Funked Up

Dudley Perkins & Georgia Anne Muldrow resolutely promote a positive message through their music. “The message is one half of the equation – the message that we're sharing about needing to live in a peaceful world,” Georgia Anne Muldrow asserts. “So we're seeking just to have it right out there — no candy colouring, just straight-up, raw — what people think every day who go to work, you know? Who are sick of this stuff.

“What we're doing is cultural, spiritual. It has something to do with how people live, and that's what culture is, you know what I mean? Right now it's what people want, and what people got, and what people ain't got – but we talking about how people live.”

Muldrow, the beats-maker of the married pair (and a solo artist in her own right), exudes joy when discussing funk music. “Funk is like – it takes loving music itself, and having an open ear to all kinds of music and hearing the funk that goes in it. If you listen to, like, Chinese classical music you can hear the funk in it. You can listen to anything and if it's funky, it's funky.” However Muldrow senses a range of genres within her compositions. “I mean, we might do it record by record. You know, this might be like a hip hop or rap record, but at the end of the day when you listen to it, you're like, 'Holy smokes!' You hear jazz, you hear, like, Latin and samba kinda stuff in there, straight-up P-Funk...”

The music of Dudley Perkins & Georgia Anne Muldrow definitely spreads positive vibrations, which is refreshing when you consider some of the toxic messages delivered via song these days. “A lot of the mainstream hip hop that has international access to other places in the world is like, 'Look what I got. I got all this, you don't have anything', you know?” And that doesn't make the working person feel included... The reality of it is there are so many talented people out here that are musically inclined, who are skilled at their craft, but [the major labels] say, 'We don't want that'... It's the whole, you know, Top 40. Not knocking simplicity, but there's a difference between Miles Davis being simple, and then looking at straight-up programming... And it's not about mastering your craft to be a musician anymore. It's about having attitude and being dramatic – it's like a whole other thing.”

Muldrow also feels pop music has a damaging influence on young people. “It's really geared towards the pre-teen generation. They're not even teenagers and they're singing about, 'Do what you want with my body'... And they think that to be successful, you have to have a reality show and you have to be a big old cartoon of yourself in order to really be famous... It's the whole aesthetic that really needs to die.”