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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles
Concentric Beats:
U.S. Jungle/Drum’n’Bass Culture, 1994-2001
A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction
of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts
in Dance
by
Valida Hadzimuratovic-Carroll
2001
Table of Contents
Part
I INTRO 1
Part
II THE
BUILD-UP 3
1. Sound 11
2. Rewind
1994-1996 21
3. Name 24
4. DJ 27
5. Dubpl8 37
6. Hip
Hop 41
7. Worldwide 44
8. Go
Big 47
9. Label 55
10. Club 58
11. Dance 65
12. Us 69
Part
IV ENDTRO 73
My
Tribe 75
Bibliography 80
ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS
Concentric Beats:
U.S. Jungle/Drum’n’Bass Culture, 1994-2001
By
Valida Hadzimuratovic-Carroll
Master of Arts in Dance
University of California, Los Angeles, 2001
Professor David Gere, Chair
INTRO
“Do you like jungle?” asked a guy whom I’d only met thirty minutes before. We were in his car at a forest rave, somewhere in the hills in Marin County, California. It was 1996, early October, and I was freezing. That’s why we were in his car. I begged him to let us in and turn on the heat so I wouldn’t die of cold. I met him at the drink stand while I was frantically looking for my girlfriend whom I had lost somewhere on the way to the dance circle at the other side of the small hill. She had my “E,” which I so desperately needed now to get me out of the mess that the two hits of acid had just gotten me into. I was beginning to lose my head and I was on this mad trip that everyone hated me.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I ever heard it before. Put it on.” That was true. I had never heard this music phenomenon called jungle. But another reason why I was curious to hear it was because my boyfriend had always expressed his frustration with the music; how it was too fast and so unlike the mellow vibe of house music that he oh so loved. We were in the process of breaking up, so chances were that I would probably end up liking anything he disliked (just to spite him).
The mix tape the guy at the rave took out of his backpack was his own. Apparently he was a DJ (lucky me!) who played at local parties, but as jungle was really not happening at the time, I had never heard of him or his crew (I subsequently forgot his name as well as the name of his crew). The tape was of poor quality, but it didn’t matter. He was kind enough to offer me one of the extra “E”s he was saving for the morning after (he must have felt sorry for the bad mental trip I was going through), so by the time he pushed “play” I was already grinding my teeth. She was good, unlike the stuff that I was used to getting back in LA. Or maybe it was because I hadn’t done her in a long time––almost four months––that she felt
so good. Whatever the reason, I remember looking up and feeling so blissfully peaceful. The sky was bursting with stars. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t seen that many stars since I was little, I thought. They shined ever so brightly down at me, compliments of the clean, smog-free forests of Marin County.
RA-TA-TA-TA-TA-RA-TAA-TA-RA-TA-KBOOM-CHEKA-BOOM-RA-TA-TA…KA-BONG…something like that anyway. It was the “beatz” (to use junglist lingo) that right away did it for me. At first, the bass didn’t come in strong enough through the speakers, but the beatz, oh the beatz. The rhythms were like nothing I had ever heard before. They resonated with the power of the most intense drum circle. This was the most perfectly chaotic sound I had ever heard. The guy fiddled with the bass knob for a couple of seconds and then the bass hit me. Whoosh! I felt it in my chest, my stomach, and my toes. At the time I remember my mind racing and pausing to contemplate how the whole universe and its planetary system were based on some principle of chaotic order––E makes you think that way. Well, if I ever had an epiphany, this was the moment. This thing, this whatever I was hearing at the time, this chaotic pulsating wave was not music. It was so much bigger than that. I felt like I was listening to my own heartbeat. No, it was even bigger than that. I was hearing The Big Bang, I thought. This was jungle? Wow! It was insane. The Leo in me had finally found its home, its Eco-system, its Serengeti––well, yes, it had found its jungle.
THE BUILD-UP
My boyfriend and I broke up shortly afterwards. That was the final straw for me–– he didn’t like Jungle and I did. I moved back to Los Angeles and decided to take a year off from college (well not exactly decided, but that’s a whole different thesis). The following year was spent getting acquainted with the LA underground music scene. Not so much the rave scene, as I didn’t have a car or too many friends (I had been away for six months) so I had to stick close to home, and westside was home. The first few months consisted of a desperate search for any westside jungle parties. There were none. Finally in the early Spring of ’97, Science, LA’s first weekly jungle club, started at the Pink in Santa Monica. The club happened every Sunday night and it was so close to home that I could practically walk to it if I wanted to. Sunday nights at Science remained a ritual until the club closed down in Winter 2000. After disappearing for a couple of months in the Fall of 1999, it finally reopened at a new location, Sugar (also in Santa Monica), but by then they had already lost their core fan base to Konkrete Jungle, a new jungle weekly in Silverlake. Since 1998 other clubs have tried their luck with jungle: Tuesday nights Atmosphere (at the Viper room) closed down in the Fall of 2000 after two years of operation (the last year was a mix of all types of electronic dance music––they even had nights when they featured a trance and a drum’n’bass DJ back-to-back!); Thursday nights Respect (at Boardner’s Bar and Grill, and then at the Martini Lounge) just recently celebrated its two-year anniversary; Sunday nights Resonance Lab (at Bar Azure) briefly opened for a few months in the Fall of 2000; Sunday nights Progress (also at Bar Azure) is the most recent, March 20001 addition; but for me, at least, none have captured the core essence of the jungle/drum’n’bass experience the way Science did. Science was all about drum’n’bass, darkness, and free water. To this day, it’s the only club in LA where free pitchers of drinking water were offered to the dancers.
I have been a fan of jungle music since that November night in Marin County. It has become my life’s soundtrack. I met my future roommate, my future boyfriend, my future DJ partner (he and I had a weekly jungle night at Nova Express coffee shop called Multifunktion, Monday nights from midnight to 3AM May 1998 to January 1999), and my future band-mates at Science. I co-produced a stage performance that featured jungle music, scored my first documentary film with at least 1/3 jungle songs (all others were breakbeat influenced in one way or another), and decided to learn all there was to learn about jungle in my graduate program at UCLA. I was fascinated with the music, the dance, the clothes, the culture, the energy. Everything.
Sometime in 1999, however, I began to enjoy my nights at the club less. There was something “weird” with the music, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I had been used to dancing the traditional West African dance (I took classes at UCLA) in jungle clubs as the movements corresponded perfectly––I noticed some of the other girls at the clubs were also doing the pelvic moves that are a trademark of traditional West African dancing––but somehow, the movements didn’t “flow” with the music any more. Every once in a while, a track would come on that would inspire me to dance, but the music was increasingly beginning to sound more like punk-rock techno than African polyrhythmic cascades. Something had gone adrift. I didn’t know what it was, but I was going to find out. Concentric Beats Reason #1.
It was also around this time that I was beginning to pay close attention to stateside jungle producer talent. I already knew about the DJ talent, but until then the tracks produced in the US had, in my opinion, quite some time to go before they could get my hips going-a-circles. Finally, the US was beginning to make some quality music. How exciting, I thought. The magazines were unimpressed, though. Their stories were at worst pumping out the “jungle
is dead” columns, or at best were glorifying jungle’s phoenix-like come-back in the new genres such as 2-Step and Nu Skool Breaks: Look What Jungle Has Inspired! The magazines were in absolute denial of the stateside producer talent boom. These pioneers deserved some recognition, I thought. Concentric Beats Reason #2.
I love to learn
about different cultures. I love to dance. I love to watch others dance.
Drum’n’bass is a dance culture! Concentric Beats Reason #3.
I applied to the graduate program at UCLA with the intention of learning all there is to learn about the drum’n’bass culture. Soon, however, I realized I somehow had to narrow down my field of interest as the topic was too broad for a two-year study program. To really probe deeply into the roots of the music and the surrounding culture one would have to go back a lot further than Science, further than London––jungle music’s birthplace––and further than Jamaica, jungle’s most defining musical roots origin. One would have to begin with Africa. I was looking more at a five-to-ten year program then a two-year program, and so I had to narrow down. I decided to concentrate on what was closest to home: the U.S. drum’n’bass scene.
In the beginning of my graduate program, I must admit, I wasn’t aware of the entire proportion of the scene. I knew that each major city had a few weekly clubs (my main outlet for the music as I had long stopped going to raves because, yes, it was getting way past my bedtime) and I knew who the most popular DJs were; but had I the slightest idea of the magnitude of the scene, I might have considered concentrating on, perhaps one city, or one DJ (Dieselboy: How America Honored Its First Jungle King), or a combination of both. Just to give an example of my ignorance at the time: as I was preparing for my ethnographic field trip to New York and San Francisco, I had thought I would only be interviewing five to
six persons in each city, and I ended up interviewing over thirty in each (and still worried that I left out some really important “headz”––to use a junglist term for “people”)
In my first quarter, my chair and mentor, David Gere, suggested that I apply to the UCLA Dance/Media 2000 Fellowship Program organized by Judy Mitoma at the UCLA’s Center for Intercultural Performance and funded by Pew Charitable Trusts. It was a nation-wide professional fellowship, but they were admitting two UCLA students who demonstrated prior experience with video and the love for dance. That would be me, my mentor thought. I had already made two short documentary video pieces and I had love for dance bursting out of every pore in my body. I guess it showed and the presiding entrance committee let me in.
It was a strange time in my life, those ten weeks of the fellowship. On the one hand, I was sick half the time, fighting a nasty infection of the sinuses which had lasted for over six months and didn’t want to die, but on the other, I was feeling that things were moving somewhere really good. We met each morning at nine o’clock, the fellowship people––all of whom were old enough to be my parents–– and myself, and we talked, laughed, breathed, ate, watched, shot, edited, and analyzed dance and video. I learned a lot and I slept a lot, but in retrospect, I learned more. Besides being surrounded by some of the most innovative artists in the field of dance and video, we were also visited by a number of impressive weekly guest speakers, some of whom had come from as far away as England. At the end of the fellowship we were each asked to produce a five-minute final piece that we could submit when we applied for grants from NIPAD (National Initiative to Preserve American Dance). There was a $25,000 limit on what each of us could receive out of the $100,000. In this way, at least four of the eight projects were sure to get funding. I proposed to make a 45-minute documentary film on the drum’n’bass scene in America, mainly the cities of New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. I don’t know if it was the dance itself––my final, five-minute project had all the splendor of jungle dance I could fit in those five minutes––,
the fact that the topic had been my thesis, or that they had one-too-many-modern-dance-applicants, but they decided to give me the go ahead. American drum’n’bass scene was going to get its 45 golden video moments.
