The sun was using Center Church like a sundial, the shadow of the steeple crawling across a New Haven Green packed with people from Elm Street well past the central fountain, when George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic took the stage at the Green’s north end. As soon as the first downbeat dropped, everybody got up. If you hear any noise, the singers started. It’s just me and the boys, the crowd sang back.
And kept singing, song after song, through the end.
So Parliament Funkadelic kicked off the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, and what felt like the official beginning of summer in New Haven. The ferociously groovy show capped a day of activity on the Green that included Music Haven’s string quartet truck, the Hartford Hot Several, and New Haven’s own Ricky Alan Draughn and the Slammin Band, who took the stage right before P. Funk and ended its set with a lush, hard-hitting cover of Prince’s “Purple Rain.”
But the night belonged to the 75-year-old Clinton and the latest incarnation of his band, which has been running in some form or another since the late 1960s and has made an indelible mark on funk, soul, jazz, rock, and hip hop.
As someone in the crowd held aloft a sign reading “Clinton 4 Prez,” the band’s energy exploded from the first song — “Mothership Connection,” which ended up becoming a mash-up of several Parliament favorites — through a jazzier part of the set, and into a middle third that delved straight into hip hop. In doing so, P. Funk turned the center of town into a real scene, bringing out four generations of people from all walks of life to take over the Green, whether it was to dance …
Brian Slattery Photo
… hang …
… bask in what, after a morning of hard rain, turned into nearly perfect weather …
… or eventually eat from the row of food trucks parked along Temple Street.
As the band’s set swung back into the funk that it can play like no one else can, the crowd was still as along for the ride as ever, never dropping the rhythm even when the band paused every fifteen minutes or so to catch its breath.
For the evening, New Haven really did feel like P. Funk’s gloriously transcendent music incarnate, the embodiment of its message, as everyone came together to put their feet down on the same beat at the same time. It was one city under a groove.