Steve Reich & George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic: Momentary Musical Utopias

Abstract

This paper explores ideas of musical temporality in the intersections between composer Steve Reich’s work Drumming and Parliament-Funkadelic’s song “Mothership Connection.” Classical composers in the 20th century have increasingly experimented with non-linear time structures despite a tradition of teleological, or goal-directed, organization while genres of popular music have primarily relied on cyclical processes for musical organization. The paper discusses kinds of musical time, linearity, non-linearity, motion, and stasis. It examines Steve Reich, minimalism, analyzes Reich’s composition Drumming, and discusses the music and meaning of George Clinton, Parliament- Funkadelic, and “Mothership Connection.” Then the paper relates commonalities between Reich and Clinton in musical approach and aesthetic intention.

In showing the teleological nature of largely cyclically constructed music the paper aims to partially deconstruct the arbitrary duality of Western, teleological, linear musical organization with non- Western, cyclical, non-linear music. In connecting minimalism and funk, genres culturally codified as high vs. low art, and in finding parallel meanings, the paper aims to legitimize non-linear or cyclical musical organization as a fundamental structural principle of modern music and bridge the gap between the two in arguing that both genres use similar temporal arrangements to fundamentally seek the same goal of momentary musical transcendence.