In a world where "Play that Funky Music" is censored...

[pizzabrat]

@KayElCee

Actually, I am pretty sure that this is not new censorship. I think that the bowdlerized version of “Play that Funky Music” has been around for as long as the original. I’m pretty sure I heard it back when I was a teenager.

It was also censored in an old Intel ad from the 90’s.

[randwill]

@jali

Wow. I didn’t know there were actual negative racial connotations. I remember James Brown, “…and it’s gots to be funky”. I remember “Do the Funky Chicken”. I remember Parliament Funkadelic and a host of bands playing “funk music”. I missed the whole negative vibe.

I learn something here everyday,

I meant hearing the work "fu** instead of funk.

If the word ‘funky’ has negative racial connotations it comes as news to me too.

[Marley23]

Are we really being asked to defend the artistic integrity of Wild Cherry? Jeez.

@OtakuLoki

My understanding has been that it started as a derogatory description of “negro music.”

You may be right, but it’s been accepted as the name for a style of music for 40 years. There can’t be too many people offended by it anymore.

[OtakuLoki]

@Marley23

You may be right, but it’s been accepted as the name for a style of music for 40 years. There can’t be too many people offended by it anymore.

I don’t disagree that it’s very, very cold pudding. I only suggested that if someone were determined to feel offended over something that I believe the word has a history that would lend itself to that.

Has nothing to do with how the word is accepted, now.

[Marley23]

@OtakuLoki

I don’t disagree that it’s very, very cold pudding. I only suggested that if someone were determined to feel offended over something that I believe the word has a history that would lend itself to that.

Knowing the way these things work, people could take offense even if your etymology is incorrect. Anyway, do you have a cite for it?

[lieu]

I’ll clean up my oldies library
when the _______ _____ go
doo do doo do doo do doo doo do doo

[OtakuLoki]

I’ll admit I’ve been doing a quick look for it. And this dictionary offers funk with a 1600’s definition as being a bad smell, then mysteriously in the 1950’s coming to mean music. It offers no linkage, but I don’t think it contradicts what I suggested. This article from Cecil seems to support that it was a derogatory descriptor, I think.

[Terrifel]

But without the “white boy,” it could be anyone playing that funky music! It could be an elderly Asian woman playing that funky music! It could be a Mestizo hermaphrodite! The song would simply make no sense!

[cornflakes]

@randwill

Soon we will hear James Brown singing, “Say it out loud! I’m _______ and I’m proud!”

And we will all “Get on up… like a sax machine!”

Well, it is a tip of the hat to his horn section, right?

[Wee_Bairn]

I thought the FCC only was concerned about certain foul words, or description of sex, and the like? Is this really an FCC issue?

[ReuvenB]

@Terrifel

But without the “white boy,” it could be anyone playing that funky music! It could be an elderly Asian woman playing that funky music! It could be a Mestizo hermaphrodite! The song would simply make no sense!

I’d just like to say that this post has made my day. I can’t stop giggling.

[Hypno-Toad]

As a person without color, I’m glad that removed those offensive lyrics.

[Marley23]

@Wee Bairn

Is this really an FCC issue?

Nobody said it was. FCC or not, stations don’t want their listeners complaining. Nor did they want them complaining 30 years ago.

[Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew]

@Terrifel

But without the “white boy,” it could be anyone playing that funky music! It could be an elderly Asian woman playing that funky music! It could be a Mestizo hermaphrodite! The song would simply make no sense!

I’m always amused when I hear that song being done by a bar band–and it is a major staple on the bar band circuit–and the singer is either not white, not a boy, or both. I have heard the song more than once sung by an Asian woman.

[Zebra]

I’m dreaming of a _____ Christmas.

[Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew]

@Zebra

I’m dreaming of a _____ Christmas.

Funky?

[Zebra]

Bing Crosby may have been many things, but ‘funky’ wasn’t one of them.

[Skywatcher]

New Kids on the Block once wished people a Funky, Funky Xmas.

[cochrane]

I’m a dirty melanin-deficient boy,
I’m a dirty melanin-deficient boy,
I’m a dirty melanin-deficient boy,

Dirty melanin-deficient boy!

[Lakai]

This reminds me when a song lyric form a Black Eyed Peas song was changed from “don’t funk with my heart” to “don’t mess with my heart” for the radio. :rolleyes: