‘Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud’: the moment funk came to the forefront of the Civil Rights movement
Music was never meant to strictly be the kind of catchy tunes that people use to soundtrack their lives. The genuine artists of the world were the ones who could put real emotion in their lyrics, document world events, or even manage to write songs about the most ludicrous things that could come into their heads. However, the best way to use one’s musical gifts is to change the world, and James Brown managed to put messages in his songs that an entire country could groove to.
Then again, it’s important to know where Brown came from when making his first tunes. He wasn’t called the hardest working man in show business by accident, and looking through his performances from the beginning to the end of his career, he was always willing to bear everything he could onstage, whether that was sweating until he collapsed or pulling every ounce of energy out of his band to get the right groove going.
However, in the era of civil rights in the US, people still weren’t willing to give Brown his due credit. Whereas rock and roll had started to become a cultural force by the late 1960s, hardly anyone was giving a voice to the Black experience. And if The Beatles could talk about the greater issues with the world and be taken seriously, why couldn’t funk and R&B be treated the same way?
Although Marvin Gaye would be at the forefront of creating social change with What’s Going On, Brown knew that there needed to be more of an edge behind the music to get people to listen. ‘Mercy Mercy Me’ was all well and good, but there are only so many times people could listen to it without either getting bored or missing the concept entirely.
When ‘Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud’ came out, though, there was no sense in sidestepping the issue any longer. And if Brown was going to make a statement about how he wasn’t going to take the lack of recognition from the white community, he was going to bring his community along with him, eventually getting various people from places like Compton to get the right feeling in the studio.
You also have to remember that the US was only a few months removed from Martin Luther King’s tragic assassination, so this was the kind of cry that Brown needed to make at this time. Artists like Jimi Hendrix may have shown people what rock and roll could be with a Black man at the helm, but this was Brown making music on his own terms without having to use any rock credentials.
And most importantly, Brown didn’t need to have any other white artist to help get his foot in the door for the record, either. Whereas many citizens’ internal racism made them not trust someone who didn’t look like them, the groove speaks much louder than what anyone’s complexion might be.
It’s not like we haven’t seen the ramifications of ‘Say It Loud I’m Black and I’m Proud’, either. Even though Brown may have been documenting what life was like for him at the moment, everything from ‘Fight the Power’ to ‘Fuck The Police’ to ‘Not Like Us’ have been able to bring people together for all the right reasons. It’s impossible for any artist to move a mountain on their own, but with the right message, the best artists get to know the shape of their audience’s hearts a lot quicker.