I decided to name the film Concentric Beats because I have always been intrigued by the concept of continuity, of the circle. I was talking to my friend Yassir (he was one of the dancers featured in the grant proposal’s five-minute video piece) as I was getting ready to start editing and I was explaining to him how I saw jungle as a continuation of all other forms of music rooted in African rhythms: “See,” I said to him, “first it was drums in Africa, then jazz, funk, dance hall, hip hop. And then, electronica went breakbeat, and finally there was jungle.” It all made perfect sense. For me, all these forms were connected, and somehow, I had to visually present that case. Jungle was the last stop, the last incarnation of the African sound. But how ironic, I thought, that this was all happening in the heart of the post-industrial Western world. To think we would be using computers to try and recreate the drum patterns and the bass sounds that our predecessors invented thousands of years ago. To me, this definitely represented that things were coming full circle. All the mentioned music forms had built on each other and jungle was the last, all–encompassing circle. In jungle one could find all these music forms in one. Amazing.
I have spent the last two-and-a-half years (1999-2001) filming, editing, and writing drum’n’bass. In addition to the video piece, which has, since the beginning of the project almost doubled in length, my degree required a written component that my advisor and I agreed would serve as a “study guide” to the film. In the paper, one can read explanations to all that was left unexplained in the film, so that even the most uninitiated viewer might follow the film without any problems. In fact, as far as the film goes, the finding of balance between saying too much and saying too little ended up being one of the biggest challenges in the video-making process. Who was my audience? Were they the die-hard junglist nation
or were they the world of academia? How can I make one constituency happy without upsetting the other? Hence this is the thesis format that, in my opinion, best compliments the film.
The thesis is organized in twelve sections that correspond to the twelve video sequences. I have singled out the most significant interview quotes from each video sequence and have used them as a guide to the text. Each quote is followed by a narrative that contextualizes it and further explains its relevance in the overall body of the section. I hope that others find this formatting style both useful and effective.
The video sequences are organized into different subjects and are not necessarily related to each other, but carry with them a logical (my logic) progression of events. I have tried to cover the most important issues of the drum’n’bass music and culture: the accessibility of music given its many different subcategories; the existence of a “jungle/drum’n’bass” culture within a broader “urban” culture; the aesthetics of the music; the hip hop connection; the dance-floor potential of the music; the over-saturation in terms of club promoters and drum’n’bass DJs; the competitiveness among the DJs and the underlying scene politics; the notion that electronic music has become a powerful force in the music industry; the self-imposed musical restrictions within drum’n’bass; the commercialization of this underground music genre; the role of an MC in the drum’n’bass scene; train-spotting phenomenon (the idea of the DJ as a connoisseur of music)––all things that have come up in conversation, readings, observing people at the clubs, and also from inward reflections about the culture of which I have become a part.
I am hoping this combined body of work will benefit both the culture’s participants as well as outsiders who are curious to learn about this vital component of their society. To the insiders, I have provided a comprehensive survey of a culture of which they are a part, so that they may learn about their history and the current issues that are shaping their
experience of the culture. I sometimes concentrated on the most controversial of issues, knowing well that they will spark up hot debate forums in website chatrooms across the country. I encourage such dialog as I strongly feel that opening topics of discussion is the most certain way for people to exchange ideas and learn from each other. Ultimately, I have wanted this to be a self-discovery experience for all those immersed in the culture. The documentary and written thesis are also intended to offer artists the recognition they deserve. Lack of recognition, many believe, can be explained by the music’s lack of commercial appeal. Whatever the cause, DJs and producers remain faceless behind their equipment, and likewise, the general public isn’t generally too aware of the existence of this, still underground, movement. I think that it would enrich the entire artist community to learn more about the value system of DJ culture. It would benefit all to find out what the culture represents morally, politically, economically, and finally, on a purely aesthetic level, artistically. Thus, I feel that the video documentary component has long been overdue. Drum’n’bass culture is both old and young, depending on your perspective. It is imperative that a reliable documentation is preserved for future generations. It will not be long before computer-generated music becomes the standard music form. Music will soon be produced, performed, transmitted, and sold almost exclusively with the aid of a computer. I strongly feel that it is in the best of interest of all to learn about the dynamics of a culture that has adopted this system early on, so that we may understand, respect, appreciate, and learn from its participants.
The ethnographic work that has facilitated the making of the film and the paper was conducted by myself––an insider who was, for better or for worse also an anthropological informant. In addition to extensive preparation which I undertook in UCLA’s ethnography-related courses––where I learned about participant-observer methods applied by ethnographers such as Emerson, Fretz, Shaw, Georges, Jones and others––the work is based on seventy-five interviews contained in seventy hours of unedited footage (including
club and rave footage), and on my own intimate knowledge of the scene since I first encountered it six years ago. The majority of the interviews occurred in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, the reason being that 95 per cent of the scene’s key figures are based in these cities. I did, however, interview a few people who do not live in these cities; the decision to include them was based purely on their contribution to the overall scene. In addition, because drum’n’bass is a worldwide phenomenon, I chose to interview a few international DJs/producers to hear what they had to say not only about the U.S. drum’n’bass scene, but about the scene as a whole.
I would like to position this project in the best tradition of participant-observer ethnography. But, I must also confess at the outset that critical distance is not my forte––or my intention, even though I do not shy away from critiquing the scene. Still, for that reason, the video and this accompanying thesis could be viewed as information direct from the source, from inside the jungle culture, written in language that is constitutive of the scene. Earlier in this introduction I almost referred to drum’n’bass culture as “my drum’n’bass culture.” But I stopped myself, realizing that there are others who are more deeply involved than myself––people who organize jungle parties, DJ regularly, produce, start record labels, promote drum’n’bass nights, set up jungle-related websites, and spend their last dollars on records that Randy J. (who sets up a mobile record booth in every jungle weekly in LA) promises to deliver. But then again, the making of the film has lasted two years, counting the time when I was first inspired by the idea––during which time nothing else mattered. I can only hope that the commitment I’ve shown will, if not earn me the title of a true junglist, at least make me the culture’s most passionate advocate.
THE DROP
If a man cannot keep pace with his companions
Perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears
However measured or far away.
Henry
David Thoreau
1. SOUND
“There seems to be a misconception that drum’n’bass suddenly
“appeared.” That first it was techno, then house…and then suddenly, there was
drum’n’bass. But it was never like that.” DJ Dara (NYC)
Music forms are constantly changing
and influencing each other. When the first prototypical “jungle”[1]
sound first began to morph from within the rave music scene in England in the
early 1990s, the popular sound of the day was “hardcore.” In his book Generation
Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture, music journalist Simon Reynolds observes that,
Throughout the history of dance culture ‘hardcore’
designates those scenes where druggy hedonism and underclass desperation
combine with a commitment to the physicality of dance and a no-nonsense
functionalism approach to making music (‘tracks’ rather than ‘songs). Although
the intransigent attitude remains the same,
musically ‘hardcore’ means
different things at different times and in different parts of the world.
Between 1990 and 1993, hardcore in Britain referred by thorns to the Northern
bleep and bass sound of Warp and Unique 3, to the hip-house and ragga-techno sounds
of the Shut Up and Dance label, to the anthemic pop-rave of acts like N-Joi and
Shades of Rhythm, to Belgian and German brutalist techno, and, finally, to the
breakbeat-driven furor of hardcore jungle.[2]
Hardcore today characterizes a sound that most resembles
what Reynolds refers to as “Belgian and German brutalist techno,” except that
the rhythm is a lot faster. Hardcore frequently reaches as high as 190 bpms,
which merits the status of the fastest electronic dance music to date (one that
is impossible to “get into” without a proper stimulant at hand).
In 1992 a handful of British renegade
dance music producers started a series of rhythm experiments by adding loops
and layers of breakbeats––“the percussion-only section of a funk or disco
track, the peak moment at which dancers cut loose and do their most impressive
steps”[3]––on
top of the more predictable “four-on-the-floor”[4]
hardcore rhythm. This technique of adding loops of breakbeats stems from hip
hop. In the mid 1970s, Kool Herc, a Jamaican immigrant to Bronx, invented the
looping technique that consisted of using two copies of the same record and
playing only the breakbeat section, back to back, over and over again. This
continuation resulted in the creation of a hypnotic groove that, within a decade
of technological progression, was perfected by hip hop artists in the 1980s.
Ten years later, in the 1990s London hardcore scene, the breakbeats added a
whole new dimension to the overall sound by reducing some of the repetitiveness
that was often the side effect of house and techno music. The rhythm
experimentation led to some
producers abolishing the bass
four-on-the-floor drum beat with only the breakbeats remaining. This new genre
soon gained popularity and momentum in the United Kingdom and by late 1992 it
was popularly called “ ’ardcore jungle.” By virtue of the fact that the methods
used to manipulate the loops of breakbeats parallel those that are used in hip
hop––along with its roots in African music––jungle became the British answer to
hip hop.
In fact, Jamaican ideas are embedded
in every aspect of jungle, including: “dubplates” (exclusive acetate-plate
recordings of tracks circulated amongst top DJs and producers before their
official release), “rewinds” (when the dancefloor shouts at the DJ to manually
spin back to the beginning a track whose ‘drop’––the part when the main body of
the track begins––had caused a mayhem on the dance floor), and “lighters
salute” (usually during the “break-down”––the part of the track that is
stripped off the beat with only the musical/ambient component of the track
remaining––but often even throughout the entire night, junglist MCs will cry
patois buzzphrases that are aimed at the crowd, rallying them to raise lighters in the air to show their
approval and support). Taking all of this into account, there is small wonder
that jungle spoke to a black British identity. During the period from 1993 to
1995, jungle penetrated deep inside London’s dance scene, reaching far beyond
racial or social boundaries, where it became the most dominant sound of the
underground.
