Show notes
Episode Summary
Bootsy Collins transforms The Tight Rope on this Special Funk Edition. Bootsy, Dr. Cornel West, and Professor Tricia Rose talk all things funk in the context of the perils of following trends, the process of self-acceptance and self-discovery, confronting fear, and the “manipulation of the funk.” Bootsy shares details about his upcoming album The Power of the One. Hear what funk means to Bootsy Collins and how we must be funky in our own lives on this episode of The Tight Rope.
Cornel West
Dr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.
Tricia Rose
Professor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.
Boosty Collins
Bootsy Collins, a great “Funkmaster,” has been making music since 1968. He played bass with the Pacesetters, James Brown, Bootsy’s Rubber Band, and the Parliament-Funkadelic collective. He also wrote songs and arranged rhythm. Black music “artistic nobility” from Cincinnati, Bootsy was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by Bass Play magazine, and he is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. No one says it better than Dr. West when he describes Bootsy as an “exemplar of the greatest modern tradition in the world which is Black music wrestling with suffering and transfiguring and transforming it into such a way that the sonic effects on souls, soul to soul, [are] mediated with genius, mediated with talent, mediated with discipline, mediated with vision.” Check out Bootsy’s new album The Power of the One, which includes a collaboration with Dr. West. All proceeds from the streams and downloads of his new song, “Stars,” will go to the MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund.
Insight from this episode:
Secrets behind the key to the funk and how to make something out of nothing.
Insights into the past, present, and future of funk music.
The story behind the bassline of “Flash Light” and Bootsy’s artistic self-discovery.
Bootsy Collins’s take on Black Lives Matter and the current moment.
Behind-the-scenes details on past and present collaborations between Boosty Collins and Dr. West.
Quotes from the show:
“I don’t never want to lose that kid inside me because when I lose him, I lose a part of myself.” –Bootsy Collins The Tight Rope Episode #14
“One of the things about funk, and one of the great gifts that we Black people have brought to the world in terms of the d
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