Education Quote by Bernie Worrell

There is a whole sociology packed into that offhand little brag. Bernie Worrell isn’t just reminiscing about a gig; he’s sketching a city ecosystem where high art and lowdown funk were never really enemies, just different doorways into the same hunger. Providence School of Art students “sneaking” into P-Funk shows implies scarcity (tickets, access, permission) and also desire so strong it turns petty rule-breaking into a rite of passage. You can hear the grin in it: the kids who were supposed to be studying form and theory were chasing the real-time classroom of volume, sweat, and improvisation.

The subtext is cultural legitimacy in reverse. Rather than P-Funk aspiring to be “serious” enough for art students, the art students are the ones crossing the border, validating funk as avant-garde without ever saying the word. Worrell, a conservatory-trained keyboardist who could move from churchy chords to sci-fi synth delirium, sits at that crossroads: he’s proof that virtuosity doesn’t need institutional approval, and that “art” is often what happens after hours, in the dark, behind a bouncer.

Context matters: in the 1970s and beyond, P-Funk wasn’t merely a band but a roaming, theatrical counter-university with its own mythology and aesthetics. Art students sneaking in suggests they recognized that the stagecraft, costumes, and cosmic storytelling weren’t gimmicks; they were a coherent visual and sonic world. Worrell frames it casually because the point isn’t gatekeeping. It’s the opposite: funk as an open secret, an underground museum where the admission price was nerve.