1971: Funkadelic, Maggot Brain
By Twinkle Fiza Duniyawala
Over the pandemic, I have developed the self-preservation skill of wailing silently in my bed so as not to wake my housemates. People grieve differently. I wail with my mouth agape with saliva drooling to the sides of my mouth and by taking heavy hot breaths that dry and cake the tears onto my cheeks. Why do I feel like I am grieving daily? How could I possibly keep on living as I keep having weeping spells even wrapped up in days of experiencing deep community care and love? Why does this emotional dichotomy become my monotony?
I am in mourning daily for the workers keeping me alive, the strangers who I feel closer to than my own biological family, and for those other — unknown-to-me-thousands-of-lives — lost because of racial capitalism, colonialism and American imperialism. Even as a child, my mother would tell me that I carry the problems of the world on my back in our spoken mother tongue, Oriya. I think mothers and caregivers try to teach us how to survive oppressions because they want us to outlive them so they do not have to grieve for us. Motherhood and caretaking can be labor-intensive burdens under capitalism.
“Mother Earth is pregnant for the Third time.
For y’all have knocked her up.
I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe. I was not offended.
For I knew I had to rise above it all
Or drown in my own shit,” George Clinton’s voice bellows from the thunderous distortions and then the wah-wah guitar reverberations of Eddie Hazel follows.
Thus begins Funkadelic’s middle-finger-to-white-America album, “Maggot Brain.” On July 12, 2021, this 1971 masterpiece concept album turned 50 years old. It still remains a revolutionary, musical fusing of cacophony & harmony to support its lyrical themes of American capitalism being a consumerist cannibal. It’s about loving Blackness and fighting White supremacy. I am grateful for George Clinton’s production, Eddie Hazel’s guitar, Tawl Ross’s guitar, Bernie Worrell’s keyboard playing, Billy Nelson’s bass guitar and Tiki Fulwood’s drums for being instrumental in my survival over the pandemic year.
While revolutionary art alone does not change the everyday living conditions of the oppressed, it can give us the strength to live one more day by decreasing our alienation. And for the majority of 2020, the year of global Black Lives Matter protests and Covid-19 pandemic, Funkadelic’s emotionality and funky playfulness in “Maggot Brain” got to the core of what it meant, for me, to be an abolitionist, to keep being in a constant state of resistance and grief, and to relish the minuscule joys of merely surviving life. Grief brings with it a reckoning with my reliance on the delicate interconnectedness of all of our interdependence on each other. I am indebted to Funkadelic and all of the Black writers and artists who’ve touched my life and I dedicate my life to practicing solidarity with every daily interaction.
George Clinton’s “Mother Earth” analogy explains that she was pregnant because living during the Cold War & the post-1968 Civil Rights era must have felt like a Third World War. Seeing deaths of prominent Black revolutionaries like Dr. King, Malcolm X, Jimi Hendrix and grieving for family and friends in 1970 must have felt like a war. It must have felt that American white supremacy was taking revenge by unleashing deadly retaliatory violence on Black people because of the victories of the Civil Rights Movement. I’m convinced that for all of the Funkadelic musicians, Mother Earth is on the cover of the record, and that “Maggot Brain” means embracing Blackness and Black people. It means to rise above all the fears and the shit of Whiteness, to do away with respectability, to embrace resistance and living in every way and to cherish the fat, funky workers of the world who keep us alive.
“Go on Maggot Brain,” Clinton whispers at the end of the first song. I’d like to believe that Funkadelic was giving us, abolitionists, political lessons in their 1971 album about how to keep going. Black artists have a revolutionary history of flipping the script and mocking oppressors while asserting their joys of survival. I’m convinced Funkadelic was mocking America. I am convinced that Funkadelic was saying that America is the biggest maggot in the universe and the Amerikkkan state is one of the biggest fear-mongers and warmongers in the Universe! Funkadelic taught me this lesson on surviving while taking revenge on our oppressors by asserting our existence via art and care work.
Looking at how the funky sounds support the lyrics in this album can unravel its lessons that are not meant for our oppressors, the rich capitalists and bourgeoisie class. For example, in “Can You Get to That,” the satirical lyrics are overpowered by the upbeat, lightness of the guitars, rhythmic drums and the melodious singing of the verses. The deep-voiced, “I wanna know,” in the hooks is the epitome of mockery and fills me with laughter. The lyrics on the surface talk about money and disillusionment with a past lover. Funkadelic is mocking White America yet again by challenging them to meet the demands for reparations that Dr. King, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers were championing, along with other Black revolutionaries who were critical of capitalism in the 60s. The reference to Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech and the money motif signal to me reparations. The song also expresses the disillusionment with revolution and seeing resistance co-opted or being thwarted by White America by its use of the analogies of an ex-lover's betrayal. The hook is a challenge to White people. Can you get to that? Can you meet the liberation demands of Black people? Do you, whites, really want liberation, or do you only want to pretend?
The third track, “Hit It and Quit It,” is such a beautiful love letter to fleeting pleasures of life that keep us alive. Funkadelic is tender with addicts. My own struggles with alcohol abuse have taught me to coddle life. Drugs and casual sex are such pleasurable escapes! So few are the joys under capitalism! Let us have these fleeting hedonisms without shaming individuals. In a capitalist Earth, addiction is caused by class struggles and aggravated by alienating people. Making art is an escape too but Funkadelic couldn’t escape their personal political turmoil from dripping into this song even while using drugs. George Clinton and Billy Nelson’s writing and Nelson’s deep bass guitar is magically psychedelic. It sounds like a good trip with its repetitive drums and its repetitive “I want you to hit it” and those yearning-for-that-high-feeling guitar playing and those lightheaded keyboard melodies of Bernie Worrell.