Besides the experimentation with the breakbeats, another
branch of science consisted of the extensive manipulation of the bass, that
was, until then, generally played as the grounding element of a track. The mad
scientist producers of the day reformulated the function of the bass to render
it a melodic and textural element rather than just a fundamental accompaniment.
Furthermore, drawing from dub reggae music traditions, which emphasize the
importance of a physically-felt music, the bass sounds gradually morphed into
what David Toop––drawing a parallel with 1940s bebop––describes as “a
physically felt harmonic/rhythmic component rather than a stun-gun which
punches home
the chord changes.”[5] The
physically felt bass has since then lured thousands of people onto the
dancefloor all over the world––its cathartic force causing child-like abandon.
Essentially, Reynolds writes,
Jungle’s sub-bass frequencies operate almost below the
threshold of hearing, impacting the viscera like shock waves from a bomb. Just
as they had meshed together multiple strands of percussion, producers
eventually deployed two or more bass lines simultaneously. In jungle,
bass––hitherto dance music’s reliable pulse––became a plasmalike substance
forever morphing and mutating. Like the jittery breakbeats, this new dangerbass put you on edge––like dancing over a minefield.[6]
“I
went to my first rave in 1991, and the one thing I noticed, that it was strange
to me was that there were no fights.” Deacon (LA)
It would be impossible to even begin a
dialogue about jungle music without contextually placing it within the rave
culture; and even more so in America then in the United Kingdom because by the
time jungle had arrived on the American continent in late 1994-early 1995, in
the United Kingdom it had become a separate entity from the rave scene. There
were jungle weekly clubs where patrons could listen to all-jungle line-ups with
MCs ripping out the ragga[7]
invectives to the “warrior-stance” masses, and in which the popular drug of
choice had ceased to be Ecstasy[8]
and was now marijuana. The Jamaican/hip
hop ethos was deeply infused
within every aspect of the culture and many British “junglists” defied the
predominantly “white” rave with glow-stick “E’ed-out” (drug Ecstasy-induced)
PLUR (Peace Love Unity Respect) attitude.[9]
In the United States, many of its
future fans first gained exposure to jungle music at the electronic dance music
festivals commonly called “raves.” These festivals are unique in the sense
that, at least in the beginning of the rave scene (1989-1991), there was an
underlying feeling of harmony amongst the participants. And for someone coming
into the rave scene with a background in hip hop, punk, or rock, it would seem
completely surreal to see so many people––not uncommonly as many as 40-50,
000––in one place and not see any fighting. These feelings of harmony could
partially be attributed to the fact that at least 90 percent of all the
participants were taking Ecstasy, which not only diffused any feelings of anger
or negativity, but also heightened the audio receptors in the body so that
people would become completely immersed in the music.
“At raves I would go into all the rooms, but I started to
notice that in certain rooms the kids were better dancers…and that was
drum’n’bass.” Reid Speed. (NYC)
In terms of music education, raves
rate high. Most raves feature multiple rooms, each with their own distinct
sound, which allow people to wander in and out and thus become more open to
hearing new music. As Mihai, a drum’n’bass booking agent, told me in an
interview, “They become educated to different musical styles.”[10] At first it is difficult
to
differentiate between music styles that are all based in four-on-the-floor
rhythm patterns. There are subtle nuances in each genre and with each new
exposure one becomes more knowledgeable and can begin to distinguish these
forms more easily.[11]
Unfortunately there exists a great divide between the different music styles
among the ravers, and nowhere is it more present than in the divide between
trance and jungle. For many junglists, trance music epitomizes everything that
has gone wrong with the rave scene: the over-indulgence in drugs, the mindless
repetitiveness of the four-on-the-floor trance beat which is particularly in
disagreement with a junglist, and the constant rhythmic build-ups which render
trance music quite predictable and unimaginative. And then there are the
component sound choices which in many ways are at the opposite end of the
spectrum when compared to the sounds used in jungle music. Trance employs heavily synthesized sounds whereas jungle uses
samples from funk and soul records that, although digitally produced, give it a
much more organic feel. Jungle-related website chat-rooms are frequently
bombarded with topics that humorously exploit this trance/jungle split: “[…]
trance is drug-music though….guess I would have to be on something to enjoy it
(just like everyone else) …no, seriously it sounds good on E….4 like 15 min….J” or, “fuck trance, it’s all the same:
intro-flow-break-flow-build-up-build-up-climax-break-die. ”[12]
It is easier to differentiate jungle
music from trance or house––jungle is layered with loops of chopped-up
breakbeats which inspire a flow of movements on the dancefloor that
appear
different from other styles of music. In jungle the influence of hip hop style
dancing is evident, with its creative pop-locking and breaking styles taken to
a whole new level of exhibitionism and sheer intensity of movement. Reid Speed
said that in the beginning, when she first started going out to raves, she
couldn’t make out the different musical styles going from one room to another,
but she did notice that “in certain rooms, the kids were better dancers, they
could dance, like, crazier…and that was drum’n’bass.”[13]
“I
strongly believe that drum’n’bass reflects in the time and day we live in” Ufo!
Because of its high-speed rhythms, its
constantly changing form (the “in” sound changes roughly every two to three
months) the way in which it is influenced, and the way in which it successfully
integrates different styles of music,[14]
drum’n’bass is the perfect reflection of the fast-paced, multi-cultural world
in which we live. Composed with the use of a computer––harnessing the latest
technology in sound production and programming–– jungle’s approach to music
production is in perfect synch with the future-bound, post-industrial Western
world; and yet, by cultivating African musical tradition roots, jungle is
grounded through the nurturing of organic polyrhythms.
Another factor that fully supports
this notion of fast-paced futurism is the turn-around time in which newly
recorded music reaches the fan. Many producers will work on a track in the
daytime, then go the same evening to a dubplate facility where the track can be
pressed on a disc-shaped acetate lacquer (dubplate), and later play this newly
pressed track at the nightclub on the same night. In this way the music always remains fresh and does not get
bottled-up in a major label bureaucratic tribulation. The producer/DJ is in
control of his/her own creation and can play it without anyone’s interference.
“People have
to be weaned on to drum’n’bass because it is a difficult music to get into if
you’ve never heard it before.” DJ
Dara (NYC)
The producers’ freedom and their
independence from major label politics have made it possible for drum’n’bass,
in a relatively short time, to be able to experience many different
incarnations of its original sound. There are at least ten distinct different
styles of drum’n’bass depending on both the period of composition and the
artist’s influences. [15] Different styles have been more popular during certain
times, however, and this style popularity divide is most pronounced in clubs
that have a tendency to feature only one or two styles at any given time.
Because the genre of drum’n’bass has become quite well established in the rave
scene, new people are becoming exposed to it all the time. Unfortunately many
of these freshmen don’t get the opportunity to become educated regarding the
evolution of the genre, and in some cases, they may enter the scene at a time
when the predominant style may not be the most accessible, and they may become
discouraged and think that drum’n’bass is only that particular sound. Of
course, they would be wrong.
“I’ve worked in studios and I know that you can train any
chimp to play a guitar riff if he practices it long enough.” Echo (SF)
The United States has strong
traditions in rock music, which unfortunately act as barriers to full
acceptance of this new wave of high-paced, future-bound electronic dance music.
Another element that adds to this unaccepting attitude is the music industry’s
bitter
memories of over-investments in disco, which is considered the
“primal parent” of electronic dance music. In many ways jungle is treated by
both the media and the general population with stark skepticism and its
musicality and validity are often challenged. It is difficult for people in the 1990s to accept computers
as musical instruments much in the same way as it was hard for a lot of
classical musicians to accept the electric guitar as a valid music instrument
in the 1950s. However, the
argument of non-validity becomes difficult to support when one realizes that
most rock music is currently produced using computers where vocals are
pitch-shifted and sound is run through elaborate effects-boxes all of which are
computer-run.
“I would like to see better sound-systems in the American
drum’n’bass scene.” all interviewees (LA, NYC, SF, CHI, MIA, PHIL)
Besides the general American
skepticism regarding electronic dance music as a whole, another significant
problem as far as growth of the scene is concerned is the rave promoters’
inability to supply the proper sound-system in the drum’n’bass room. Many
promoters are not professional enough and are too profit-oriented to care about
presenting the music in its best light, which would require supplying adequate
sound-systems. Another thing that the rave promoters fail to provide is a
proper “jungle” setting in the jungle room. All non-rave “all-jungle one-offs”[16]
regularly implement the commissioning of graffiti-style art pieces that add to
the overall creation of the junglist ambience which is crucial to the proper
enjoyment of the music.
“The
rave scene is cool…it’s just that…we’re in the second room, and we’re getting
the worst soundsystem!” Neil Scheild (SF)
Many rave promoters find it very
difficult to appreciate the drum’n’bass sound because of its intensity. “In the
beginning, the drum’n’bass DJ was put in the toilet or the broom closet.”[17]
Most rave promoters added a drum’n’bass DJ on the flyer only so that they could
cash in on the extra few hundred kids who would come to the rave just to hear
jungle. “Jungle was not a big crowd pull in most rave scenes in the US. In most
cities, the sound was only taken up by small cliques at jungle nights in little
clubs or in the backrooms of some raves.”[18]
According to Neil Scheild, the owner of one of the largest drum’n’bass DJ
booking agencies, “jungle always had a tight following. If you were into
jungle, you were really into jungle,
whereas the kids in other genres, not to put them down or anything, but it
seemed that they came and went a lot quicker. It was more of a fad issue, like
them going out and raving.”[19]
In general, rave promoters were not
interested in investing funds in order to secure a proper representation for
the drum’n’bass DJ in most drum’n’bass rooms. The technical set-up was
completely unacceptable in terms of the quality reproduction of the music from
the record to the speakers, and thus most rave promoters initially did jungle
more damage than good. But at any rate, such promoters did provide a way to
expose the music to a mass audience. Until the first jungle weekly clubs
started to sprout across the US in 1996-1997, raves were, for many, the only
way to hear the music.
“Everyone
always thinks it’s nothing but a bunch of drug parties because of kids dying
and people being irresponsible.” DJ Roxanne
In the past few years, the rave
scene has increasingly become a place where people do not necessarily go to
hear the music. Many people flock to the festivals in search of drug-induced
fun, not really caring about the music or knowing what DJs are playing.
