James Brown - the 'illogic' of innovation

To analyse Brown's inimitable compositional processes most fruitfully, I suggest that an application of Deleuze's concept of the "Idiot" might be beneficial. This is not, it should be said at the outset, to speak ill of the "Godfather of Soul". On the contrary, I will attempt to illustrate how a certain type of naiveté was necessary to realise one of music's most creative forces. For one of Brown's most enduring gifts to contemporary music practice was his willing embrace of "illogic" in the face of a dogmatic image of musical thought, a quality shared with the Deleuzean Idiot of Difference and Repetition (1968).