Richard Anderson Reality

Sir Richard Rodney Bennett’s Gothic opera The Mines of Sulphur is reminiscent of suspense thrillers from Edgar Allan Poe to Alfred Hitchcock. Love, longing, and dark as well as light comedy abound in this macabre tale of greed and retribution set in a haunted manor house in the West of England. The title of the tale, taken from Shakespeare’s Othello, refers to the theme of gradual corruption.

So what is funk? It’s sometimes difficult to know. In the 1950s, the piano style of both Ray Charles and Horace Silver were described as funk, and the word itself has long associations with black music, going back even further into history. Clearly the success of James Brown at the tail end of the 1960s—say from “Cold Sweat” onwards—established the funk era, but the Godfather of super-heavy funk had already set out his stall with “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” and “I Got You (I Feel Good)” in 1965. At the same time a series of productions he recorded with Bobby Byrd, James Crawford, and others saw him slowly perfect his groove.