Various Artists - Good God! Born Again Funk Review

I am not religious. Not even a little. So when I listen to gospel music, there is naturally a gap between me and the people singing. But to be irreligious is not necessarily to be without a spiritual side, and music has always been my connection to it. I don't pretend to have answers-- for all I know, the intangible effects of music could be 100% chemistry or the handiwork of an involved god-- but I do know that music has strange powers. It can lift you up, if not to Heaven, then at least out of a funk; it can access places and emotions that you don't get to in daily conversation, regardless of what the singer is actually saying. It can be hopeful without saying anything hopeful, sad without saying anything sad, joyful without saying a word.

More tangibly, music can activate the parts of the brain that govern movement, and here's where it gets really easy to ignore my differences with other belief systems and just get into someone else's groove. This compilation, a collection of funk and soul-influenced gospel music recorded between 1970 and 1985, is Numero Group's second foray into this field, and it's easily as good as the first. It's also funky enough immediately to grab any listener with a taste for rhythm-- even if you don't roll with Jesus, there's a good chance you can enjoy the storytelling and feel the sheer passion these performers put into their music. Right in the middle of the compilation, the Victory Travelers deliver a screaming, devotional blast called "I Know I've Been Changed" that hinges on a key couplet heard in numerous funky gospel tunes: "I dropped in the water, the water was cold/ Chilled my body but not my soul." It's a powerful image and says a lot about the singer's faith without sanctimony....full text As Al Green could tell you, the line between pulpit-rocking and pelvis-rocking can be mighty thin. The second volume of Numero Group's Good God! series takes this point to the bridge and beyond. There's nothing as bizarre as the Voices of Conquest's choir-and-drum-kit jam "O Yes My Lord" (see 2006's A Gospel Funk Hymnal), but Born Again rivals its forerunner for fire-and-brimstone grooves. The ladies shine brightest: Lucy "Sister Soul" Rodgers rides a funky clavinet jam, and Ada Richards praises holy intoxication on the set's hardest cut, "I'm Drunk & Real High (In the Spirit of God)." Belly up to the bar....full text VINYL FORMAT. The Numero Group's 2006 release Good God! A Gospel Funk Hymnal examined what seemed to be a conundrum: gospel singers performing pious gospel songs, and devoutly, but doing so amid hot, sweaty, earthy sounds. Four years later, Numero returns with not quite a New Testament, rather a re-examination of a weighty tome. Born Again Funk lends new ears to a joyful strain of American composers and performers unafraid of expressing their devotion with both inspiration and invention....full text