The Funktresses!

As promised I am delivering a post about the women of funk music. Funk music is the music I remember around the house as a little girl in the 70's. That's right I said the 70's you wanna make something of it? It had heavy bass guitar sounds, organ bangs, lots of "owwws," "yowwws," "eewwws," "unhs," and "yes suhs." Of course, there were costumes and over the top antics from the performers, It was exciting. That music gave me a huge sense of pride about being young, beautiful and black. Most of the performers were men. Sly stone, Larry Graham, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, and James Brown were the usual suspects.

But when I saw the women of funk, I would just go crazy. They were sexy, strong and almost seemed taboo somehow. They gave black women of that day the permission to do and to be something other than sweet, conservative, lady-like, well-mannered, damsels that you often see depicted in the era of the early 60's.

I did a post earlier on Nona Hendryx, and I've made mention of Taka Boom, Chaka Khan's sister. They were funktresses. I think the most popular funk sisters of that day were The Brides of Funkenstein. They would usually be found right along side George Clinton, Parliament Funkadelic, and Bootsy Collins. However, they started out singing with Sly Stone.




Betty Mabry Davis, the ex-wife of Miles Davis (She came before Cicely Tyson married him), was a great Funktress. She was a fashion model and produced great funk music in the USA and in Europe. Some credit the genius of Bitches Brew from Miles Davis directly to her influence on him.



Another female funk group was Parlet. They were similar to Brides of Funkenstein, but less popular. They were a spin-off of parliament. They were very talented. There were many iterations of this group, this is the 1979 version, although they started in 1975.