George Clinton’s Keeping the P-Funk Flame Burning : Music: The premier funketeer still has faith in his vision of America as ‘One Nation Under a Groove.’

At a time when American society seems to grow ever more fractious and factional, George Clinton hasn’t given up on the ideal of “One Nation Under a Groove.”

The funk-music hero, one of pop’s great aphorists and sloganeers, isn’t sanguine about the immediate prospects of America embracing his lofty concept, but, ultimately, he keeps the faith.

“I don’t think racial (divisions) are as big as they used to be,” Clinton, 52, said. “We will become one nation under a groove because of what’s happening. We’ll be forced to rise above it, and we can.”

Clinton first declared his “One Nation” vision on a hit 1978 album that championed funk as a liberating and unifying principle. During the ‘70s, Clinton and an array of musical comrades known collectively as P-Funk (short for Parliament-Funkadelic, the names of Clinton’s two key bands) became famous for spinning out seriocomic concept albums and staging wildly theatrical, costume-extravaganza concerts founded on a freaky internal mythology wherein that redeeming essence known as “the funk” might be attacked, jeopardized or hidden away, but always somehow prevailed.

Clinton will lead the P-Funk All Stars at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach at 9:30 tonight.

He hopes someday to offer a sequel to the elaborately staged tours that P-Funk played during the 1970s, but for now, he and a band that includes such P-Funk stalwarts as bassist Bootsy Collins, singer Garry Shider and guitarists Michael Hampton, DeWayne (Blackbird) McKnight and Eddie Hazel, are playing in a stripped-down, no-props format.

“Just to get in sync,” said Clinton during a phone interview from a tour stop in Dayton, Ohio, “every once in a while we go out and just re-up the band.”

Clinton said there will be more social commentary on coming albums than could be found on his most recent solo album, 1989’s “The Cinderella Theory.”

Clinton is readying “Sample Some of Disk, Sample Some of Dat,” an album of old P-Funk outtakes, horn riffs and rhythm grooves, with the idea of providing a ready-made source of material for rap producers and dance club deejays. He disowns the efforts of some former business associates who recently sued an array of rappers and record labels, seeking royalty payments for the use of P-Funk samples on rap records.

“To me it seems to be an effort to harm hip-hop,” said Clinton, who has incorporated rap in his own music and featured Public Enemy on “The Cinderella Theory.” Clinton said that he has received payments derived from rappers’ recycling of his old material.

Because it’s a presidential election year, and since his full name is on the ballot (albeit split half-and-half between the Republican and Democratic tickets), it seemed appropriate to ask Clinton whether he detects traces of “the funk” in either of his political namesakes.

“Uh-uh,” he said. “Somebody asked Bill Clinton on television, did he know George Clinton, and he said no.”

Nevertheless, funketeer Clinton said he plans to vote for candidate Clinton. As for Bush, “Everybody has a little funk somewhere in him. But I think Bush had to get rid of all his. He’d rather not have it.”