Brit-Funk

Brit-funk is British dance music built around the playing of a band: bass and drums lock into a groove, guitar adds rhythmic figures, and horns and voices deliver short, memorable phrases. It draws heavily on American funk, soul and jazz-funk, with groups developing their own songs and performance networks in Britain.

The musicians often do more than one job—an instrumentalist may also sing—and the arrangement lets different parts answer one another. A strong bass line can carry the movement while a horn phrase lifts it. The style includes both instrumental interplay and direct vocal hooks, so it can work as music for dancing without reducing the band to a backing track for one singer.

Light of the World and Hi-Tension are among the original bands represented by the musicians in the Brit Funk Association. Kenny Wellington, Breeze McKrieth and David Baptiste formed Beggar & Co from their earlier work in Light of the World. The artist biography dates that offshoot to 1981. Songs including “Somebody (Help Me Out),” “Hi-Tension” and “British Hustle” remain part of the shared performing repertoire. The connections continued through musicians’ work with Incognito as well as the collective’s concerts. In 2021 Beggar & Co revisited their material with remixes, remastering and newly added parts. Those recordings document musicians returning to their own catalogue, with some familiar titles representing changed performances and arrangements.

Contemporary advertising in April 1979 places Light of the World’s single “Swingin’” alongside a working tour schedule and named instrumentalists. Those period traces complement the later recollections: the original band scene and today’s revisited recordings are connected, but they represent different moments.