Berklee Funk by Alissia Benveniste
This week’s featured video is coming from Alissia Benveniste and her Berklee band. This video was a really big hit when it was first released in 2013, over 7 years ago! This is one of the most popular videos on Berklee College of Music’s YouTube channel with over 5 million views. Since then, Alissia became a producer and beatmaker, opening up her own studio “The Spaceship” in New York City and later moving to Los Angeles.
This was one of her first videos as a bandleader with her band “Alissia & The Funketeers”, a 14-piece funk ensemble.
In this video, she is using a Lakland 5 string bass, which is not your typical funk bass, to lay down some serious grooves. But none the less, she makes it work on a 5 string as well. Since this video, we have seen her play numerous bass makes. She is a Mayones Guitars artist and also endorses Bartolini Pickups as well.
Alissia together with her Berklee band is channeling the old school funk vibes with this song. The composition reminds us of the great funk bands of the ’70s. You can clearly hear influences from the great funk bands such as Parliament Funkadelic, George Clinton, and Bootsy Collins to name a few.
After the release of this video Alissia’s career took off. Huffington Post mentioned her as the “future face of funk music“. Furthermore, Billboard magazine wrote “a funk newcomer with some serious skills and impressive co-signs”.
Since then, she has collaborated on Bootsy Collins’s 2017 album “World Wide Funk” together with bass giants Stanley Clarke and Victor Wooten. She has also worked with Mark Ronson, Anderson Paak and have been co-signed by artists such as Cee-Lo Green, Rafael Saadiq, and Q-Tip to name a few.
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