“You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks” is the perfect middle point of the album because Tiki Fulwood’s drumming shines through the guitar and takes more of a central thematic role! This song is about the deep seated trust issues within the working class and why class consciousness and unity is so difficult to achieve in our communities. Listen to these recurring phrases and words in the song: fears, trust each other, poor, roaches and rats. To me, it seems that Funkadelic is saying that paranoia and distrust is a result of the poor fighting for scraps against each other. Mass public paranoia is caused by our capitalist oppressors to keep us separated. Whenever our bosses, the rich and their government practice pro-capitalist reform measures like funding police departments and militaries instead of public schools then they are telling us that we are actually deserving of less than we demand. We, the oppressed, internalize this and fight amongst each other. So for me, Funkadelic is telling me to work on building trust within my communities if I want to keep building abolition. We’ve got to keep investing in each other’s survival to build abolition, otherwise the “hate is gonna keep multiplying.”
“Super Stupid” is the true anecdote of Eddie Hazel seeking out a coke high but instead finding heroine and experiencing a “scag” overdose. It is actually physically difficult to keep only engaging in self-destructive and addictive escapes as a means of survival. Our addictions hurt those we care for. No matter how much numbing of capitalism-induced alienation via drugs and casual sex we can engage in, the only true lasting escape from oppression is the liberation of all Black working class people. However, White Amerikkka’s retaliation after 1968, seems to Funkadelic that fear is the winner. The winner is White America’s fear of Blackness. Hazel’s scatting and guitar are actually pretty cacophonous if played separately from each other and from Bernie Worrell’s keyboards but together they expose this anguish of tasting what freedom could be but seeing Amerikkka looting it from Black people via the lyrical analogy of a drug high turned overdose.
What happens after the high? What happens after Langston Hughes’ and Dr. King’s “Dream” is deferred yet again? What happens when revolutionaries keep dying during the fight? Funkadelic’s answer is “Back in Our Minds.” Perhaps, seeing White Supremacy being accepted in reformist measures, put Funkadelic back in their mind and turned them away from fighting on the streets. Maybe, just maybe, this loss of trust in the resistance fueled the band’s interpersonal conflict and distrust. The original group split after this album and they have collaborated in other ways in later years but there was a major shift within the group dynamics after this album. In some cases, drugs fatigued the physical health of some members. But they kept making art. The upbeat, playful sounds of the bells and whirring in the song hide the utter disillusionment with getting free in their lifetime. The cheery chorus, “we don’t fight no more,” is not about peace. It's about the emotional bitterness in having to keep on living while being oppressed because dying would mean that our oppressors won. Black artists had to keep revolutizing music and still struggle multitudes more than the whites to achieve recognition and monetary stability. Funkadelic played funk in the post-1968 era to mock commercially successful white rock stars.
Making funk was Funkadelic’s refuge. “Wars of Armageddon'' is the funkiest of all funk songs ever made! I never knew how alluring jarring sounds could be until I attended a Black Lives Matter protest in Columbus, Ohio in June 2020 and was reminded of this song. This particular protest the cops and national guard had military grade tanks but their eyes betrayed their racist fears of the protestors. I believe that for Funkadelic, liberation sounded like this song. Metals banging alongside protest chants. Distorted, crackling reverbs. Mother Earth’s baby crying as it is born. Workers shouting at each other about hating going to work. Guitars squealing like a PIG being killed. Fulwood’s glorious, victorious and unrelenting drumming. Farting. Capitalist clocks breaking. Monkey mimicry. The howls and fearful screams of White America. Titillating whispers at the end of the song that say, “It’s a fat funky person.”
Funk is defined as an unpleasant smell, or a state of depression, or a state of fear. However, funk music was born at the time of Black revolutionaries rejoicing in “Black is Beautiful” and “Black Power” slogans. Funkadelic is celebrating Blackness and promoting afro-futuristic hopes of what the death of white supremacy might sound like in this album. I will forever be indebted to Black artists for the ways they have become the reasons I have kept living. I will forever be indebted to Black comrades, Black working class women co-workers, Black queer and trans friends and Black revolutionaries — all who have been there for me when I wasn’t able to be there for myself.
The “Maggot Brain” album fully characterizes the cacophony and harmony of living in a revolutionary period where centuries of oppression is questioned and we, the oppressed, experience a glimpse of what we could have if we could be free. Being alive in this apocalyptic time when it feels like the day could be stolen from us in the blink of an eye and there are uncertainties of making to the next day alive, we experience a range of human emotions and thoughts: happiness, sadness, grief, alienation, fear, joys of community, hope, paranoia, self-loathing, trust, love, hedonism, apathy, and various other complexities.
Fighting against White America, fighting for Black liberation, and fighting racial capitalism’s hold on our brains is uncomfortable work within us — the people who are freedom-minded and trying to rise above it all. We experience the emotional dichotomy of happiness and sadness that cause us to unlearn oppressive behaviors and we experience emotional anguish. Thank you to Funkadelic for ferociously asserting their truth and resisting where they could and however they could! Today, I am sending gratitude and undying solidarity to all of the original band members, the living and the departed, for the 50th “Maggot Brain” anniversary.
Twinkle Fiza Duniyawala is a South Asian non-binary bisexual journalist and artist in Columbus, Ohio. Twinkle has had journalist internships with Matter News, Columbus Free Press, and has an internet radio show on Verge FM called, "For the love of world cinema with Sonia and Twinkle." They've been a leftist activist in Columbus since 2016.