Marching to the Beat of the Funky Drummer

For reasons too embarrassing to mention, I recently stumbled across the U.S. Army Field Band Jazz Ambassador’s educational video “Inside the Big Band.” At around the 15:40 mark, the outfit explains how to play funk and hip hop, as only the U.S. Army Field Band can explain.

My good friend, the clown philosopher Steve Petersen, excerpted the segment.

That’s called playing it straight, folks. [Insert “Play that Funky Music” joke here.]

This is eerily similar to a 2005 episode of Look Around You, a pitch-perfect British parody of early 1980s children’s science television. (To this day, I have a 5- year-old’s crush on Ginny Ortiz. Damn you, 3-2-1 Contact, for causing me to major in physics for two painful years.) In one episode (or as they call it, “module”), singers competed to predict what music would sound like in the year 2000.

Before his performance, competitor Antony Carmichael, a profiterol chef from London, explained, “There’s a new kind of music emerging in America where people talk over the music. . . . It’s known as ‘rap music.'”

If you enjoyed that, also check out the uninhibited performance by shy theoretical physicist Tony Baxter.

And the third and last performance, Tony Rudd’s Bob Dylan-esque “Machadaynu,” was popular enough to receive a heavily sampled remix.

This entry was posted in comedy, curio, hip hop, irony, music. Bookmark the permalink.

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