Brass Trax

The funk revival has been going on for longer than a decade. It’s been a largely urban affair, featuring sophisticates in the big cities rehashing that brief period, say 1966 to 1975, when funk was deep and the drum breaks were sick. Since then, funk revival bands have started trickling into the mainstream. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings jammed on late night talk shows; Grupo Fantasma nearly got a Grammy. Funk revival has paid its dues. The movement has cred.

But the question still must be considered: Is the music worth hunting down in the record or iTunes store? Does the funk revival have anything new to offer, or is it just a pale imitation of an earlier era in music? When a band is reviving a genre that has been all but superseded—by disco and its descendants, hip hop and house—it might end up sounding all too antiquarian.

Indeed, if you have never heard the J.B.’s album Doing it to Death or the collected works of Willie Colón, you’re better off just buying those records. But, if you’ve done your homework and want to hear what’s happening today, here are four bands worth checking out.

Osaka Monaurail

It might surprise you that some of the world’s best contemporary funk comes out of Japan, but it shouldn’t. The Japanese have been digging James Brown since day one, and Osaka Monaurail is evidence that the Godfather’s message of soul did not get lost in translation. Not convinced? Just ask J.B. diva Marva Whitney, who cut a record with the group.

Osaka Monaurail has been doing its thing since 1992, which makes the band early adopters of the funk revival. As you might guess from the name, which comes from an old J.B.’s album, the band is steeped in James Brown. The drummer throws everything and the kitchen sink at the one, just like Jabo Starks did, and the band follows suit. But the organ embellishments and horn vamps sound completely new, even as Nakata Ryu’s vocals can sometimes grate.

Essential Albums: The band came a long way in its first 15 years, and its 2007 effort Reality for the People is by far the strongest. And, luckily, it’s the album that’s most readily available in the United States. Don’t pass up the band’s collaboration with Marva Whitney, I Am What I Am, her first album since the 70s.

El Michels Affair

This list has to include an act from New York, the U.S. home base for the funk revival, and our pick is El Michels Affair. El Michels Affair was started by Leon Michels, after he left the better known Dap Kings. Unlike the Dap Kings, who perform as a fairly straight-forward rehash of an R&B revue, El Michels Affair has never been afraid to get a little weird.

The band has been releasing material since 2002, but it was the 2005 full-length Sounding Out the City that got folks to sit up and pay attention. An ambitious soul jazz record, Sounding Out the City tackles fusion in a way that really hadn’t been heard before. While cuts like “Detroit Twice” can sound like fairly conventional—if funky—throwback tunes, other tracks like “El Pueblo Unido” and “Behind the Blue Curtains” prove that the band had more in mind than a simple retread. Its sound includes Afrobeat, boogaloo, and dub, too.

El Michels Affair probably wasn’t the first band to do instrumental covers of famous hip hop songs, but, when it tackled the music of the Wu Tang Clan, the band might have done it better than anybody else. There’s something almost absurd about cutting an instrumental version of songs that were cobbled together from samples of earlier recordings, but El Michels Affair finds a way to to make it compelling. Listen to the cover of “Shimmy, Shimmy Ya” if you need a shot of funk in the behind.

Essential Albums: If it’s an El Michels record, it’s worth listening to. But there’s no excuse for passing up Enter the 37th Chamber, especially if you are a Wu Tang fan.

Grupo Fantasma

If you are the type of person who is suspicious of bands that have been nominated for a Grammy—as Grupo Fantasma was for the 2008 effort Sonidos Gold—you should put your worries to rest. Grupo Fantasma is the real deal.

A big band from the mean streets of Austin, Texas, Grupo Fantasma is the foremost purveyor of throwback Latin music. Its earliest albums showed a marked preference for boogaloo, the Latin-funk fusion that came out of the Nuyorican scene in the late 60s and early 70s. But, as the band has matured, its members have mastered a stunning array of Latin rhythms, and there’s little, from Norteño to mambo, that Grupo Fantasma can’t handle.

Unlike funk, which had gone mostly dormant after the 70s, salsa and other Latin dance music has maintained its vibrancy. The good news is that Grupo Fantasma can hang with the best in today’s Latin music world even while maintaining an old school sound. And there are few Latin acts that can shred through a psychedelic guitar line like Fantasma can. The track “Bacalao Con Pan,” for example, can melt your brain.

Essential Albums: Sonidos Gold might have garnered a Grammy nomination, but don’t hold that against the album. It might have high production values, but it’s still a self-released labor of love. It’s a great place to get acquainted with the Grupo and its versatility, but don’t ignore the earlier effort Movimento Popular.

NOMO

Ann Arbor, Michigan is a little bit too cold for Afrobeat, which might be the reason why NOMO sounds so weird. It’s Afrobeat filtered through an experimental music class. The structure of its tunes might be dominated by Fela Kuti, but it’s easy to hear such disparate influences as electric era Miles Davis and Brian Eno. NOMO’s most recent recordings have included an electric kalimba—a nod to the contemporary African electro-acoustic outfit Konono No. 1.

NOMO may have inherited the music of Fela Kuti, but, unlike fellow Afrobeat revivalists like Antibalas, the band didn’t import his politics. NOMO’s music is instrumental; it doesn’t denounce the status quo, except possibly abstractly. But it does swing, in a mind-expanding sort of way.

Essential Albums: Check out NOMO’s latest two releases, Invisible Cities and Ghost Rock. Both albums were recorded at around the same time, and they are an expression of NOMO’s growing vocabulary. The addition of the electric kalimba, in particular, adds a funky mellowness to the avant-garde funk stew. It’s great headphone fodder.

No Comments »