At long last, funk music and its history will now be celebrated with an official museum. Yesterday, the Dayton Daily News, reported that the Funk Music Hall of Fame & Exhibition Center has officially cleared its permits and approvals from the city of Dayton, and is now set to open for business.

Dayton has come to be known as the “Land of the Funk” due to the city’s unusually prolific output of influential funk music. As writer Scot Brown explains in the 2008 book The Funk Era and Beyond: New Perspectives on Black Popular Culture, “Although funk during its peak years—roughly 1975 to the early 1980s—had regionally specific styles and forms of expression, a disproportionately large number of funk bands recording with major labels came from Dayton: Ohio Players (Westbound and Mercury), Slave (Cotillion/Atlantic), Lakeside (Solar), Roger and Zapp (Warner Bros.), Sun (Capitol), Faze-O (S.H.E./Atlantic), Platypus (Casablanca), Dayton (Liberty), Shadow (Elektra), Junie (Westbound and CBS), and Heatwave (Epic). Additionally, there were countless Dayton bands that did not attain recording contracts but maintained a local following. In spite of these developments, scholarly acknowledgement of Dayton as a funk epicenter is only beginning to emerge.”

Watch “8 Dayton Acts You Should Give A Funk About” via the Dayton Daily News:

As Museum President David R. Webb told the local Dayton paper, “I am in tears. This has been a long time coming. This is real emotional, right.” The museum has publicly been in the works for about three years, but has been a longtime dream of Webb and several other fans of funk. It was initially slated to open in March of this year, but faced various unexpected delays.

Sign The Petition To Include Funk Music As A Category For The GRAMMYs

The new museum is set to honor the style’s greatest proponents and contributors, like Bootsy Collins, who hails from nearby Cincinnati, OH:

The center, located at 113 E. Third St. in downtown Dayton’s Fire Blocks District, will have its grand opening in late January or February, according to Webb, but will be open to visitors effective immediately. Hours posted on the door are Monday to Wednesday by appointment only and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday to Saturday. A suggested $5 donation will be requested per visitor. You can preview some photos of the new museum here.

Those interested in tours should call 937-837-4441 or visit thefunkcenter.org.

[via Dayton Daily News]