Episode 31: Dawn Silva [FUNK QUEEN]

When DAWN SILVA – (Brides of Funkenstein, P-Funk, GAP Band, All My Funky Friends] – shopped her autobiography, The FUNK QUEEN to book publishers, they didn’t exactly grasp the entire vision. “Everybody said the same thing,” she says. “‘You can’t do it.’” This is because the OG funkateer had created something you don’t see on shelves every day. “Mine is not only a table book with classic photos,” she explains. “It also has an autobiography, and there‘s about maybe five books within that one book.” Dawn wasn’t exactly shocked by the rejections, however. “Autobiography table books don’t exist,” she allows. “They cost too much.” Therefore companies she approached insisted that she would have to do something much simpler and cheaper to produce. But she knew that what she had, though unusual, was also magical.

Gathering the photos was a tale unto itself, starting with a man by the name of Steve Labelle, an ex-police officer turned photographer who traveled with Parliament Funkadelic from 1976 to 1981. “He was a fanatic,” she recalls. “So he went out on the road with us for all those years and he took all these photos… His health took a turn for the worse and he had been sitting on those photos for about 30 years. So he says ‘Are you still writing your book, Dawn?’ and I said ‘Yea I am.’ So he asked me to make him a promise that, if he sent those photos to me to me, I would put them in my book.”

She of course agreed, assuming he was talking about a couple dozen pictures or so. But then packages started arriving via Fed Ex—daily—with CDs full of classic photos. “There was three thousand of them,” she says. “I was like, What the heck?” But shock soon turned into inspiration, as each picture became the outline for a story that became more and more detailed until an epic tale in full color emerged, one that she couldn’t deny the world despite what publishers had advised. “I did actually start trying to remove the photos,” she admits, but “every photo I removed, I lost a little of the magic.” So she raised the capital and had it manufactured herself—a seven pound (!) hardcover masterpiece. “They sent it back to me,” she laughs, “and I was like ‘Oh my God. What have I done?’”

What she had created was the FUNK QUEEN, a beautifully printed, glossy package containing over 500 pages of rich funk history, way more than knee deep with amazing and tragic tales, as well as brushes with funk and soul greatness that will inspire ladies young and old while imbuing the fellas with a greater respective for Dawn’s legacy. And just like everything else in her storied career, she had done exactly what the powers that be had said she couldn’t do. “I took a chance because everyone said I couldn’t do it and it wouldn’t work,” she confirms. “And it’s working.”

Taking chances is what made Dawn a professional singer in the first place. As a young lady, a friend of hers brought her to the Record Plant in Sausalito, a Bay Area CA haven for some of the biggest musical acts in the world, including the man who was there laying tracks that day, none other than SLY STONE. He was recording a cut called “Crossword Puzzle,” and his lil sister Vet was having trouble hitting the top notes. Dawn’s friend told Sly that she could hit those notes, so next thing she knew, she was standing in front of the mic herself. She sang like her life depended on it, but things weren’t quite coming together at first. “I didn’t realize I was singing wrong,” she remembers. “I didn’t know how to blend with the section.” After a quick tutorial from Elva “Tiny” Mouton, Dawn learned how to blend her voice with the others. “Like an hour after that session was over,” says Dawn, “Sly said, ‘Welcome to Sly and the Family Stone.’ And that’s how I got that gig.”

Dawn rolled with the Fam for a while, but at some point Sly’s interest in carrying on seemed to wane. His lack of enthusiasm culminated into his walking off a tour with Bootsy’s Rubber Band and Parliament Funkadelic. That very night, Dawn and her then cohort Lynn Maybry were invited to jump ship—mothership, that is. The ladies were thrilled, but it was a whole ‘nother kind of thing. “We were like these little debutantes,’ laughs Dawn. “These little Cali girls… I remember Garry [Shider] saying, ‘That good home trainin’ stuff doesn’t work out here.’”

