What did Disco Have to Do With Funk?

[mnaz]

Random question, fifty years later.
Did Disco make a mockery of the Funk?
God help me, I still like KC & the Sunshine pop
from 1975, right before disco hit us hard.

Get down tonight.
Get down tonight.
The basic premise is always there.
How to play it out is up for interpretation.

[saw]

loved what George Clinton was doing with P funk....but refused to listen to disco......our rock station here in Baltimore literally blew up a whole mountain of disco records in the stadium HA Ha.....those were the days

there was a lot of overlap, sorta impossible to not hear soul and rythym and blues in there with each

technically with funk the emphasis in on the first beat.....disco emphasized every beat and ramped up the electronica

but it all kinda blended together with certain recordings adding psychedelia.......diversity ruled

[mnaz]

Short answer: disco appropriated from and "dumbed down" the funk, soul and R&B, and (too) often in a cheap, plastic way. (P=Funk is king, btw. I have most of Parliament's albums and used to have Best of Funkadelic until someone stole it.) There was more to the disco story of course. It was a social phenomenon, giving rise to Club culture. Before Studio 54 opened in 1977, I don't remember much of a dance club scene anywhere.

Like I said, I've had my "guilty pleasures," some more "guilty" than others, sprinkled within (KC's plastic pop among them). I also had a thing for Chic, and its legit musical talent. I loved Bernard Edwards' bass playing, and guitarist Nile Rodgers went on to produce many recording artists, including Diana Ross, David Bowie, INXS, Madonna, Duran Duran, Jeff Beck, Mick Jagger and others. He also composed movie soundtracks, including the orchestral soundtrack for Coming to America.

But yes, in the end it was Disco, and it had to die.

[sasha]

I was heavy into the jazz-rock thing, what we call fusion now - Mahavishnu Orchestra, Carlos Santana, RTF, and an also-ran called the 11th House. Even they veered dangerously close to disco a few times - probably at the behest of their labels, who smelled a lot of money to be made.

[mnaz]

It definitely was huge. Heck, it even crept into a Rolling Stones song ...

[sasha]

"...a coupla Puerto Rican girls just dyyyyyyyin' to meetya! "