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Music Moderators: Shinji Ikari
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Code~613
Bluelighter
<<<<<<<>>>>>>>
a couple additions to the jungle questions:
there are several eternal questions about jungle that will never really be answered... but here's my opinion.
re: when was jungle invented?
probably 1989. while it's difficult to say for sure, listen to Lennie De Ice - We are I.E. (I.E., 1989), and form your own opinions. sure, it's not fully developed lighter crew junglism, but you have to agree there are moments that sound like jungle.
alternate answer: 1963. The truly erudite among you will know what i mean: Amen, brother, by The Winstons (Metromedia, 1963). One minute and twenty-five seconds into the track, the brass and organ drop out; the next few seconds represent a break you've heard hundreds, thousands of times. There are moments when this track really does sound like what jungle would have been if synthesizers had never been invented: acoustic drum and bass, from almost 40 years ago.
on the origin of the term 'jungle'
I wondered about this for a long time myself, thinking the derivation from "concrete jungle" (good 187 track, btw- new york city is hot as hell) a likely possibility. Many people just leave the origin as 'inconclusive', perhaps because they fear that it's 'racist'. Hearing some old ragga helped me sort this out--the term "jungle" is certainly older than jungle music (heh, the term "jungle music" is older than the music we know as jungle). This, combined with some looking into patois itself, seems to favor MC Navigator's apparent explanation of the origins of the term "jungle": a ghetto-like, tough area of Kingston, Jamaica known as "the jungle". Obviously, people who lived in the "jungle" were termed "junglists"; apparently there were a lot of male prostitutes in the area as well, which doesn't make junglists look good...I don't agree with dropping "jungle" in favor of "drum and bass" because "jungle" is racist or whatever... there are a lot of ordinary words that have somewhat nasty origins that we seem to overlook -- both orchids and avocados are named after testicles. This seems to be the most likely derivation, anyway, although I've never asked anyone Jamaican about this "jungle".
What is a breakbeat?
Essentially, a 'break' is just that; a short, complex drum solo, intended to "give the drummer some" and let the band rest for a bit. Since dance music is fundamentally based on rhythm, the complexity of the break was quite attractive--"the break is the part people wanted to hear anyway"--and this is what caused DJ Kool Herc (one of the worst DJ names in history, I think) to invent his technique of creating a breakbeat by using two copies of a record, playing the break on one copy while rewinding the other. This technique is roughly a contemporary of Grasso's slipmat cueing, the technique still used by DJs to create a non-stop, smooth set. Though initially a reggae DJ, Kool Herc's breakbeats are directly responsible for hip-hop.
Breakbeats are not only fun to dance to, they're arguably one of the most important musical innovations of the twentieth century, because they enabled the massive extant body of music to be re-sampled and re-used; any track, no matter how bad, can always be salvaged if it has a good break. This is even more significant in light of modern samplers, which enable a breakbeat to be chopped up and rearranged into something better than the original.
There are *lots* of breakbeats; "Amen" (said to have begun with LTJ Bukem - Music)and "Apache" (e.g. Deep Blue - The Helicopter Tune) are two common ones, but there's hundreds, with sources ranging from soul (the Isley Brothers breakbeat with its classic "give the drummer some!" in 4 Hero's equally classic Mr Kirk's Nightmare)to reggae ("Throw me corn" in Conquering Lion - Code Red).
there are several eternal questions about jungle that will never really be answered... but here's my opinion.
re: when was jungle invented?
probably 1989. while it's difficult to say for sure, listen to Lennie De Ice - We are I.E. (I.E., 1989), and form your own opinions. sure, it's not fully developed lighter crew junglism, but you have to agree there are moments that sound like jungle.
alternate answer: 1963. The truly erudite among you will know what i mean: Amen, brother, by The Winstons (Metromedia, 1963). One minute and twenty-five seconds into the track, the brass and organ drop out; the next few seconds represent a break you've heard hundreds, thousands of times. There are moments when this track really does sound like what jungle would have been if synthesizers had never been invented: acoustic drum and bass, from almost 40 years ago.
on the origin of the term 'jungle'
I wondered about this for a long time myself, thinking the derivation from "concrete jungle" (good 187 track, btw- new york city is hot as hell) a likely possibility. Many people just leave the origin as 'inconclusive', perhaps because they fear that it's 'racist'. Hearing some old ragga helped me sort this out--the term "jungle" is certainly older than jungle music (heh, the term "jungle music" is older than the music we know as jungle). This, combined with some looking into patois itself, seems to favor MC Navigator's apparent explanation of the origins of the term "jungle": a ghetto-like, tough area of Kingston, Jamaica known as "the jungle". Obviously, people who lived in the "jungle" were termed "junglists"; apparently there were a lot of male prostitutes in the area as well, which doesn't make junglists look good...I don't agree with dropping "jungle" in favor of "drum and bass" because "jungle" is racist or whatever... there are a lot of ordinary words that have somewhat nasty origins that we seem to overlook -- both orchids and avocados are named after testicles. This seems to be the most likely derivation, anyway, although I've never asked anyone Jamaican about this "jungle".
What is a breakbeat?
Essentially, a 'break' is just that; a short, complex drum solo, intended to "give the drummer some" and let the band rest for a bit. Since dance music is fundamentally based on rhythm, the complexity of the break was quite attractive--"the break is the part people wanted to hear anyway"--and this is what caused DJ Kool Herc (one of the worst DJ names in history, I think) to invent his technique of creating a breakbeat by using two copies of a record, playing the break on one copy while rewinding the other. This technique is roughly a contemporary of Grasso's slipmat cueing, the technique still used by DJs to create a non-stop, smooth set. Though initially a reggae DJ, Kool Herc's breakbeats are directly responsible for hip-hop.
Breakbeats are not only fun to dance to, they're arguably one of the most important musical innovations of the twentieth century, because they enabled the massive extant body of music to be re-sampled and re-used; any track, no matter how bad, can always be salvaged if it has a good break. This is even more significant in light of modern samplers, which enable a breakbeat to be chopped up and rearranged into something better than the original.
There are *lots* of breakbeats; "Amen" (said to have begun with LTJ Bukem - Music)and "Apache" (e.g. Deep Blue - The Helicopter Tune) are two common ones, but there's hundreds, with sources ranging from soul (the Isley Brothers breakbeat with its classic "give the drummer some!" in 4 Hero's equally classic Mr Kirk's Nightmare)to reggae ("Throw me corn" in Conquering Lion - Code Red).
The Mexican
Bluelighter
dwnq
This should help out some of the newbies to this board.
This should help out some of the newbies to this board.
I agree. There is a distinct difference between Jungle and dNb. dNb can be melodic, jazzy, and the production is more crisp, imo. Bukem will show you how that is done. Now Jungle... whew, electronic mayhem. alot of 16th note high hat type percussion, almost undefined moving, distorted basslines. much more agressive. I am a prog head so that is my interpretation of dNb vs. Jungle. Lemme know if any of that hits home or if you think I am way off.
RavinRabbi
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Sep 14, 2000
- Messages
- 1,629
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Squirrel6362
Bluelighter
THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
DJSethNichols
Bluelighter
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