Soon afterward, Dawn along with other funk queens—whom she calls “thoroughbreds”—appeared across all P-Funk platforms, from Parliament’s Motor Booty Affair and Funkentelechy vs the Placebo Syndrome, to Funkadelic’s One Nation Under Groove and Uncle Jam Wants You. Her voice can also be heard all over such essential, stanky classics as Eddie Hazel’s beloved solo album Game, Dames & Guitar Thangs, and the Sweat Band and Horny Horns albums. Even more importantly, she took center stage to co-lead the BRIDES OF FUNKENSTEIN, whose funktastic albums Funk or Walk and Never Buy Texas from a Cowboy are still much admired today. And the Brides’ original band was a mutha too, featuring Frankie “Kash” Waddy on drums, the Headhunters’ Blackbyrd McKnight on guitar, bassist Jeff “Cherokee” Bunn, Gary Hudgins on keys, and the hecka bad Horny Horns: Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley, Kush Griffith, and Rick Gardner.

But this star turn with the Brides was when things started going wrong for Ms. Silva. “Back in those days,” she explains, “women were pretty much deemed second class at every level in terms of abuse and being creative. If you were too strong, if you were too powerful, then you were pretty much deemed a threat.” This pernicious system of misogyny resulted in self-sabotaging decisions that, in retrospect, seem outrageous today. Clinton and others within her own camp even disallowed the press from speaking with the Brides, obliging road managers such as Cheryl James to risk sneaking reporters and photographers into the ladies’ dressing room. “The more successful we became,” laments Dawn, “the more they sought to shut it down… Even [though] we were winning music awards… Why, in a world that thrives on success, would you deliberately sabotage your female artists? The shortest way I could explain that today is called control. Power. Greed.“

But Dawn stayed with the Funk Organization and put up with the oppression and low pay for a while. Indeed, one might ask, If it was so bad, why did you stay? Her answer is clear and quite understandable. “I call it being a slave to the rhythm,” she says. “Sometimes people can take what you love the most and use it as a weapon against you to control you—and that would be the music… Regardless of everything that was going on around me that I saw that I had complaints about, it’s the music that kept me grounded because I wasn’t just a fan—I was in love with this art form. And it was a way of freedom and peace for me too on the other side of that. “

Dawn did eventually break away, however, recording and touring with artists such as Ice Cube, Roy Ayers, the GAP Band, and even the Platters. But her best work was not behind her. After several false starts over the years, she entered the 21st century with a banger of a solo joint, the almighty album ALL MY FUNKY FRIENDS. Yet, much like publishers regarding her book, the record execs refused to see it for the rare treasure that it was. “They told me that funk was dead,” she recalls. “They told me there was no longer a market for funk… I thought they were systematically trying to eliminate it, so I took that personal… Now I had a mission.”

She decided to put the album out herself on her own independent label. She also expanded her reach by being an early adopter of online forums—where a million plus fans could follow her directly—and entered into indie licensing deals in places like Holland, Germany, France, Japan, China, Thailand, and Sierra Leone. “I ended up selling over a quarter of a million CDs out of my kitchen,” she says, “from a ‘dead’ market, supposedly.” If all that weren’t impressive enough for a woman in funk, her promotional activity overseas led to a headlining gig (!) at the mammoth North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands alongside Chaka Khan, Herbie Hancock, and the Yellowjackets. And by the way: Funky Friends is still selling today. “I proved to the naysayers, to corporate record companies in the states that here was a very viable market for the funk,” Dawn surmises proudly. “Actually, it’s even bigger today than it was then. That’s why I continue on.”

Indeed, Ms. Silva is one of the truest Funk Soldiers out there today, as she says: “down in the trenches fighting to keep this art form alive.” And as far as she’s concerned, the key to funk’s survival is the youth of today. “I want to pass it on to those who want to continue on with that legacy,” she explains. “Because it’s not fair. I grew up with it… If you’re stressed out… it alleviates pain… It just makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time. And I was blessed to be able to grow up and have that in my life and it’s missing nowadays. There’s literally hundreds and thousands of us, and what we have to do is find the means for us all to come together under one funky umbrella, and to keep this art form going and then to pass it on to our children and our children’s children. And that’s my mission.”

In this thoughtful, revealing, and illuminating interview, Dawn promotes the legacy of other fem funk legends, from Malia Franklin to Gail Muldrow, and how they were instrumental in pushing P-Funk to the top of the heap despite not getting the recognition they are still due. She also reveals how the Sly Stone Fam paid more and was better organized than the Clinton camp, and recalls how the late, great Glenn Goins taught her to sing funky lyrics with character. On top of all that, Dawn discusses why her friend James Baker’s New Birth was one of the most influential self-contained Black bands in funk history, exciting news about her plans to finally put out certain unreleased material, and the importance of her African-Indigenous-European lineage.