A Bridge Between The Funk Model of Personal Development and Cu...

I swam everyday this week.

I decided to change my physical training routine this summer by working more often underwater instead of lifting weights, the latter of which I have done on average three times a week for the past decade.

Not that lifting in the gym is stale by any means: I stopped counting reps years ago and learned instead to focus on the tempo and energy of the music in my portable music player.

Since most of my workouts are between 90 minutes and 3-and-a-half hours long, I’ve learned to challenge all my muscle groups by utilizing particular songs to motivate and encourage my movement and breathing, like a dancer uses music to improvise and discover new movement.

For example, I’ve used Janet Jackson’s “If”, not only because of the superlative Jam/Lewis production values, but because the tempo of the song is perfect for ab crunches on a decline bench at various angles. When I mix in Hamilton Bohannon’s “Disco Symphony", Cameo’s “Word Up”, EWF’s “Can't Let Go”, or Lyn Collin’s “Think”, I can easily repeat 3 sets of 15, at 3 to 4 different angles, for a continuous minimum of 30 to 45 minutes.

The result of doing this for a few years is that my lower back muscles are significantly stronger than they used to be and I now possess abs of steel.

Same with the shoulder press: I use Parliament Funkadelic’s “Flashlight” for strength training, along with The Gap Band’s “Burn Rubber” or a combination of Roger Troutman’s “Do Wah Ditty” and “So Ruff So Tuff” to hit all the right spots with stanknasty funk, say 3 to 4 sets of 15 reps using 25 to 35 kilo (55 to 77 lb.) weights. Not a lot of weight, but enough strength training in my shoulder and neck muscles to do headstands without using my hands at the end of my yoga stretching routines. No brag, just fact.

What I’ve observed is that most urban dwellers my age lack youthfulness and energy simply because they don’t workout enough to the funk.

Working out to the funk means physical movement expressed through multiple body rhythms, engaging in disciplined rehearsal of physical balance, strength, quickness, improvisation, circular movement and synchronization. When entrainment is achieved by diligent practice, funk becomes it’s own reward.

As Robert Farris Thompson has explained, the word funk is of ki-congo origin and literally means “to work out to achieve one’s aims”. This metaphor signifies an entire value system which Africans brought with them to the new world and represents the idea of achieving any goal by the use of extreme effort.

Thus understood, funk music culture is an excellent opportunity to understand a cultural value system in which highly trained cultural specialists leverage diverse ideas (obscure styles of music, varied costume designs, diverse eras in dance and movement, recombined stories and myths), distill patterns and compare archetypes while leveraging conceptual values, such as key signatures, tempos, mixtures of music theory and dynamic expression.

In sum, to understand, appreciate and utilize funk music organizational principles, one must cultivate a high tolerance for ambiguity, the skill to use diverse concepts and exercise a life-long commitment to uncovering cultural complexity. I am convinced that the people at Cultural Detective understand this...

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