Funk Legend George Clinton To Receive Honorary Doctorate from Berklee College of Music

At
the concert, February 16, Berklee President Roger Brown will present
Clinton with an honorary doctor of music degree in recognition for the
funk icon’s enduring musical and cultural contributions. Featuring
performances of “I Wanna Testify, ” an early career doo-wop hit,
“Mothership Connection, ” and other P-Funk classics, the concert will
pay tribute to Clinton’s musical legacy. February 13-16, Clinton will
visit classes, interact with students, and rehearse with the Berklee
P-Funk Ensemble. Clinton’s longtime horn section players Greg Thomas and
Bennie Cowan will perform with him at the concert.

George
Clinton Meets Berklee takes place on Thursday, February 16, 8:15 p.m.,
at the Berklee Performance Center (BPC), 136 Massachusetts Avenue,
Boston. Tickets are $20, $15, reserved seating. Purchase tickets at
berkleebpc.com, call 617-747-2261, or visit the BPC Box Office. The BPC
is wheelchair accessible. The concert is produced by faculty bassist
Lenny Stallworth and Africana Studies, a focused area of study within
the college’s Liberal Arts Department.

About George Clinton
George
Clinton is one of the foremost innovators of funk music, and was the
mastermind behind the bands Parliament and Funkadelic. Clinton was
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 with fifteen other
members of Parliament-Funkadelic.

Clinton started his career with
the Parliaments, a barbershop doo-wop ensemble, which scored a major
hit with “I Wanna Testify” in 1967. Clinton then began experimenting
with harmonies, melody, and rhythm, and taking cues from the psychedelic
movement, forever setting himself apart from the Motown era.

By
the early 1970s, the group’s tight songs evolved into sprawling jams
around funky rhythms. They dropped the “s” from the band name and
Parliament was born. Around the same time, Clinton spawned Funkadelic, a
rock group which fused psychedelic guitar distortion, bizarre sound
effects, and cosmological rants with danceable beats and booming bass
lines. Funkadelic recorded a number of influential concept albums,
including Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow, Maggot Brain, and
America Eats It’s Young.

Parliament and Funkadelic captured 40
hit R&B singles, including #1 hits “Flashlight, ” “One Nation Under a
Groove, ” “Aqua Boogie, ” and “(Not Just) Knee Deep.” Clinton’s
collaborators included keyboardist Bernie Worrell, guitarist Eddie
Hazel, bassist Bootsy Collins, saxophonist Maceo Parker, trombonist Fred
Wesley. On stage, spectacle ruled the day, with an enormous mothership,
outrageous costumes, and marathon performances.

In the 1980s,
Clinton emerged as a successful solo artist. He released Computer Games
with the #1 hit single “Atomic Dog, ” produced The Red Hot Chili
Peppers’ pioneering Freaky Styley, and signed with Prince’s Paisley Park
label. He also began to experiment with the urban hip-hop music scene,
as a generation of rappers reared on P-Funk began to name-check him.

Clinton
has become recognized as the godfather of modern urban music. Beats,
loops, and samples of P-Funk have appeared on albums by OutKast, Dr.
Dre, Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Missy Elliot, De La Soul, Fishbone, and
many others. As Clinton has said, “funk is the DNA of hip-hop and rap.”
In 1996, Clinton released the solo album The Awesome Power of a Fully
Operational Mothership, which reunited him with Bernie Worrel and Bootsy
Collins.

In 1997, Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic were
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Guitar Center’s Hollywood
Rock Walk, and earned a Lifetime Achievement Award at the NAACP Image
Awards. In 2002, Spin voted Parliament-Funkadelic #6 of the 50 Greatest
Bands of All Time.