow-jam funk anthem that earned him a free pass to all Black cookouts: “What You Won’t Do For Love.” The song, which is inspired by Earth Wing & Fire’s horn section, is a sophisticated fusion of the best of funk: a chugging rhythm guitar, horns and a head-bopping, bite-your-lower-lip bass groove. What sends it over the top is Caldwell’s impassioned vocals (“I came back to let you know/Got a thing for you and I can’t let it go”).

The song quickly became a staple on Black radio stations. When it came out, I looked in vain for pictures of this soulful new Black singer, but his record company didn’t show his photo. When Black folks went to concert venues to hear Caldwell sing, they discovered why — he was a skinny, bearded White man who, according to one stunned Black fan, “looked like Indiana Jones.”

One Black comedian, Kevin Fredericks, said he experienced so much cognitive dissonance upon seeing Caldwell sing that “I called out of work today. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

It turned out Caldwell was just one of many White artists who had earned their doctorates in funk. Another, Wild Cherry, was an all-White band that had a monster funk hit in 1976 called “Play That Funky Music.” I still remember the sudden silence and furrowed brows from my friends when we watched them on TV.

Then there was the shock of learning that arguably funk music’s greatest instrumental, “Pick up the Pieces,” was created by a group of White musicians from Scotland. Maybe I should have taken the cue from their name: the Average White Band.

There was an implicit message in these White and interracial funk groups for me: Here were White people stepping into our world to let us know that our culture mattered. For brief moments onstage, it seemed like we could work out our racial divisions. We were, as the Funkadelic hit declared, “one nation under a groove.”

So what killed the funk?

But then, somewhere in the 1980s, we lost the funk. Although elements of funk showed up in songs like Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” the genre lost its widespread popularity. How could this happen to such a visceral, joyous style of music? It’s a mystery that people still debate today.

Some say it’s partly because the Reagan administration pulled funding to musical education programs in public schools. Kids didn’t learn how to play instruments anymore, so they turned to rap and hip-hop.

Others say it came down to business. It didn’t make economic sense anymore for record companies to sign bands. This is the perspective of Rick Beato, the music producer and host of the popular “Everything Music” YouTube channel. Beato released a video last year asking, “Why are bands mysteriously disappearing?” His conclusion: It’s far cheaper now for a record label to work with and promote a solo artist.

Technology also has killed bands, he says.

“A solo artist can record a song at their house on their laptop, put it on TikTok and it becomes a massive hit,” Beato says.

Miller, the bassist, has had to adjust. To avoid being trapped in a funk cul-de-sac, he’s branched out to compose music for film and TV. He’s also a prolific collaborator with jazz and pop artists.

When asked if funk bands will ever return to their bell-bottomed glory, he is skeptical.

“Imagine if you’re a kid who is 12 and somebody says to you, ‘You can play this saxophone, but you have to practice at least three hours a day for many years to make a wonderful sound,’” Miller says. “Or you can go to an Apple store, buy a laptop and you can find the right software to have control of every sound.”

We’ve lost funk music’s communal spirit

But there’s a deeper reason why we’ve lost the funk. We’ve lost the communal spirit that feeds funk music.

We’ve gone from a “We” to an “I” society. That’s how Robert D. Putnam, the eminent sociologist who wrote “Bowling Alone,” describes this shift. Americans were once a nation of joiners who participated in groups like the Boy Scouts, the Rotary Club and bowling leagues.

 

Today we’ve become a nation of loners. There’s been a surge in Americans who eat their meals alone, at home and in restaurants. We drive around in cars with tinted windows that separate us from the world. Technology has reinforced this social isolation. Many of us interact with screens more than with one another. I’m continually puzzled by people who go to coffee shops to be around other people — and then ignore them by sitting alone in silence, pecking away at their keyboards.

This loneliness infects our music. When I pull up next to young people’s “hoopty” cars at stoplights in Atlanta I now hear snippets from a musical wasteland: bland singers who can’t hit notes without Auto-Tune, musicians who can’t play instruments, and synthetic, overproduced music that sounds like it was sprayed from an aerosol can.

Today’s pop artists don’t seem like they’re really listening to one another. Why should I listen to them?

I get my funk fix today by going to YouTube and watching old concert footage of funk groups. Many of these videos rack up millions of views. I don’t believe all of those viewers are “turn that music down!” old folks like me. There must also be young people looking for a glimpse of the musical craftsmanship and communal joy that I took for granted as a kid.

It’s hard for funk to flower in a nation of fearful, isolated people. And yet somehow it still does. Elements of funk music persist in hip-hop, contemporary jazz and in school marching bands. “Uptown Funk,” the 2014 hit by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars, is a prominent example of funk’s enduring appeal.

 

Funk bands no longer rule the radio, but their influence is still felt around the globe. Cover bands from as far away as Russia and Australia play funk classics, and one of the most inventive funk dance routines I’ve ever seen comes from a Japanese choreographer named Moga. She put together a viral dance routine based on a James Brown song that is electric. Funk doesn’t just belong to Black people; it speaks to everyone.

That’s the hope I hold onto now. The need to sing and dance together is as ancient as the earliest humans who played drums and chanted around campfires.

No matter our race, age or political beliefs, we all want the funk – even if we don’t know it. It’s the kind of music human beings will always have a thing for. And thankfully, we can’t quite let it go.

John Blake is a CNN senior writer and author of the award-winning memoir, “More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.”