Unfortunately it sometimes happens that “ravers”(partygoers) over-dose due to a
lack of proper education regarding drug ingestion. This phenomenon in turn gets
exploited by the media whose coverage of these events becomes very pigeonholed
in an attempt to create a mass hysteria regarding raves. Images of comatose
bodies stranded on the rocks seem to pervade the coverage of desert parties,
and likewise, hidden cameras and 20/20 Eye on America specials are filled with
teenage bodies on drug-excursions. Little or nothing ever gets mentioned of the
music or the work that the promoters, DJs, and the producers put into it in
order for these parties to happen in the first place. DJ Roxanne expressed her
frustration with the media when she said that “we are playing great music…and
that’s why we’re doing this, that’s why the promoters are throwing parties…for
the music! Not for the kids to do drugs and die.”[20]
2. REWIND
“ At a certain point we broke off from the Rave scene and we
considered ourselves not ravers but junglists.” R.A.W. (LA)
Although the jungle movement owes
its existence and longevity largely to the rave scene, in the beginning of the
movement, many of its most avid fans strove to disassociate themselves from the
rave scene. By 1994 many had started to feel alienated from the PLUR attitude
that rave had advocated. Jungle fans took pride in considering themselves to be
the true music connoisseurs who went to clubs and parties to listen to the
music and not be a
part of the masses who went out to raves to “rave”––that
is, to go to the festivals in order to socialize and indulge in mindless drug
taking.
“In the beginning the only way to hear jungle was if you
went to a rave and heard it on two crappy speakers…so there were kids straight starving for a straight jungle party.” Deacon (LA)
In early 1995, the fast-growing
support of jungle music on both US coasts, coupled with the rave promoters’
inadequate delivery and representation of the music, began to drive some fans
into taking matters into their own hands. That year saw the first West Coast
all-jungle weekly gatherings in the downtown area of Los Angeles. R.A.W., a DJ
from Los Angeles, told me in an interview that the first weekly gathering was
called “Jungle” and it was located at the Belmont tunnel in downtown Los
Angeles. He said that he and his friends, DJs CRS? and APX-1 together under the
collective name “Mictlan,” started the weekly. “We found this great big tunnel
and there were some homeless people there, so we asked them if we could use
that space once a week in exchange for cans of food, and they accepted.” That
weekly ran for almost two years until Science, the first jungle weekly club,
was founded.
Science was located in Santa Monica’s
posh club venue “The Pink.” Many in the jungle community herald the Science
days as LA’s most formative.[21]
In fact, for over a year, Science was the only all-jungle club in LA, even
during the two-year period when jungle music was exploding on the world music
scene. 1997 was the year when jungle’s Roni Size swept off with UK’s Mercury
Music Award with his album New Forms. Jungle was everywhere and everyone
was into jungle. During its almost three-year running-time,
Science relocated three times and
was finally forced to shut down in the Spring of 2000 while it was at Sugar,
also in Santa Monica, due to that venue’s inability to deliver a proper
junglist ambiance (the soundsystem was a complete joke, and the place looked
too clean). When Science closed its doors in the winter of 2000, many in the
scene, including myself, welcomed its end. For a few months leading up to the
inevitable end, the club was barely attracting a meager thirty or forty patrons
per night. Ironically, on the closing night, the club was packed.
“We started with that attitude; as far as, so militant, that
if you don’t know, then you’re never gonna know.” CRS? (LA)
Almost from the beginning of the US
jungle movement, its participants (now regrettably perhaps) admitted to a
certain sense of exclusivity that was present at the all-jungle gatherings. “We
started with that attitude,” DJ CRS? explained, “as far as, so militant, that
if you don’t know, then you’re never gonna know.”21 This exclusivity is perhaps one of the
reasons that the scene in the US did not experience the type of bloom that it
did in the UK. I was told in one of the conversations with the Stuck-On-Earth
jungle crew from NYC that the reason this “bravado” attitude was present was
both a sense of pride in the music (for junglists, their music was far more
intricate and complex than the other forms of electronic dance music) and also,
the junglists’ own way of “fighting” back at the rave scene for excluding them
in the first place. There was an unspoken dress code that many participants
adhered to––and still adhere to today––which was illustrated by the
omnipresence of camouflage patterns.
“Help Support the Uprise of the West Coast Junglist
Movement” Deacon (LA)
The camouflage pattern
signified an almost militant separation from the rest of the rave scene. The
troops, however, were in need of a unifying force. Deacon, a Los Angeles DJ
told me that he and his crew Wreckignition started to place slogans on the
flyers for their parties: HELP SUPPORT THE UPRISE OF THE WEST-COAST JUNGLIST
MOVEMENT. According to Deacon, the slogan “helped people realize that they were
a part of something…that we were all gonna push together.” The West-Coast
parties organized by the early jungle collectives like Mictlan (LA),
Wreckignition (LA), and the B.A.S.S. Crew (SF) were often happening in venues
without electricity or running water. People had to sacrifice a lot to be a
part of the early jungle scene.
3. NAME
“We just started calling it “jungle” because, back in the
days, we were speeding the beats up…it sounded jungle.” TC Izlam
In the beginning, the producers
of jungle music found their inspirations primarily from old soul and funk
songs. They would find the breakbeat point in a song––the point when everything
else would stop except for the beat––sample the actual beat, speed it up,
process it until it barely resembled the original version, and then loop that
beat into a continuous pulse so that it would become the driving rhythmic
structure of the track. “We just started calling it ‘jungle’ because we were
speeding the beats up…it sounded jungle.”22
Many producers experimented by “chopping” a single bar of the breakbeat into
even smaller sections which, when layered on top of each other, would result in
an even more radically polyrhythmic feel.
One breakbeat in particular became the break which experienced the
greatest sampling rate by producers and eventually went ahead to become
its
most ardent ambassador. This breakbeat was called the Amen, and it was sampled
from an old funk record, Amen Brother
by the Winstons. This break, which even today continues to be a favorite with
many producers, has become the signature break of jungle/drum’n’bass
music. It has a groovy,
live-drumming feel to it that helps it retain its funky-ness even at a 180 bpms
(beats per minute).23
“Jungle was a racist term used to describe the more hip
hoppy and ragga styles of break-beat music as opposed to the more intelligent
forms which were associated with the older twenty-one and over crowds in the
club and bar set!’” DJ Odi (NYC)
The Amen break-influenced jungle was
predominantly associated with an urban black population. This is largely due to
its influences in soul, funk, dance hall, and hip hop. In the UK, most jungle
clubs were predominantly frequented by working-class black youth amongst whom
gang reprisals were a common occurrence. DJ Odi, a veteran jungle DJ from NYC,
said that “jungle was a racist term used to describe the more hip hoppy and
ragga styles of break-beat music, as opposed to the more intelligent forms
which were associated with the older twenty-one and over crowds in the club and
bar set!”24 The music, however, was
produced by whites and blacks alike, and with the mounting support that the
pirate radio network had produced, the music industry and the media began to
recognize the potential of the music. According to Jumpin’ Jack Frost, the
partner of London’s V-Recordings––one of jungle’s pioneer labels––they (the
record companies) began to “think of ways to market the music. They got
together, the media and the business people, took the same music, in a different
format, and called it drum’n’bass.”25
According to Frost, they
deemed this necessary if the music was to lose
its rude-boy image and leave London’s disadvantaged Southeast end.
As jungle became more popular,
especially in 1997-1998, many of its original fans opposed the scene’s
infiltration by all the newcomers. This was echoed by many producers’
purposeful almost-complete eradication of the Amen break with the introduction
of the techno-influenced rhythmic structure which was called tech-step.
“When it was fun it was jungle…and then it became serious
and it became drum’n’bass.” Reid Speed (NYC)
DJ Empress who lives in New York City
rationalizes tech-step in terms of the scene’s refusal to accept the commercial
radio-generated fan base who switched to drum’n’bass when the music surfaced
both in the UK and the US. She said that, “fearing the infiltration of all
these new-comers, many producers went back into their studios and started to
make music which was far from being accessible to the mainstream.”26 This new wave of producers began to
incorporate sounds that were heavily influenced by the shuddering sounds of
Belgian techno. As Roy Dank, another DJ from New York City puts it, the new
sound incorporated “dark and growly bass-lines, techno stabs and scary shit.”27
The attitude in clubs had begun
to change from the crowd’s playfulness of jungle days to their “art-gallery”
voyeurism of the drum’n’bass DJ.
The most common scene at the club was that of the DJ being surrounded by
a staring crowd of “b-boy”28 posers
who
seldom did more than just nod their heads in approval of the tunes.
The overall vibe of the clubs had become quite serious and it had started to
become a dance-less atmosphere due to the crowd’s intimidation by the
tough-looking poser fans.
4. DJ
“The DJ has become such an icon within our society.” XXXL
(LA)
Since the 1950s, when the first live
DJ events had began to occur in the US––with dances known as “platter parties”
or “sock hops”29––the role of the DJ has
increasingly been pushed far beyond the boundaries of its original traditional
role as a radio host. He30 was
starting to no longer be limited to playing exclusively across the airwaves and
he slowly began to emerge as one of the most essential components of dance
events. His role as a live entertainer had come to its full fruition during the
1970s disco era when he was seen as someone with immense powers to not only
entertain, but also be in command of the dance floor. The authors of Last
Night a DJ Saved My Life, Brewster and
Broughton describe the disco period as “the era when he [the DJ] came of age.
This was when he became a star, even a god to his dancefloor”31 However, whereas during the disco age
the DJ may have
become a star and a god to its dancefloor constituency, it
was really during the 1990s rave culture that he became a god to the marketing
and advertising constituency.
The 1990s rave culture has elevated
the DJ to a superstar status, and as is the case with any superstar, he has
become an extraordinarily marketable tool for all whose market demographics
fall in the club-age category. In
an interview with DJ XXXL, who manages Beatnonstop, a record shop in Los
Angeles’ trendy Melrose location, I was told that “the DJ has become such an
icon within our society that everyone from Coca Cola, The Gap, to McDonalds and
Levi’s are all using his image to sell their product. Any music magazine you
open, where back in the day [1990-1993/94] they used to be about, you know, the
music, but nowadays it’s all plugs for dual CD players, such and such kind of
headphones[…]make sure you’ve got these clothes or these shoes or accessories
to help maintain your image as the DJ”32
This is true. Most music magazines have become inundated with advertising which
leaves a limited amount of space
for music articles or record reviews.
