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Funk My Soul: The Assassination Of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And The Birth Of Funk Culture, Domenico Rocco Ferri
Funk My Soul: The Assassination Of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And The Birth Of Funk Culture, Domenico Rocco Ferri
Dissertations
Few can deny that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s untimely death had a profound impact on American life. In this dissertation, I argue that the assassination inspired musicians, producers, artists, and consumers across the nation to reconstruct soul music and, in its place, construct the cultural idiom known as funk. Narrating the process by which black artists' embraced and popularized funk modes of expression, this dissertation traces how the genre extended directly from post-assassination trauma and attempted to provide a purposeful announcement of black solidarity and an uncensored narrative of the black American experience. In telling the story of funk, …