The UNH Center for the Humanities is excited to announce a special campus event to be supported by the Saul O Sidore Memorial Lecture Series. Danny Bedrosian '03, music director for the pathbreaking Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award-winning funk band George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic, will join bandmates and Clinton himself in a multi-part visit to UNH later this month.
A longtime archivist for the band, Bedrosian will share his newly published music history, The Authorized P-Funk Song Reference, 1956-2023, in a book talk Nov. 27 at 7 p.m. in Hamilton Smith 210, following a master class for UNH jazz students at 3 p.m. in PCAC M226.
On the evening of Nov. 28, Bedrosian, bandmates and Clinton will perform a free public concert in the Granite State Room for the wider community.
This will be something new and different from the Sidore series and symposia of recent years — a funk-tastic musical event that will also give an inside look at the recording process and music industry and the makings of a cultural legacy. Professor Rob Haskins, chair and professor of music and one of the event organizers, says, “The history of African-American music cannot be told without mentioning the considerable achievements of Parliament-Funkadelic. This visit will be a wonderful experience for our students and faculty.”
Bedrosian has been the keyboardist for George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic for the past 20 years, making him the longest tenured keyboard player in the band’s history. In addition to performing with Clinton and company, he has worked or performed with many musical icons such as Snoop Dogg, Chuck D and Flavor Flav, Ice Cube, Shavo Odadjian from System of A Down, Kendrick Lamar, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Erykah Badu, Queen Latifah, Mumford & Sons, RZA, Flying Lotus, Thundercat, Sheila E, Wu-Tang Clan, and many more. He has appeared on The BET 25th Anniversary Special, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Carson Daly Show, I’m With Rolling Stone, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Monique Show, MTV in several nations and many more. (Bio courtesy of Rowman & Littlefield.)
Bedrosian’s book is being released by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, which says of the text:
“George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic collective (P-Funk) stands as one of the most iconic and important groups in popular music history, with an impressively large discography, enormous number of members, and long history. For the first time, this authorized reference provides the official P-Funk canon from 1956 to 2023: every project, album, collaboration, song, details of personnel for songs, and tidbits about each act and select songs, as well as dozens of rare photos and a color photospread.
“No volume has ever attempted to provide such details from this collective and its many dozens of acts, collaborations, and offshoot projects from its inception in the 50s as The Parliaments to the present day. Daniel Bedrosian, keyboardist for P-Funk, accomplishes that in this volume, the culmination of nearly thirty years of careful research, interviews, and access to exclusive archival material. Song entries are organized under artist / group names and contain definitive listings of players…”
The faculty organizing committee for the visit is made up of Casey Golomski, department chair and associate professor of anthropology and program coordinator of Africana and African American studies; Rob Haskins, department chair and professor of music; Kurk Dorsey, department chair and professor of history; Jenni Cook, associate dean of COLA and professor of music; and Nate Jorgensen, associate professor of music and director of jazz studies.
The Saul O Sidore Memorial Lecture Series was established in 1965 in memory of Saul O Sidore of Manchester, New Hampshire. The purpose of the series is to offer the university community and the state of New Hampshire programs that raise critical and sometimes controversial issues facing our society. The University of New Hampshire Center for the Humanities sponsors the programs. Lectures and events are free and open to the public.
Tickets for the concert are free, but registration is required, as space is very limited.
For more information on the events or on tickets, please contact Jenna Scholefield at Jenna.Scholefield@dos5.net.
Get tickets for the Nov 28 concert
featuring George Clinton!
Get tickets for Danny Bedrosian's master class
Get tickets for Danny Bedrosian's book talk
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Written By:
Katie Umans | UNH Center for the Humanities | katie.umans@dos5.net | 603-862-4356