Some of the more underground
electronic magazines such as Lotus, XLR8R,33
and Fix have initially protested corporate America’s moving in on the rave
scene on the grounds that the rave PLUR ethos stands in stark opposition to
their multi-million dollar industry practices. Including child and slave labor
policies, the destruction of the rainforest, animal rights abuses, etc. This
initial fervor has, unfortunately, somewhat subsided over the years and has
become less effective in disabling some of the major companies to advertise to
the rave demographics. Over the last few years, many DJ culture magazines have
regularly featured ads by companies such as Camel, Levi’s, and Nike,34 and have gone as far as
cross-promoting larger DJ tours
with some of them.35 Some
magazines defend these advertising policies by quoting the huge growth that the
DJ culture has experienced, which in turn feeds the magazines’ need to reach a
wider audience that is possible only through an increase in advertising
revenue. With the mounting pressure from the readers’ polls, however, some
magazines have considerably scaled down on the corporate advertising front.
“The worst thing about DJ-ing, and don’t let anyone fool you
or lie to you, is that it is a job” DJ Odi (NYC)
The growth of DJ culture has
inevitably created a new class of DJ royalty who preside over their kingdoms in
unprecedented glory. But, as glamorous as being a successful DJ can be, and
contrary to many people’s view of the DJ as someone who has fun for a living,
DJ Odi claimed that “the worst thing about DJ-ing, and don’t let anyone fool
you or lie to you is that it is a job. It’s an adventure, but it is a job, and
it’s work.”36 Besides having to
routinely visit record shops and search through hundreds of records (in search
of that particular one that will make a dancer loose himself or herself on the
floor) and practicing their mixing skills for hours on end, many of the more
successful DJs will spend more hours on an airplane traveling from one place to
another than at their actual destination. Mark Caro, a.k.a. Technical Itch, a
DJ/producer from England, said that, “Most people don’t understand what goes
into it. Especially back home [in England] our friends think we’re off all the
time enjoying ourselves, [and don’t get me wrong it can be great too] but,
sometimes we’re up for 36 hours at a time, showing up at gigs extremely
tired[…]and
some may wonder why our performance may sometimes not measure
up to our names. You try doing that, it’s really hard work, it’s not easy.”37
In the beginning of their careers many
DJs (especially jungle DJs because jungle is not as widely accepted as house or
trance) will have to work extraordinarily hard in order to build a reputable
name for themselves and establish good relationships with event promoters. This
may include working with new and untested event promoters and infrequently
finding themselves in situations which are not risk-free. DJ Odi remembers his beginner jungle DJ
days, circa 1994-1995, when “I
used to end up stranded at airports with no rides, left in hotel rooms without
fee payments, arriving at a club venue only to find that it was false
advertising.”38 Stareyes, another
veteran jungle DJ from San Francisco, said that she still gets excited when she
gets paid on time, or books a gig in a different city that someone else had
organized for her, because for half the time she has been DJ-ing, she was
“playing for free on crappy soundsystems, because many people hated jungle music
and because it was the only way to hear the music other than her bedroom.”39
These growing pains can be seen as a
way of paying one’s dues and can help the DJ keep things in perspective and
help him retain his humbleness, especially once the DJ becomes well-known and
these incidents become more rare. One way to minimize these risk situations,
however, is to have adequate management or booking agent representation. The
manager or a booking agent’s role is to be on the look out for any signs of
inappropriate conduct and to make sure that everything gets taken care of
properly. Neil Scheild of Reflex Music Group said that the best way to avoid
incidents is to be “very up-front and honest in all your dealings and to make
sure that both the travel arrangements and the appropriate contracts have been
taken care of beforehand.”40
“DJing is not
only matching beats. Beat-matching is a part of it, but it’s not the whole
thing.” DJ Dara NYC
The impetus for DJ manager
representation has especially increased in the last decade as the job
description of the DJ has grown considerably since his early radio days when he
was required to only play each record from start to finish and begin playing
the next one at the end of the previous one. Today DJing embraces a range of
activities which have rightfully earned him the title of a creative
artist.
In addition to having a good taste in
record selection, or what is commonly referred to in the drum’n’bass culture as
being a “dope selecta,”41 the
club DJ plays on two (and sometimes three) turntables simultaneously, and he or
she (there are many more female DJs today than there were during the radio DJ
period) is required to demonstrate a considerable amount of technical skill,
creativity, and leadership in order to please the dancing crowd. The technical
skill aspect requires the DJ to be able to: 1) beat-match or “overlap the ending of one record with
the beginning of the second record so that their drum-beats are synchronized;”42 2) manipulate the EQ on the DJ mixer
as to minimize the clutter and maximize those sounds that blend well together
during the actual mix point; 3) scratch the records with his hands for an added
percussive effect (mainly in hip hop, but increasingly so in drum’n’bass); 4)
employ his beat-matching skill to perform a quick “cross-fade”––the
manipulation of the DJ mixer in order to choose what record is to be heard
through the loudspeaker at any given time––from the first record (the one
already playing) to the second record (the one that had been beat-matched)
repeatedly throughout the
duration of the first record so that the end
result becomes an unbroken sound, composed of the two component records.
The creativity of the DJ is sometimes
measured by the amount of risk he takes in choosing what records to play
together. Some DJs will find a cappella
tracks (versions of songs that had been stripped of the instrumental
accompaniment with only the vocals remaining) and mix them with music tracks
that lack vocals, and by doing so end up creating a remix on the spot; others
will mix different genres of music together (in drum’n’bass, due to the beat
compatibility, it is most often hip hop) to create an interesting concoction of
the two, others still will spice up their mixes with elaborate display of scratching
skill, adding yet another rhythmic component to the overall sound.
The stage presence of the DJ also
plays a big part in the crowd’s overall experience of his set and his ability
to control the crowd—the DJ’s ultimate goal. DJ Tee Bee, known for his dancing
behind the turntables while DJ-ing, explained why it was important to give his
all to the crowd: “This [dj-ing] is about making the people enjoy this thing as
much as you enjoy it, and you’ve got to give a huge portion of yourself to
succeed, because it’s your energy, at the end of the night, that’s gonna make
them dance and make them go crazy[…]and, if a person is on the dancefloor, just
wiggling along, and he looks up at the DJ and the DJ is in it, like he’s loving
it, he’s gonna listen a little bit
harder [to the music] and think [to himself] ‘oh no, something is going down,
oh no,’ and he looks up and the DJ
hypes it up, the riff comes in, the bass kicks in, the DJ goes crazy…the floor
goes crazy.”43
In addition to all of the above, a
great DJ needs to have the ability to take people on a journey. Brewster and
Broughton explain the importance of this crucial skill:
In
a good club, and even in most bad ones, the dancers are celebrating their
youth, their energy, their sexuality. They are worshipping life through dance
and music. Some worship with the heightened levels of perception that drugs
bring; but most are carried away merely by the music and the people around
them. The DJ is
the key to all this. By playing records in the right way
the average DJ has a tremendous power to affect people’s states of mind. A
truly great DJ, just for a moment, can make the whole room fall in love.
Because
you see, DJ-ing is not just about choosing a few tunes. It is about generating
shared moods; it’s about understanding the feeling of a group of people and
directing them to a better place. In the hands of a master, records become the
tools for rituals of spiritual communion that for many people are the most
powerful events of their lives.44
A DJ must also be able to “tell a story” with his music. When
I asked Reid Speed what makes a good set good, she said “it’s when I say
something with my music […] when I tell a story. That’s what makes it good. It
doesn’t always happen, but when it does it’s the best feeling.”45 Just like a good book, this musical
journey has to have its own peaks, valleys, and troughs. It has to be
interesting and suspenseful, imaginative, and above all have the ability to
make the people on the dancefloor experience deep-felt emotions. DJ Tee Bee
said that when he plays he tries to introduce elements “that will make them
smile and be happy, and likewise I will also play some elements of sadness…it
has to be an emotional journey,”46
(preferably traveled in a space ship).
“Is this the only chance I’m ever gonna get? I’ve got to
prove myself every time I play…I have to play the most rinsing set, because if
I don’t…people are going to think I suck.” Reid Speed (NYC)
Because drum’n’bass has evolved
between 1998-2000 to incorporate more techno/hardcore/punk-sounding elements,
many DJs who have entered the scene during that period lack this crucial skill
of guiding the dancers to transcend their spatial surroundings. Their
perception of the music is very restricted, as is their access to older records
that
incorporate more
melodic and vocal based tracks. This detachment from the music’s roots has
created an entire breed of DJs whose sets are very interchangeable and whose
dominant sound is very dark and sinister sounding. Many DJs’ performance sets
sound like a war zone battle-field, with each new track trying to outdo the
previous one in their levels of intensity and sheer ferocity. In an interview
with Reid Speed, a jungle DJ from NYC who has in the past two years began to
play more 2-step sets precisely because jungle events had become too serious
for her, I was told that a lot of jungle DJs “suffer from it [the need to play
only the darker sounding records] and will think to themselves: ‘is this the
only chance I’m ever gonna get?…I’ve got to prove myself every time I go out to
play, I’ve got to play, like, the most rinsing (intense) set because if I
don’t…you know…people are gonna think I suck.”47
In addition to playing “battle-field”
music, many DJs will acquire a very serious disposition while DJing, which in
turn has a freeze-effect on the people on the dancefloor who, instead of
dancing, end up staring at the DJ, hands crossed at the waist “with a hard
B-boy pose.”48 This attitude makes for
an overall intimidating atmosphere, and even those who would like to dance
sometimes can’t, either because the direct view49
of the DJ had been obstructed by the voyeur posse, or because it just doesn’t
feel right to be dancing with all that serious watching business going on.
While I was talking to G13, a producer from New Jersey, I was told that he
often feels like he is at an “art show, rather than a party,” when he goes out.
