Continued: OnStage: A Funky high school musical

Say brother, what it is?

dig this: I've got something

better than a woman's kiss --

taste like a bowl of grits

with sausage on the side.

Why walk when you can slide, brother?

We're all gonna die

so enjoy the ride.

That bit of slick rhyme-slinging is delivered by tall, sinewy performer Edwin Lee Gibson as a cross between spoken-word poetry and Al Green-style falsetto singing over a steady, hypnotic beat. It is from a scene in the new musical "Five Fingers of Funk," which premieres today at the Children's Theatre.

The show celebrates the bass-heavy deep grooves and long vamps of a musical genre that had its heyday in the 1970s with its own sayings ("more bounce to the ounce" and "tear the roof off the sucker") and stars (James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, George Clinton, Curtis Mayfield and bassist Bootsy Collins).

The music, which blended soul, blues and jazz into dense and sometimes complex interlocking rhythms, has remained important because of its stylistic influence on, among others, house and dance music, hip-hop and punk.

"These are the sounds that I heard growing up -- funk is a way of understanding the world and of fitting in it," said Power, a Bay Area native who wrote and co-composed the show. "This is an homage to a time and place, and to the innocence of that era -- the wide-open possibilities before AIDS and drugs and all that stuff hit really hard in the '80s. But it's also about the shadows. It's a show that prefigures what comes next."

The musical, which members of the creative team are calling a "funkical," revolves around a high-school band. Its members dream of success and stardom in spite of obstacles and threats -- parents who don't understand, the neighborhood drug dealer who is trying to lead them astray, and their own lingering self-doubts.

"You have to go through a whole bunch of nasty stuff in order to get to the good stuff," he continued. "This piece is a metaphor of music and life."

Long-held dream

A pioneer of hip-hop theater, Power is perhaps best known for "The Seven," his gospel, doo-wop- and hip-hop-flavored adaptation of Aeschylus' "Seven Against Thebes." That show, which employs rap and a James Brown-like figure with a cape, has been performed in New York and California. He may further his reputation with "Funk," which he has been honing over the past month in Minneapolis.

While he started working on the show three years ago, Power said that he has long harbored the idea of doing a work about musicians.

"I've not been satisfied with what I've seen onstage in how bands are portrayed," said Power, who has been a part of hip-hop spoken-word outfits. He pointed, with all due respect, to a number of plays about musicians, including August Wilson's "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom."

"When we're in the studio together, we're always fiddling, playing, doing something musical," he said. "You can't have a show about a group of musicians who just stand around somewhere for two or three hours and all they do is talk."

In "Funk," five of the show's eight actors must play instruments. They form the backing band, which makes it a tall order when it comes to casting.

"Some of the performers who come to audition might be strong on acting but weaker on musicianship," said Justin Ellington, the Atlanta-based co-composer of the show. "Some might be amazing musicians but not good singers. We've had to get everyone up to speed, and it's been a lot of good work."

To bring his dream to life, Power is working with some young and gifted collaborators, including Ellington, a relative of jazz great Duke Ellington and a member of a production company that has created hits for the likes of Ludacris and Li'l Wayne, and director Derrick Sanders, founding artistic director of Chicago-based Congo Square Theatre, an up-and-coming company.

For these principal collaborators, "Funk" is personal. Each hails from a part of the country -- the West Coast for Power, the Midwest for Sanders and "the Dirty South" for Ellington -- where a different flavor of funk predominated, as did a different dance style. "Remember, this was all before MTV," said Sanders. "In order to find out what was going on in other parts of the country, you had to get up early on Saturday morning to watch 'Soul Train.'"

Adding to the repertory

For all their love of music, this is a musical theater piece, which means collaborating until all the parts fit just right. At a recent rehearsal, where the band was jamming, Ellington played the piano, delivering long, blues-style passages that sounded like something out of Miles Davis' electric period. He was translating Power's words and emotions into music and song.

"I'm not a composer on the order of Justin -- he's brilliant -- but I do hear this in musical terms," said Power.

Ellington said it's easy to translate Power's text into music -- as long as he knows the mood.

"I've been steeped in music, but I wasn't formally trained at first," he said. "But I learned what major and minor chords do, how they make you feel. Sacred music is based around major chords for a reason. They are happy. The blues came out of that, and put something else in there, some angst."

Ellington, who recently returned from a taping of "Rap City" in New York, said that it's easy to jump between the music industry and theater. "Music is music," he said. "If somebody needs a dance record, I have an idea of the chords and orchestration. The same thing goes if Will gives me a scene. If it's an up scene, I know what to do. At the end of the day, it's just music."

All are glad to be working on a show that underscores their own musical foundations.

"A lot of kids don't know the roots of hip-hop," said Ellington. "They think it just came out of nowhere. This is bread and butter."

And they hope that "Funk" catches fire -- and gets added to the repertory of musical theater. Power prayed, out loud, that it would come to represent its genre in the same way that "Hair" represents tribal rock, that "The Wiz" glides along on R&B and that "Rent" has become synonymous in theater with angst-laden '90s-era pop.

"While this is about a specific story, this connects to people who don't know much about the genre, per se," he said. "It speaks to people in a universal way, especially since the music connects to all people and all states of mind."

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390