About Us

Welcome to the official Danda Funk website, I am glad you stopped by.

First and foremost let me tell you a little about myself, my name is John and I hail out of Wichita Kansas.  Danda, pronounced Don-Duh, is a nick name my mother named me when I was younger, and Funk is just the one genre of music I truly enjoy.  So when I write music, I tend to lean towards that genre.

Now, that does not mean that is all I write, because I will write blues, pop, jazz, rock and even … gulp … country at times, it all depends on the mood and what my subconscious or higher up, transmits to me.

I originally started learning music as a drummer when I was  younger, and later started learning how to play the guitar.  I still study drum music and now play the guitar, bass, congos and keyboards, particularly when I am writing and recording a song.

My first guitar instructor was the late David Carry, may his memory be a blessing.  David taught me all my modes up and down the guitar neck, the basics of the Western Musical System.  Then I showed up one day for my next lesson, only to find out that David had passed, but he had laid down the foundation for me, that was the main thing.

I furthered my guitar studies under Jazz Guitarists Sterling Gray and Jerry Hahn at Wichita State University.

I have had the opportunity to work in the studio with Sterling, Ray Murry, Reggie littleton and Eddie Macey and John Collison.  However when it comes to song writing, working with Ray Murray was by far the most educational and enjoyable.

There have been several authors of books that I have studied that have also been instrumental in developing my song writing, people like the late Sheila Davis, Rikky Rooksby, and I took a course on song writing by Pat Pattison.  Pat is a writing instructor at Berklee College of Music and of course I have studied some of his books also. 

I took an online course by Louden Stern on music production, and that opened up a whole new world to me not to mention Eli Krantzberg, Bobby Oswsinski and Joshua Carney.  But to be honest with ya, this is a never ending process.  Even now I am learning more about sampling.

I taught Jiu-jitsu for many years, and what I have discovered is that writing music is like a Jiu-jtsu match.  You always have to be changing and updating your game, because music has changed a lot since I was a kid.  If you get beat in a Jiu-jitsu match, you figure out why you lost and how to change your game so you don’t loose again.

I recently started concentrating more on writing beats, but now I need to take all that I am learning, and update my song writing by incorporating all that I am learning from beat making and incorporating it into my song writing … updating the game.

I am hoping to have this site updated soon with the beats and more songs, so keep checking back.

Thanks for stopping by!

Danda Funk