“I have been to so many parties,” he said to me, “where not a single person had
had a smile on…now what is that about?”50
Drawing upon my extensive
interviews, I conclude that the serious attitude can be explained in terms of
many DJs’ and fans’ obsession with being musical connoisseurs, which prompts
them to engage in the acute analysis of the music and forgo the entertainment
element of the club experience.
“It’s not so
important that you’re on the edge. What’s important is that what you’re doing
is dope…whatever that is.” Raymond Roker (LA)
Until the most recent inventions of
other break-beat based music genres such as British 2-step garage and nu skool
breaks,51 drum’n’bass has been on the forefront
of the electronic dance music evolution. During this “electronic dance music
baby” period––and even still today––it was viewed as the most musically
“innovative and futuristic” genre, if not by the entire electronic dance music
community, then at least by its most avid fans. Unfortunately, it has also been
the case that this “most innovative,” self-conscious attitude has created an
aura of almost cult-like exclusivity within the drum’n’bass community that has
often prevented the inclusion of new members into the scene, both musically and
physically. Many junglists openly
speak of their contempt for other styles of electronic dance music that
incorporate the four-on-the-floor pulsating beat. And nowhere is this contempt
more pronounced than in the recent music war that is being waged against the
2-step genre which many die-hard junglists see as a bastard son of jungle—a
style which has taken the best elements of jungle music, mainly the bass
sounds—which is stealing not only producer resources (as many traditionally
jungle producers have began to compose 2-step records), but also the fan base
that “rightfully”52
belongs to jungle.
Another result of the music’s
cutting-edge status is its treatment of its own music as a very disposable
commodity. It is not rare that in
drum’n’bass, a track’s club-life sometimes does not exceed a month or two
before it becomes old or “played out” and set aside until—the quality of the
track permitting—it is resurrected at a later point, usually after a two year
minimum wait, as a classic. Most tracks do not reach the classic status,
however, and become completely forgotten. This “murdering” of records is in a
way a price which the producers, DJs, and fans have to pay in search of the
most cutting-edge sound, but it is also a trend that has left many DJs, who are
not so obsessed with the music’s cutting-edge status, wondering as to whether
this inclination for the new is in itself debilitating for the overall
scene. Raymond Roker, a DJ and
editor of URB magazine, said “we leave great records behind because we are
always searching for the edge…well, you never find the edge. The edge is always
this elusive thing. It’s not so important that you’re on the edge, it’s what
you’re doing that it’s dope, whatever that is.” 53
“Girls don’t want to come to clubs any more because it’s too
serious.” DB (NYC)
The art-gallery ambiance of many
drum’n’bass events is possibly the main contributor to why the scene has lost many
of its female supporters. The
scene has become very male-oriented, which is in direct response to the music’s
loss of its initial playfulness. According to DB, a DJ and a CEO of Higher
Education, a Warner Brothers’ drum’n’bass imprint, “girls don’t want to come to
clubs any more because it’s too serious.”54
Even in the midst of the female fan
support scarcity, drum’n’bass has, perhaps ironically, always maintained the
leadership position in the female DJ bloom. One of the first and longest running West Coast drum’n’bass
weeklies, Eklektic first opened its doors to the public, in 1997, with two
female resident DJs, Sage and Stareyes, during what dMarie
named the
“female jungle explosion.”55 This
female drum’n’bass DJ outburst can be attributed to a number of factors. First,
since drum’n’bass is one of the youngest electronic dance music genres, and by
the time it arrived in the US, DJ culture had been firmly established and
females have had more time to experiment with the technical aspects of playing.
They were more acquainted with the equipment and the scene was not yet
locked-down, meaning that unlike with disco, house, techno or trance
music––which have always had strong traditions in the US and have all been male
DJ-dominated since the early 1970s (at least for disco)––nothing was
established in the drum’n’bass genre. So timing played a big role in the female
DJ explosion. Second, many promoters found that the crowd was very receptive to
female DJs whose presence on the stage was considered a novelty and who also
played into erotic fantasies engendered by the male gaze fantasy.56 Third, female aggression has often had
to find alternative means for outlets in Western culture, where it is
traditionally considered “inappropriate,” and what better way than to play hard
and fast paced music and be in control of a sea of men, beating them at their
own game! And finally, jungle music itself was very alluring to many female
DJs, especially in the beginning when many tracks featured angelic female
vocals laid over hard beats and basslines. Even today, there are producers who
still make tracks that incorporate this soft-hard juxtaposition.
With time, the music taste of many
female DJs has changed to embrace even harder sounding records so that all are
keeping pace with, if not outdoing, their male peers in the hardness of the
records that they choose to play.
5. DUBPLATE
"Drum'n'bass is a lot about getting the latest tunes,
and playing tunes that other people haven't got." Tech Itch (UK)
Since jungle/drum'n'bass owes much to
the 1970s Jamaican culture of soundsystem competition, these influences can be
seen in all aspects of drum'n'bass culture. In Jamaica, this fierce competition
has lead to the creation of exclusive, custom-made records that were, and still
continue to be, used by each soundsystem in their attempt to outdo each other
during soundsystem battles. Initially these exclusive tracks were called
“‘versions’––new instrumental versions of a song made from a recycled
backing track––and later ‘dubs,’ where a more radical reconstruction of a song
was undertaken.”57
This tradition of the quest for
exclusive tracks translated in jungle culture with producer-DJs' exporting of
their home studio recordings of songs on a DAT (digital audio tape) which they
then pressed onto metal acetate discs ($30-40) at a dubplate manufacturing
facility. Shaped like regular vinyl, these metal acetate recordings are
popularly called dubplates, but unlike vinyl, they have a limited life span,
anywhere from 25-50 plays. For producers, dubplates remain the most reliable
way to test tracks on a club-soundsystem and see the crowd's response, before
final vinyl pressings are eventually released on labels. However, as Tech Itch
points out, "drum'n'bass is a lot about playing the latest tunes and
playing the stuff that other people haven't got,"58 which leads to many tracks getting
left on dubplate for an unreasonable amount of time, sometimes over a year.
These records remain on dubplates until DJs become tired of them and then go
ahead and have them released to the public when they are no longer in demand.
This can be very frustrating for young
aspiring DJs who do not have access to top producers'
DAT versions and therefore are always a couple of steps behind the most current
music.
Likewise, label politics can also prevent a track from being
released in a timely manner, or being released at all. Many drum'n'bass
producers are quite prolific and can often create five or six tracks per month,
which is a lot more than any independent label can release.
"Music should be accessible. Especially the best of
music should be accessible if you are the DJ." Cassien (NYC)
Access to dubplates is very
restricted. In drum'n'bass, it is usually the producers themselves who exchange
dubplates, which makes it quite difficult for a non-producer DJ to have access
to the freshest material. Those who are new to the scene may take a while to
understand this concept that makes little sense if you are not familiar with
the drum'n'bass' roots in Jamaican soundsystem competition. In an interview
with Cassien, one of Direct Drive's resident DJs in New York City, I was told
that "music should be accessible to the DJ. Dubplate culture did a lot to
ruin my concept of what DJ-ing is."59
Especially in recent years since the American producers are starting to make
quality drum'n'bass music and are gaining respect from many of their
hard-to-please UK counterparts––who are now more willing to share their
music––the non-producer DJs' access to the latest music is limited. This has
unfortunately led some DJs to acquire dubplates by any means
necessary––including stealing.
"Dubplates have become a fetish. People have fetishized
the very idea of a plate." Pieter K. (LA)
The DJ hierarchy that the
dubplate system creates in the drum'n'bass scene has developed a dubplate
frenzy. DJs will go to any length to obtain the acetate gems: they will
"cut" plates from MP3s, DJ mix CDs, or even tapes that they convert
to CDs (you can't cut plates from an analogue audio tape). Often, in their
attempt to climb the hierarchical ladder, aspiring DJs will not even care what
tracks they do end up cutting as long as they can play the 10-inch records
(dubplates are generally smaller than regular vinyl records) at parties, or be
able to write "dub" on their mix tape track listings.60 Pieter K, one of the most prolific
producers in the US drum'n'bass scene, talks of the silliness of the
drum'n'bass dubplate fetish: "People have fetishized the very notion of a
plate. There are so many aspiring DJs who post their 'Top 10 Lists' on
websites, and everything is 'dub', 'dub', 'dub' 'dub’… and some of those tunes
they play," he said, "are shit."61
"You don't have to play 'new, new, new, new' all the
time. You have to play for the people...Play the old shit! You have to be a
DJ!" Phantom–45 (CHI)
One of the ways that a non-producer DJ
can still sustain his career, provided he has excellent programming skills, is
to find new and creative ways of playing. Mixing other genres into the set is
one way of doing it, as is finding popular a cappella tracks and laying a "phat" drum'n'bass beat on
top of it that can breathe new life into a song. Some DJs play custom sets such
as "all ragga sets" that work really well in the midst of the
techno-sound infiltration, or "history of jungle music" sets which
take the audience on a musical memory journey. Some DJs introduce turntablist
techniques that tantalize the audience with their elaborate scratching and
fading action. Some DJs will play "two by four" sets that consist of
two DJs playing simultaneously on two pairs of turntables each. This is
particularly
exciting as there is a lot more room for error as both DJs
have to pay close attention to not only their own beat-matching, but also to
their partner's.
There is no doubt that the dubplate
fascination will always be present in the drum'n'bass scene, as dubplates are,
and will continue to be an integral part of the culture. Aspiring DJs should
understand, however, that there are alternative ways of gaining popularity in
the scene that could use further exploring.
6. HIP
HOP
“Hip Hop has a mentality that hip hop is the only music on
planet Earth. And that’s how my attitude was for a while.” DJ Abstract (SF)
Although jungle’s roots draw from African music traditions,
the hip hop community in America has not yet fully embraced this UK import.
This can be attributed to the music’s initial association with the
predominantly “white” rave scene, as well as to the hip hop community’s
relative skepticism towards other forms of music, in general. According to DJ
Abstract from San Francisco who used to be a hip hop DJ before he discovered
jungle, “hip hop has a mentality that hip hop is the only music on planet
Earth…and that’s how my attitude was for a while.”62 This “bravado” attitude can also be
explained in terms of hip hop’s direct relationship to Jamaican soundsystem––a
culture whose ethos is based in competition and rivalry.
