A traditional history of rock music divides up the genre into chronologically discrete
eras, the fifties, the sixties and the seventies. Due to its convoluted influence streams,
black popular music, especially funk must be looked at differently. Following on from the
narrowly defined funk of James Brown, the second-wave of funk groups such as Sly and
the Family Stone and Funkadelic allied themselves to the late-sixties psychedelic rock
movement. Essentially funk was black music and rock was white, and the pivotal figure
that connected these two movements was Jimi Hendrix.