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Who established the funk beat?

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James Brown’s band established the “funk beat” and modern street funk in the late 1960s. His innovative music style was characterized by a heavily syncopated rhythm with a strong pulse on the first note of the measure. (Traditional rhythm and blues emphasized the backbeat—the second and fourth beats of the measure.) Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, and other artists began to use funk rhythms as their musical foundation while their lyrics took on themes of urgent social commentary.