courtesy photo
Tower of Power
at the Brown County Music Center March 18
F
~by Ryan Stacy
unk music of the 1970s has never gone away. You’ll hear it on a TV commercial tonight, on the soundtrack of a movie you watch this weekend, and sampled by a rap or R&B artist next week. Stop in at a night spot in Bloomington or Indianapolis: you’ll hear seventies funk, through karaoke machines, from DJ booths, and on stages. At any wedding reception, bowling alley, or outdoor festival worth going to, at some point, you’ll hear seventies funk. More important, on March 18 you’ll hear—and see, and feel—seventies funk at the Brown County Music Center, when giants of the genre Tower of Power make the only Indiana appearance of their 2022 tour. The tenpiece will bring the funky rhythms in the way only they can do it, offering our community a rare opportunity to experience the real deal. Tower of Power don’t play seventies funk. They are seventies funk. Along with James Brown, Parliament, and the Ohio Players, their relentless rhythms and magnificent horn section carved out an instantly
28 Our Brown County March/April 2022
recognizable, irresistibly danceable style of American music. The foundations of the Tower were laid in Oakland, California in the late 1960s, when saxophonists Emilio Castillo and Doc Kupka, together with bassist Rocco Prestia, set their sights on playing the Fillmore in San Francisco, the epicenter of hippie culture. “We started adapting to the times, growing our hair out,” says Castillo. Over time, their band grew as well, eventually to ten players. Castillo and Kupka were the group’s main songwriters, and by the mid-1970s, they’d established themselves as a funk powerhouse, with five albums and a string of hit singles including “You’re Still a Young Man,” “So Very Hard to Go,” and “What Is Hip?” But being musical pioneers wasn’t always easy. “We made every mistake known to man,” laughs Castillo, referring to ToP’s earlier days. Something must have gone right, however, Continued on 30
