Big Fun with Big Fun(K)

[Editor's note: This concert has been cancelled.]

Pam Splieth, 12, talked about funk: "It's body wiggling music," she shimmied.

Get ready to wiggle your body when the collaborative band, Big Fun(K), boogies into the Oskar Schindler Performing Arts Center at 4 Boland Drive, West Orange, 8 p.m. Thursday.

If you remember George Clinton and the Funkadelics, the Average White Band, and the years in the late 1960s, early 1970s when Sly and the Family Stone electrified the airwaves and performance stages, then you know funk.

These days, Clinton still is performing and rock bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and some hip hop groups have a strong funk element to their music.

As to Big Fun(K), the quartet  has a live album and video recorded at Cecil's Jazz Club on Valley Street near Main Street in West Orange that's coming out this fall.

Eponymous drummer Cecil Brooks III talked about funk. "Funk is the very essence of American music. It comes out of gospel, blues, jazz. In the 1950s and 60's it was the Meters out of New Orleans; it was James Brown singing 'Papa's Got A Brand New Bag,' " Brooks said.

"There are certain drum styles in funk," Brooks continued. "They're more complicated than the soul music of the same era, but funk has soul."

Funk is also built on prominent bass lines, coming out of the innovations of Motown's famed  bassist, James Jamerson.

Big Fun(K) is a collaborative band — that means there is no one leader. Band mates Don Braden on tenor saxophone, Nick Rolfe on keyboards, Gary Foote on bass and Karl Latham on drums have performed with one another in different bands over the years. They work individually and together on the band's original compositions and arrangements.

Big Fun(K) drummer Karl Latham talked about the group, the band's name and the music.

"I always wanted to do a jam band with a lot of soul, a band where people would get up and dance. People really like our music." Latham said.

"As musicians, we were inspired by Miles Davis' psychedelic recording, 'Big Fun,' that came out in 1974," Latham continued. "That's where the band's name comes from and that's where I came into jazz.

"As to funk, I liked 'Parliament- Funkadelic' by George Clinton. Later, Prince brought the music forward in time. Now, a lot of young kids are playing it."

Noted tenor saxophone player and jazz educator Don Braden of South Orange grew up in Louisville, Ky., listening and playing covers of saxophonist Grover Washington Jr.'s funk/R&B hit album " Mr. Magic," Tower of Power cuts and Stevie Wonder.

Soon he was digging the jazz-funk Crusaders, Miles, Herbie Hancock and Weather Report with Wayne Shorter.

"It's electric music as is being done now. The songs I write for the band are high energy, definitely a lot of groove and funk. We do my compositions as well as some covers," Braden said. "It's exciting to play. We go for it."