This is Part II of a three part pancocojams series about Toots And The Maytals, an iconic Jamaican Ska & Rocksteady music group.
Part II presents information about the Toots And The Maytals' song "Funky Kingston". This post also showcases a YouTube video of Toots And The Maytals performing "Funky Kingston", and includes the lyrics to that song.
Update: April 17, 2019: The Addendum to this post presents a (music) definition for the word "funk" and information about "Funk music".
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2019/04/information-about-iconic-jamaican-ska.html for Part I of this series. Part I presents information about Toots And The Maytals and showcases a YouTube video of the group's song "54-46 That's My Number." Information about that song is included in this post along with a link to that song's lyrics.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2019/04/toots-and-maytals-funky-kingston.html for Part III of this series. Part III showcases a YouTube sound of file of Toots And The Maytals' "Funky Kingston" and documents selected comments from the discussion thread of that sound file.
The content of this post is presented for cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Toots And The Maytals for their musical legacy. Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publisher of this video on YouTube.
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SHOWCASE VIDEO: Funky Kingston - Toots and the Maytals
connectartists, Published on Aug 23, 2009
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Statistics: as of April 16, 2019 2:13 PM EST
total views - 547,411
total likes - 3,300
total dislikes - 25
total comments - 157
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INFORMATION ABOUT THE ALBUM AND SONG "FUNKY KINGSTON"
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funky_Kingston
"Funky Kingston is the name of two albums by reggae singing group Toots and the Maytals. The first was issued in Jamaica and the United Kingdom in 1972 on Dragon Records, DRLS 5002, a subsidiary label of Island Records, owned by Chris Blackwell.[2] A different album, with the same cover and title, was issued in the United States in 1975 on Mango Records, MLPS 9330. That album peaked at #164 on the Billboard 200 and was voted the eleventh best album of 1975 in the annual Pazz & Jop poll.[3] In 2003, the American version was placed at number 378 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[4]
[...]
Context
When the music for this album was recorded at Dynamic Sound Studios in Kingston, reggae music was little known outside of its native Jamaica, other than in musical circles. The first international release by The Wailers, Catch A Fire, would not be until 1973. Awareness of reggae began to change in 1972 with the release of the seminal film The Harder They Come (1972), which became a cult hit that year in the UK, with its soundtrack featuring two numbers by the Maytals.[7] The Maytals had been consistent hit makers in Jamaica during the 1960s, and had even given the genre its name with their single "Do the Reggay". As he would with the Wailers the following year, producer Chris Blackwell tailored the Maytals for the international market on this album.[8]
Appearances in other media
The title track, "Funky Kingston", appears in the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas video game soundtrack, on the fictitious radio station K-Jah West. It also features as the opening theme for the reality show Miami Ink. It was the basis for the "Funky Vodka" track, which in turn fueled "Don't Stop The Party". The song can be heard in the film "Notes On A Scandal" where the Hart family can be seen dancing to it. The song "Time Tough" was featured on the soundtrack for Tony Hawk's Project 8.”...
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The song “Funky Kingston” is a track on Side One of the album with the same name.
“Funky Vodka” was recorded by ___
“Don’t Stop The Party” was recorded by Pittbull
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LYRICS: FUNKY KINGSTON
(Frederick "Toots" Hibbert)
Everybody, give it to me! Uh!
Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey!
Yeah! Oh yeah
Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey!
I want you to believe every word I say
I want you to believe everything I do
I said music is what I've got to give
And I've got to find some way to make it
Music is what I've got baby
I want you to come on and shake it
Shake it, shake it baby
Oh yeah, hey
Na na na
Oh yeah! Na na na
Funky, Funky, Funky
Funky Kingston, is what I've got for you
Oh yeah
Funky Kingston, yeah, is what I've got for you
Funky Kingston, oh yeah
Oh!
Uh! (x9)
Lemme hear your, funky guitar
Eh Eh! Eh Eh! Eh Eh!
