Bootsy Collins Roots Anti-Violence Project in Garfield Heights, Urges Kids: Funk, Not Fight

Musician Bootsy Collins with his wife, Patti Collins, president of the Bootsy Collins Foundation, presenting their Funk Not Fight project Thursday at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Credit: Mark Oprea

“I’m not a fighter,” musician Bootsy Collins says on his latest single, “Funk Not Fight,” trailing a winding bass riff. “But I’m a lover.”

Collins, who’s reached legendary status thanks to his stints playing bass with James Brown and in the funk luminaries Parliament-Funkadelic, detailed his pacifism in front of the Rock Hall on Thursday afternoon.

In signature foot-tall violet top hat, voodoo-styled suit jacket and heavily-sequined star sunglasses, Collins and his wife, Patti, announced a partnership with The Village, a youth-focused cultural center based in Garfield Heights. With a groove-lathered project also entitled Funk Not Fight, Collins is hoping his legendary stature can help calm the spike in youth violence seen nationwide since the pandemic began.

The dozen panelists at Thursday’s Funk Not Fight presentation. Credit: Mark Oprea

For Collins, who assembled a 13-person panel of speakers including neurologists, pastors, school board presidents, Garfield Heights Mayor Matt Burke and County Executive Chris Ronayne, the seed of the issue lied in a self-esteem epidemic.

“Everybody don’t feel good about themselves, so most of us don’t feel good about ourselves,” Collins told the crowd of 40. ” And we need to be told over and over that, ‘You cool.’ And that’s what we got to know. That’s what we got to do. We got to make sure that that program goes [on] over and over, even though [kids] come home looking crazy, the message is the same: ‘You gave up the funk.'”

Although the Collins Foundation has not yet donated any funds, Bootsy himself handed “bags” of guitar strings and headphones to the Village on Thursday, after about a two-hour presentation, which featured music by rapper Baby Triggy and Humble G Tha Fiddler.

Eventually, Collins will work with Sweetwater Music to bolster Village’s recording gear and instrument inventory, with aims of fortifying the Village as a secure space for kids and teenagers intrigued with music creation, founder Lawrence Lane told Scene

“Bootsy just came in and put steroids on our program,” Lane told Scene in a phone call, recalling those initial meetings in March. “He’s really high on making sure we present a musical platform, and creating a safe haven for those kids who don’t have one at home.”

It’s an issue that is personal for Collins, who turned 71 in October. In both his speech and a sit-down interview with Scene, Collins opened up about growing up in Cincinnati without a father figure around, and then, scoring a spot in James Brown’s band in 1968, finding that presence in the Godfather of Soul himself.

Annette Blackwell, mayor of Maple Heights (center) and partner with Funk Not Fight, sits in the Rock Hall crowd Thursday. “This is a different project,” she told Scene. ” I mean, a lot of [our] kids don’t leave the ZIP codes they live in.” Credit: Mark Oprea

“I didn’t know [music] was going to become my life. This is just something that makes us feel good, makes the kids and everybody feel good,” Collins recalled, sitting on a couch in a Rock Hall green room. “So it’s like, that’s why I was doing it: to get away from the street thing that we all fell into. And James gave us an opportunity to get out of that.”

For Collins, who had invited the Garfield Heights Music Express youth dance group to show off funk’s natural vivacity, the power to divert literally lies in the music. It’s why Collins has, after five decades securing his legacy in funk history, become the genre’s leading light.

It’s Collins’ philosophy in a nutshell: Give kids a good riff on a decent instrument. Lay down a rhythm. Choose your beat. Close your eyes, maybe.

One doesn’t have to be the Crown Prince of Funk to tap into The One.

“The same thing happens to them happened to me,” Collins said. “Some of us just take it a little further, and then others kind of just don’t take it as far, But it still affects you. That music just affects you in some kind of way.”

Collins smiles under his star glasses. He points to a reporter in the room. “You might get it more than the next guy,” he said. “The next guy might not feel it like that. But the ones that do? Oh, they came to give up the funk. They were sent here to give up the funk.”

He opens his arms to everyone in the room. “And that’s what we are.”
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