BBC Music

Rodney P's Jazz Funk (2020x24)

: 24, 2020

Rapper Rodney P Edwards reveals how the first generation of British-born black kids was inspired by the avant-garde musical fusions of black America in the 70s to lay the foundations of modern-day multiculturalism by creating the first black British music culture with the jazz-funk movement. Jazz-funk resists any simple description. It's a scene, not a genre; an attitude, not a sound; a movement, not a fashion. In this film - the first to deconstruct, explain and contextualise this most British of underground music genres - we show the importance of jazz-funk as the very first home-grown black British music culture, a world created by the first generation of British-born black kids who were determined to make space for self-expression that they could truly call their own. To understand how black British culture has gone on to have such a deep impact on youth culture in Britain and around the world, you need to understand jazz-funk.