Not a Googlewhack

Googlewhacking arose several years ago as a result of Google’s rise to dominance in the search wars. The game is to find two words who don’t yet appear anywhere, or who only appear in one place on the internet. So, if you find a space and fill it, then you have your Whack.

Now this may be terribly old fashioned, but I still get a mild shock when I find a phrase which doesn’t exist in the analog collective mind of Search. Yesterday I was smiling to myself at the way I have always insisted – known – that the real origin of the word Funk is the smell of sex. In the same way that Rock ‘n’ Roll is the movement of sex – of course, you knew that, didn’t you?

Somewhere about the time that freed american slaves began to achieve social standing, the word “Funk” became used to mean “fear” and being “in a funk” was used to mean “scared”. I don’t think this use of language a casual coincidence – I think it’s part of the way in which the ruling classes maintain their vice-like grip on the oppressed. It’s more than just sanitising and Bowdlerising, it is about control. Yet, Funk will out, and while the music still flows on like Art Blakey’s river, it still lives, while the old expressions fall out of usage.

Funk is the grown up, happy child of the blues, no doubt about it, having woken up one morning, got stoned, taken acid, started wearing outrageous clothes and got political. While it welcomes all races and creeds, it represents black artists in particular doing it for themselves. Americans in particular like to obfuscate and deny anything to do with the dark side of their culture and its roots in black slavery – the continuing legacy of which is the appalling ratio of blacks to other races in the US prison system – and this of course extends to music.

So, what was that Googlewhack?

Explanation: I was creating a new RSS feed and smiling at my persistence and bizarrely scholastic methods. Clearly, I haven’t been insistent enough – funksmellofsex is absolutely nowhere to be found.