File this under awesome posts, and big ups to @panicfilms for sharing, the original post is from insomniac.com
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Electronic music as a whole has a wide and seemingly disparate family tree that makes it hard to locate any one specific root or source from which the rest of the ever-evolving genre has evolved. Nowhere does the complex nature of electronic music make itself more known than in the overwhelming complexity of the genre we have come to know as drum & bass. Seemingly drawing not only from all branches of the electronic music tree, drum & bass is like a postmodern carnivore that has consumed and integrated all forms of music output over the course of the past century and spit them back at us in a fractured yet completely unique way.
The beauty of drum & bass is that it is both retro and futuristic, complex merely as the result of its fractured and often multifaceted influences, and yet relatively accessible and pleasing to advanced and neophyte listeners alike. As a music scholar, I’m fascinated by the way drum & bass reflects just how far sampling and remix culture can go. And yet, while the boundaries of tempo, technology and experimentation have resulted in a language and culture that is all its own, there is something primal about the groove and beat that transcends the intellect and dives straight in for the soul, able to unleash a heaving mass of bodies crashing against each other in a kind of primitive fever just as likely to unlock the keys to the universe to someone strapped in on their headphones, contemplating the stars, existence, life. There is something holy in the way that a breakbeat can be chopped and reformed into something new, and drum & bass in particular seems to have created a kind of religious fervor in its listeners and followers that is far beyond what other music genres seem capable of pulling.
“From festival to warehouse to art opening to renegade desert party and everything in between, drum & bass is a sound that wants to punish and heal you at the same time.”
Rivaled perhaps only by techno, drum & bass is in itself a kind of religion, spiritual as much as it is an expression of unbridled aggression and frenzy. It is able to induce a higher state of consciousness as much as it is to release a kind of primordial energy that many have never fully realized until they are side by side with fellow drum & bass heads, getting pummeled by hyperkinetic breakbeats and chest-rattling basslines.
We’re getting ahead of ourselves, but where else can we begin? How else can we deconstruct a genre that, by its very nature, resists being dissected and reduced to a series of clinical observations? Breakbeats, dubplates, basslines, rewinds, rollers, mentasms, Jamaica, Bristol, UK, or London… there is no one story or history that can truly capture all that could possibly be told in a style that by its very nature seeks to erase the line between mind and body and unite them into one.
This culture, this world—for some, it’s like offering a glimpse into a secret society, a tribe of snobby culture purists mixed with straight-up nutters who have just discovered the hyperkinetic sound and want to spread the love and brock the fuck out every week to their favorite DJ. For others, it’s a vibe, an energy, a groove, or something to put up with until the next big dubstep act comes on at the festival. But that’s the beauty of drum & bass. From festival to warehouse to art opening to renegade desert party and everything in between, it’s a sound that wants to punish and heal you at the same time.
But let’s put all that aside for now and build our own junglist from scratch. Let’s assume that our junglist is well-versed in the history and knowledge of ambient, techno and acid house—from the likes of John Cage, all the way through to Kraftwerk, and beyond into Phuture or Jesse Saunders. Just like in elementary school when you learn about the Pilgrims and Christopher Columbus, it’s only one-half of the story, or in our case, one strand of the DNA of drum & bass as the real heart and soul of music can be traced back to Jamaican sound system culture. We’ll talk about breakbeats in a moment, but it can’t be emphasized enough just how important Jamaican sound system culture is to the development and continued evolution of all electronic music culture. Without dub and reggae and, more importantly, the culture that formed around these forms of musical expression, there is no jungle, there is no drum & bass, trap, grime, footwork, dubstep, or hip-hop; there is no MC, there is no rewind, dubplate, or this obsessive determination to harness the Babylonian technology of the Man and push it to its absolute limits in search of a unique form of expression that speaks to an underground culture all its own.
Imagine neighborhood streets and parking lots transformed into asphalt dancefloors with DJs playing special versions of popular songs and MCs providing running commentary, “chatting” over the beats, while the crowd roars in appreciation when a particular moving bassline or groove is dropped. It’s proto-rave culture through and through!
Do yourself a favor and watch the 1978 film Rockers. Not only will you find a treasure trove of sample sources used in early jungle/drum & bass anthems, you’ll also develop an new understanding of street vernacular that is used to this day by bassheads near and far. Even better, as far as our budding junglist is concerned, the film schools the viewer on how a renegade tribe of underground musicians not only resists flashy clubs and mainstream music, but creates something much deeper along the way.
More important and to the point, it’s out of sound system culture that production wizards like Duke Reid, Sir Coxsone, and King Tubby push the boundaries of studio technology and find unique and exciting ways to develop a new sound. While concepts like reverb, echo, and equalization have been the mainstays of recording technology throughout the 20th century, in the hands of Jamaican producers and engineers, these features were used to shape and create what was essentially a new language.
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