“There are a lot of junglists who are in the closet and they
need to come out. It’s OK, man…junglist pride!” DJ Craze (MIA)
Unfortunately, this
“horse-blinders” mentality has prevented many in the hip hop community from
hearing the music, and furthermore there is a likelihood that it may have also
prevented many of those who heard it to admit that they may actually even like
the music for the fear of being accused by their peers of not “keepin’ it real”
by embracing this “other” form of music. DJ Craze, third time DMC63 world champion, strongly believes that
there are many hip hop fans who secretly like jungle and who have yet to come
out of the closet with their love for jungle, “There are a lot of junglists who
are in the closet. They need to come out. It’s OK, man…junglist pride!”64
Another jungle producer/MC duo
from Oakland, Zion-I, who produce hip hop as well as jungle, tell of the many
rejections they received when they submitted their drum’n’bass/hip hop mix
album to the college radio stations. “As soon as they put it [the needle] on
the wax and heard that it was drum’n’bass they were like, ‘Hell, no! Get that
shit out of here!’ Straight up!” But fortunately for Zion-I the other tracks on
the album were “strictly” hip hop, so eventually many stations started to warm
up to their drum’n’bass sound based on the respect they received for their hip
hop songs. “If your sound doesn’t fall within the designated parameters of
‘classic underground’ hip hop, most DJs don’t want to mess with it,”65 Zion-I added.
When raves first started to
happen in the US, in 1991, most didn’t feature hip hop music. Today, however,
most big raves or “massives,” have hip hop rooms, and quite often with very
impressive line-ups. This inclusion of hip hop in the rave culture is what will
hopefully eventually pave the way for the hip hop community’s finally embracing
jungle/drum’n’bass.
“If MCs want
to be on the same level as the DJ in the rave, then boom… Make rap!” TC Izlam
(NYC)
MC-ing, a core element in hip
hop culture, is also a significant part of jungle/drum’n’bass culture. When
jungle first emerged in the UK, it was the MCs, shouting out over London’s
pirate radio waves, who were really its first ardent ambassadors. Most early
jungle tracks incorporated ragga-style MC-ing or “toasting” of Jamaican style
rhymes over jungle beats, bringing it even closer to the Jamaican soundsystem
tradition. Some tracks had vocals already recorded on them such as Shy
FX’s “Original Nutta’” featuring
Apache’s (an MC from London) vocals, which was one of the first jungle tracks
to become hugely successful. The MC’s role is to “hype up the music, the DJ and
the crowd”66 or to emphasize
whatever is going on on the stage. MC Kemst from LA said that he also sees his
role as the “news and the weather reporter” and that it is his job to point out
to the crowd what tracks are being played. “Hey, this is a dubplate, perhaps
the crowd should know that the person who’s spinning it made it.” He also sees
himself as “the human contact, because the music is electronic…it’s not the
timbre of an upright bass.”67 The MC
is a crucial factor in the overall enjoyment of the show also in that he offers
exactly that––a show. A good MC can entertain the crowd much in the same way as
a live-act can, and he can add that extra excitement and movement on the stage
that, when an MC is really good, can upgrade a bad DJ set to a good one, or a
good DJ set to an amazing one.
One of the shortcomings of many
jungle MCs, especially in America, is their over-eagerness with the microphone
that often results in their constant “flow” over music, without knowing when to
let the music play without interruption. I say especially in America, (although
it is quite common in the UK as well, even with some of the most
popular MCs) because MC-ing
in America has traditionally been associated with the hip hop culture, where
the MC is the focal point. And when jungle crossed over into America, many hip
hop MCs, especially those who had a difficult time breaking into America’s very
selective hip hop scene, took to the microphone and began their careers as
drum’n’bass MCs. This has resulted in many a DJ set being ruined by
over-zealous MCs who really need to hear TC Izlam when he says that “if MCs
want to be on the same level as the DJ in the rave, then boom…make RAP!”68
7. WORLDWIDE
“As hip hop in America is very close-minded to outside
influences, drum’n’bass is also very close-minded to outside influences” DB
(NYC)
Having a claim to being the
originator of any style of music can be a powerful thing both economically as
well as psychologically. For instance, it allows you to have the upper hand
when it comes to quality control, by virtue of having more experience in
production. You can set standards and conventions which often become unspoken
guidelines that, for outsiders, become difficult to decipher (if they ever do).
Being “the first” also helps in terms of accumulating fan support or building
of “the scene” that inevitably translates into the establishment of weekly
clubs, record companies, the accompanying distribution channels, and the
necessary media attention. This snowball effect serves to affirm a leadership
position that becomes very difficult, and quite often impossible, to challenge.
Some genres are more open to interpretation by “outsiders.” In drum’n’bass,
however, as is the case with any other genre based in the Jamaican soundsystem
tradition, the stakes become very high and challengers have a long way to go
before their existence is even
acknowledged, let alone taken
seriously. DB, a Londoner who now
lives in New York City, knows exactly what he is talking about when he says
that, “as hip hop in America is very close-minded to outside influences,
drum’n’bass in the UK is also very close-minded to outside influences.”69 He had been the head of a
now-dissolved US drum’n’bass label “Higher Education” and knows how difficult
it had been to sell US drum’n’bass records in the UK. Cassien, another DJ from
New York City also agrees with DB, “It [drum’n’bass] is their [the UK] music.
Why should they want another interpretation when they are quite happy with the
formula that they have created.”70
“No mate, the bass isn’t right! No mate, the snares aren’t
hittin’” R.A.W. (LA)
This attitude has not
discouraged US and other non-UK producers from making their “interpretations”
and versions of the music. R.A.W., a Los Angeles producer talks of his first
encounters with UK producers whom he entrusted to offer an honest opinion about
his tracks. He lets out a laugh as he remembers the kind of response he
received: “No mate, the bass isn’t right. No mate, the snares aren’t hitting.” But
R.A.W. wasn’t discouraged. His background is in hip hop (one of his producer
pseudonyms is B-Boy 3000) and so he was able to explain it in terms of the
American producers having less experience with studio equipment and thus not
being able to produce material that was yet on par with the UK. He also
understood that he was being caught in the same scenario as many of the UK hip
hop artists who have been trying to get the attention of the US scene for
decades. “You can do hip hop in the UK, and no one will recognize you, but you
can still do it from your heart.”71 he
added. DJ Craze wasn’t exactly as diplomatic in his response and when I asked
him about this issue he said that most in the US hip hop scene have a prejudice
against non-US
DJs and producers, and “even if they are
real real dope, it’s like, ‘what does this UK nigga know about hip hop?”72
“It’s not a London thing any more. It’s a global thing.” Tee
Bee (Norway)
Some of these attitudes of
non-acceptance are changing, especially since the genre is becoming more and
more established in all corners of the world. New people are coming into the
scene and bringing their own cultures that are, perhaps, more accepting and
less competition based. Producers in the US are especially open to
collaboration and are constantly in pursuit of working partners. Already,
joined efforts between such reputable UK producers such as Technical Itch (who
has combined forces with Dieselboy and Hive), Calibre (who worked with
Phunckateck’s73 DJ Abstract and Juju),
Loxy and Ink (now working with XXXL and Hazen), and the Usual Suspects (also
working with XXXL and Hazen) have all resulted in some remarkable works of
music with more planned for the future.
DJ Tee Bee, a producer from Norway who was recently voted “best international
producer” by the UK’s leading drum’n’bass publication, Knowledge, doesn’t seem to care that his quite impressive production
credits only won him best “international” award when he says that “it’s not a
London thing anymore, it’s a global thing.” Perhaps with time, the
“international” DJ category will be abolished all together, but I don’t think
any non-UK junglists are holding their breath.
“We’re basically a hybrid––a child of what they’ve created.”
UFO! (SF)
One of the most popular US
producers, San Francisco’s UFO!, points out that feelings of anger or
frustration towards his hard-judging UK peers aren’t as pronounced as
some
people might imagine them to be.
More than anything, he talks of the deepest respect he has for his
“fathers,” as he calls the UK drum’n’bass producers, “without whom,” he said,
“he wouldn’t be doing what he is doing and [therefore] wouldn’t be happy at
all.” He also added that it is silly to try and be “better than Britain. There
is no competition,” he asserts, “there is no best. We are basically a hybrid––a
child of what they’ve created.”74
8. GO
BIG
"If the media gets involved it could just spoil it. It
could cause a bunch of ego crap that, frankly, might ruin everything."
Stareyes (SF)
For any underground music community,
media attention can be perceived as both a threat and a blessing. Daddy Kev of LA’s Vortex recordings
thinks that "there are many people in the underground music scene who
pride themselves for being true music connoisseurs, and for having the rare
shit."75 Media attention for
them would therefore mean the inevitable guaranteed infiltration of new people
into the scene who could "dilute" its potency and compromise its
authenticity.
In addition, as Stareyes points out,
"if the media gets involved it could cause a bunch of ego crap that
frankly, might ruin everything."76
This has already happened in other electronic dance music genres in
America––genres whose main DJs have been exalted to a rock-star status that is
far removed from the original utopian PLUR ideals of the rave culture. This DJ
as rock star has not yet fully reached the American drum'n'bass scene
because,
"drum'n'bass hasn't arrived in America like it did in the UK,"77 although that remains a possibility in
the not so distant future.
"No, you're not going to get mass amounts of people
listening to a 180 bpm music. I don't see that catching on" Fred FS (NYC)
Drum'n'bass music in its current
state, however, has little or no real potential of reaching a mass audience.78 The lack of mass appeal is mainly due
to how the music has evolved in the recent years to become too fast-paced for
an average listener. It has also incorporated dark techno sounds that even
further distance all but the fully initiated. Fred FS of Ming & FS strongly
believes that this combination of fast paced music and the incorporation of
darker techno sounds are mainly responsible for this lack of mass appeal for
drum'n'bass: "No, you're not going to hear of mass amounts of people
listening to a 180 BPM music with dark techno basslines. I don't see that
catching on."79 Keaton
Suspect of Usual Suspects also agrees with Fred, "forgetting whether it is
American or not, drum'n'bass is a medium of 170 beats per minute, and like
anything that fast it just doesn't necessarily appeal to the mainstream."80 In addition to its speed and sound
choices, drum'n'bass also lacks the main ingredient necessary for any music
form to become accessible to a mainstream market: a face.
