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Reader question: Please explain this sentence: Overseas markets are all in a funk at the moment. My comments: This means the global economy is still in a depression. As a consequence, the prospects for exports are grim as overseas markets will not be able to buy much from you. Truth be told, the world economy has not fully recovered from the recession triggered by the housing crisis in America a few years ago. Anyways, “in a funk” is the phrase in question here and let’s see how “funk” has anything to do with “depression”. Funk is a style of music popularized by Afro-American musicians in the United States in the 1960s. Featuring rhythmic and strong beats, funk was developed from, or at least influenced by, among other genres, R&B music, which stands for rhythm and blues. The blues of course grew out of other earlier genres of jazz music. Jazz music in general was a black American specialty. Louis Armstrong, in singing, used to ask “what did I do to be so black and blue?” He was singing, in fact, “Black and Blue”, a jazz standard composed by Fats Waller in 1929, but the question is an apt one. Being black in America, you see, has its particular history of pain and hardship. I don’t think we need to go back into the slave trade but suffice it to say that African Americans have had more than their fair share of misery in life. Being black, therefore, may have made them feel particularly keenly to hear the phrase “black and blue”, as a person is physically beaten black and blue. | 
