Funk and circumstance. Music icon George Clinton collects honorary degree at HBCU in SC

Who needs pomp and circumstance when you can give up the funk, instead?

The Mothership arrived in Rock Hill on Friday afternoon, as music icon George Clinton accepted an honorary doctorate degree from the college named for his great-great-grandfather, Bishop Isom Caleb Clinton.

“Today in Rock Hill, South Carolina,” Clinton College president Lester McCorn said during Friday’s commencement ceremony, “Dr. Funkenstein officially becomes Dr. Clinton.”

Clinton, 82, began his music career six decades ago. He influenced generations with a new genre of soul and R&B while popularizing Afrofuturism and synthesizing new sounds, McCorn said. A long reel of popular songs include the “unofficial anthem of the culture,” he said, “One Nation Under a Groove.”

“Your music became the summons to the dance floor for every event that allowed Black folk to be free to express themselves,” McCorn said.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic in 1997. Prince gave the induction speech.

The Hall of Fame describes P-Funk online as the “mind-blowing, soul-expanding musical equivalent of an acid trip.” Clinton and P-Funk received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.

George Clinton and the Carolinas

Clinton was born in Kannapolis, North Carolina. He moved north a year later, but learned about his mother’s side of the family in the Charlotte area during his music tours.

Clinton didn’t know as much about his South Carolina connection until a few years ago when his wife, Carlon, dug into genealogy research.

“This is the first time I’m actually getting close to my father’s side of town,” Clinton told The Herald in an exclusive interview ahead of the ceremony. “I’m just finding it out myself,”

Clinton’s father was born in Lancaster, which led to churches and schools and other areas in that city that share the family name. Clinton found out about his great-great-grandfather who was presiding bishop of the AME Zion Church when what was then called Clinton Institute, now Clinton College, was founded in 1894.

Bishop Clinton went from being enslaved as a young man to become a prominent church founder in South Carolina. That link led George Clinton to Clinton College, an HBCU that graduated almost two dozen students Friday in business, religious studies, liberal arts or science schools.

“Since we’ve been digging into our ancestry and found out the connection (to the college)... that’s when we realized that it was that close,” Clinton said. “And so we’re trying to make up for what we can do for the culture and for the family.”

George Clinton’s advice to grads

Known for music lyrics like “tear the roof off the sucker” and references to space ships — among other topics — Clinton laughed when asked what he’d tell new graduates, given all his life experiences.

“I’m looking to learn from people that I see, as opposed to like telling them what I’ve seen,” Clinton said. “Because what they’re going through, it’s hard to compare the two.”

Clinton sang about the future, but graduates today are living it, he said.

“It’s forever changing,” Clinton said. “So what you think you know from what you’ve learned, you know you’re in what we was calling the future, from what I came from. And it’s brand new.”

There is some advice he’d give. That hasn’t changed even in a new future.

“Just keep your eyes and ears open,” Clinton said. “You’ll find out something new. That’s all you can tell anybody. Just pay attention.”