We Gotta Have the Funk
Danny Bedrosian ’03 (pictured), music director for the renowned funk band George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic, was back on campus last fall to talk about his newly published book of music history, “The Authorized P-Funk Song Reference, 1956—2023.”
And he brought the band with him — Clinton and P-Funk performed a free concert in the MUB for the community.
“The history of African American music cannot be told without mentioning the considerable achievements of Parliament-Funkadelic,” says Professor Rob Haskins, chair and professor of music and one of the event organizers.
Bedrosian has been the keyboardist for George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic for the past 20 years. He has also worked or performed with many musical icons such as Snoop Dogg, Chuck D and Flavor Flav, Ice Cube, The Red Hot Chili Peppers and more.
He first met Clinton by winning a contest to design one of the bedsheets that Clinton often wore as stage attire in the late ’90s: the prize included a backstage visit with Clinton. According to Boston’s WBUR radio, Clinton told Bedrosian he could start by working as a tech, but insisted that any full-time road jobs would have to wait until after Bedrosian finished college.
At UNH, Bedrosian earned a degree in history, with a focus on Middle Eastern studies, “but I had a whole lifetime of musical studies under my belt,” he’s said. Soon after graduating he moved to Tallahassee and began his musical career.
The Sidore lecture series, hosted by the UNH Center for the Humanities, was established in 1965 in memory of Saul O Sidore of Manchester. 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.