Yo reggae
Hear the piano, stick it to me, stick to me
Na Na Na Na
Oh yeah, alright, oh yeah
Watch me now
You watch me now
Playing from east to west yeah
I just play from north to south, yeah
I love black America
People keep on asking me for, Funky Kingston!
But I ain't got none
Somebody take it away from me
Source: https://genius.com/Toots-and-the-maytals-funky-kingston-lyrics
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ADDENDUM- (MUSIC) DEFINITION FOR "FUNKY" AND INFORMATION ABOUT "FUNK MUSIC"
Funky
a) of or related to funk music
b) something or someone that is "cool", "hip" (and the same or similar newer superlatives)
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These definitions are different from the "smelly", "odorous", "nasty", "stinky" (and "stinking") meaning of "funky". However, if music is really funky, it will cause people to sweat while they "get down", i.e. dance/perform soulfully without inhibitions, including dance close to the ground. Also, “getting down and dirty" means playing music and dancing with all your heart. In so doing, those people and that place will smell funky (stink).
Note that one contemporary African American vernacular meaning of "nasty" is to perform or otherwise do something very well.
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Excerpt #1:
From https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/17228/where-does-funk-and-or-funky-come-from-and-why-the-musical-reference answered by Callithumpian Mar 22 '11
"As the Wikipedia entry on Funk indicates, Yale art historian Robert Farris Thompson has posited an African origin to the musical use of funky. Here is an expanded quote from his 1984 work, Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy:
The slang term 'funky' in black communities originally referred to strong body odor, and not to 'funk,' meaning fear or panic. The black nuance seems to derive from the Ki-Kongo lu-fuki, 'bad body odor,' and is perhaps reinforced by contact with fumet, 'aroma of food and wine,' in French Louisiana. But the Ki-Kongo word is closer to the jazz word 'funky' in form and meaning, as both jazzmen and Bakongo use 'funky' and lu-fuki to praise persons for the integrity of their art, for having 'worked out' to achieve their aims. In Kongo today it is possible to hear an elder lauded in this way: 'like, there is a really funky person!--my soul advances toward him to receive his blessing (yati, nkwa lu-fuki! Ve miela miami ikwenda baki) Fu-Kiau Bunseki, a leading native authority on Kongo culture, explains: 'Someone who is very old, I go sit with him, in order to feel his lu-fuki, meaning, I would like to be blessed by him.' For in Kongo the smell of a hardworking elder carries luck. This Kongo sign of exertion is identified with the positive energy of a person. Hence, 'funk' in black American jazz parlance can mean earthiness, a return to fundamentals."
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Excerpt #2:
From https://uselessetymology.com/2017/11/25/the-etymology-of-funk/
....“a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of soul music, jazz, and rhythm and blues (R&B).”...
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Excerpt #2: From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funk
"Funk is a music genre that originated in African-American communities in the mid-1960s when African-American musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of soul music, jazz, and rhythm and blues (R&B). Funk de-emphasizes melody and chord progressions and focuses on a strong rhythmic groove of a bass line played by an electric bassist and a drum part played by a drummer. Like much of African-inspired music, funk typically consists of a complex groove with rhythm instruments playing interlocking grooves. Funk uses the same richly colored extended chords found in bebop jazz, such as minor chords with added sevenths and elevenths, or dominant seventh chords with altered ninths and thirteenths.
Funk originated in the mid-1960s, with James Brown's development of a signature groove that emphasized the downbeat—with heavy emphasis on the first beat of every measure ("The One"), and the application of swung 16th notes and syncopation on all bass lines, drum patterns, and guitar riffs.[2] Other musical groups, including Sly and the Family Stone, the Meters, and Parliament-Funkadelic, soon began to adopt and develop Brown's innovations. While much of the written history of funk focuses on men, there have been notable funk women, including Chaka Khan, Labelle, Lyn Collins, Brides of Funkenstein, Klymaxx, Mother's Finest, and Betty Davis."...
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The words that are written in italics were given that way in this article.
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This concludes Part II of this three part pancocojams series on Toots And The Maytals.
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