“Radio in America is 10 years behind most countries in terms
of what they play." DB (NYC)
With the exception of college
radio, drum’n’bass, and most other electronic dance music genres, have received
little or no radio attention. This
is mainly due to the fact that the music that is played over American radio
waves is, for the most part, song driven. The songs are delivered by artists
whom the public can see on TV or read about in mainstream music magazines and
with whom they can construct relationships. Though usually one-sided, they are,
nevertheless relationships. “People need a face and lyrics to latch on to,” DJ
Sub-Flow explained to me. Fred FS was in accord with DJ Subflow: “That’s the
way music has evolved in America, and you can’t change time.”81 In Europe it is a different story.
Many of the mainstream radio stations have already embraced drum’n’bass and
have even moved on to other, younger music forms, such as 2-step and nu skool
breaks, that have been born out of London’s underground.
The biggest obstacle with American
radio lays in its dependency on advertising revenue. Once a particular segment
of the market and their particular music preferences have been identified,
introducing new music into rotation to an already existing show becomes a
political incubus. Most stations feature only one type of music to begin with,
which makes adding songs or shows that do not conform to their perceived
demographic audience an extremely complicated, and above all time-consuming,
matter. “It took American radio ten years to embrace hip hop, and that was
music that came from this country, so they had no choice in the end,”82 DJ Dara said.
Although many drum’n’bass DJs and
producers welcome the increased exposure and attention the music has received
and are thinking of those melodies and vocals that could shift the American
radio fraternity in favor of the music, there are some who still feel that
drum’n’bass isn’t about mass markets and radio play. “You can relate it to
Jazz,” LA’s premier drum’n’bass producer, DJ Hive said, “it’s been around for
years and it’s still not mainstream. There is talk of laying down melodies and
vocals for people to latch on
to. I don’t think that that’s what
drum’n’bass is necessarily about. It is complicated music and there is only a
certain percentage of the population that will ever truly feel it.”83
“Any underground music movement needed an underground media
to support it and to help it grow, and right now the Internet is the most
viable and the most powerful medium in the world.” Frosty (LA)
It may be surprising that with virtually
no radio or TV play in the United States, drum’n’bass music has been able to
acquire any type of a serious following, but as the saying goes, “That which
doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.”84
The radio/TV resistance has forced drum’n’bass to search for other mediums of
transmission. The search did not last long with drum’n’bass stumbling across
the Internet, in 1999: drum’n’bass had found a voice.
There are an estimated 600 drum’n’bass
related websites in the world today.85
They range from radio and on-line record and other merchandise stores, to music
labels, MP3 downloads, magazines and other news forums. They are the
drum’n’bass life-line support mechanism. “Frosty” of dublab.com–– an internet
radio station based out of Los Angeles––explains this drum’n’bass website boom:
“Any underground music movement needed an underground media to support it and
to help it grow, and right now the Internet is the most viable and the most
powerful medium in the world. And it’s growing.” In addition, since drum’n’bass
is considered to be very futuristic music, it is only suitable that the choice
medium for its growing support is the youngest medium in information
dissemination. “The people who
would be into this type of music are the people who have
adopted this medium
early. They are always on line because they can’t find the shows they like on
WB network, and they can’t find the music they’d want to listen to on Kiss FM.”86
Another advantage of Internet radio
that makes it especially attractive for its listeners is its independence from
advertisers and the virtual non-existence of the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) regulations. “Just with us,” databass.com’s Rusta explains,
“we’re basically transmitting DJ sets twenty-four hours a day, and there are no
commercial breaks, no bids to our sponsors, and no FCC telling you what you can
and cannot do.” It is uncertain how long the FCC will keep its tentacles out of
internet radio, but whatever its future involvement will be, databass.com and
the others may only hope that it will be minimal and that it will not affect
the stations’ programming choices.
“I think pirate radio really needs to happen here.” DJ Dara
(NYC)
It is believed that one of the
principal reasons why drum’n’bass was able to accumulate such an enormous
following in the UK is due to its fully developed pirate radio network system.
In the beginning, when drum’n’bass first gained momentum in the UK, circa 1994,
it was completely dependent on pirate radio. And although pirate radio is
illegal in the UK, the law is not as strict as that in the US––you cannot get
a jail sentence for broadcasting from a pirate radio station. This allowed many
in the UK to set up their own makeshift stations and enable fans to tune in and
“lock on.” Unfortunately for the American drum’n’bass scene, “we don’t have
that [pirate radio] here.” Randy J. of junglevoodoo.com said in his interview.
“Everybody has the Internet, but you have to go out of your way and turn on
your computer and go to Dublab to check out someone’s set. But if you have
pirate radio that you can tune in to twenty stations within seconds and hear
some guys whipping out beats in some abandoned building… That’s a whole other
story.
That’s something America will never see.”87 The main reason for pirate radio’s
lack of success in the US is the extremely stringent anti-pirate radio law that
is in effect. If discovered and caught, the owners of the pirate radio station
can face huge fines, the confiscation of their equipment, and even a jail
sentence…and all this in a country where freedom of speech and press are
granted by its Constitution.
“A lot of people complain that drum’n’bass is becoming
commercial. The more the merrier, I say.” MC Posi-D, (NYC)
According to popular opinion shared by
my interviewees, there is little doubt that drum’n’bass has already reached its
peak commercial status in the UK. Some would even go as far as to argue that
around 1997/1998 when drum’n’bass faced its own success, it became annoyed and
hid even more underground than before. “Many UK producers didn’t welcome the
radio and TV play,” DJ Empress said in her interview. “They didn’t appreciate
the type of crowd it had started to attract. That’s one of the reasons they
went back in their studio and made music that wagon-hoppers couldn’t
appreciate.”88 This proved quite
effective. Drum’n’bass lost many of its fleeting fans in the period from
1998-2000 that allowed other drum’n’bass influenced music forms such as 2-step
and new school breaks to gain momentum.
In the US, opinions regarding the
commercialization of drum’n’bass vary. Some like Stareyes, would like to see it
remain underground for the sake of preserving its authenticity. Fears of
artists “selling out” or what Dick Hebdige describes as “incorporating into the
hegemony”89 of the authentic drum’n’bass sound for a
more commercially viable alternative are justifiable. But others welcome the media attention.
“Some people complain that it’s becoming
commercial,” said MC Posi-D from New York, “the more the merrier, I say.”90 His partner, DJ Wally, shared his
opinion: “If you didn’t see and hear those things, then you should start
worrying, because that could mean that our music might be beginning to die.” In
fact, DJ Wally’s opinion is in complete accord with Thornton: “Ironically,
nothing proves the originality and inventiveness of subcultural music and style
more than its eventual ‘mainstreaming.’ Similarly, subcultures that never go
beyond their initial base market are considered failures”91
The fears of the sound’s authenticity
being compromised if drum’n’bass were to become more mainstream are also not
shared by Echo, a San Francisco drum’n’bass producer who claims that “music is
not just for one select group of people, and if more people are going to hear
my music it would make me happier, and it wouldn’t necessarily change my music.
I think it’s up to the artist to make what they want of it.”92 This opinion is shared by Audio Angel,
a drum’n’bass vocalist from San Francisco who told me that she would like to
see drum’n’bass exposed to more people, “I’m not scared that it’s going to get
taken or cheesy-fied,”93 she
said. And as for the music itself, Matt Cohen of Elite Recordings from San
Francisco had this to say: “There will always be an underground, and no matter
how big anything gets, there will always be people who are experimenting and
pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable to be played on the radio.”81 Roni Size’s success with his album
“New Forms” can be a testimony to this. Only a year after the prestigious UK Mercury
award went to this drum’n’bass producer in 1997, the music
plunged back
into the underground where it has long outlived its media moment and where it
continues to grow and evolve.
“For drum’n’bass to blow up in America it’s not going to be
the same way it sounds or did sound back in England because the experience in
America is totally different.” Zion-I (OAK)
It is difficult to predict the future
of drum’n’bass in the US. To expect it to encounter, in its current form, the
type of success it encountered in the UK would be unrealistic according to
Zion-I because “the experience in the US is completely different. It [the
music] has to somehow reflect how we feel inside of it.”94 Drum’n’bass in England was an English
music, produced by English artists, and for an English audience. DJ Hype told
URB magazine in summer of 1995 that “drum’n’bass [was] the British answer to
hip hop”95 It fit perfectly within
its social and cultural context. And thus, for anyone to hope that drum’n’bass
will have the same effect on an American audience is to downplay this
socio-cultural factor that is crucial for any subcultural music form to gain
popularity.
One of the ways in which drum’n’bass
could penetrate to the American audience on a bigger scale, according to MC TC
Izlam, is for American producers to return to American musical influences,
mainly hip hop, funk, and soul. “We have to represent the American style, and
the American style is with funk and with soul. That’s America.”96 New York City drum’n’bass producers Ming
& FS and San Francisco’s Zion-I are spiking up their versions of
drum’n’bass with heavy rapping. On the flip side, we are seeing jungle
influences in some traditionally hip hop producers like Timbaland, who recently
introduced a tech-step jungle-influenced beat that has been a huge success in
the hip hop scene in
America.97
But this may not be enough, and it may be a long time before drum’n’bass takes
a firm hold in the US without the music undergoing serious change. And although a more radical alteration
in the sound could prompt some of its more purist-attitude fans to turn their
back on drum’n’bass, placing restriction on the natural course of evolution for
drum’n’bass, according to Jumpin’ Jack Frost, one of the founders of jungle in
the UK, need not occur. “Who is to say that drum’n’bass can’t be a 140 bpm? Who
says you can’t have songs? Who says that? It’s just the drums and the bass. It
doesn’t say the drums and the bass at blah blah blah bpms, it’s just the drums
and the bass. And that’s the way I look at it.”98
9.
LABEL
“Selling drum’n’bass in America is one thing…selling
American drum’n’bass in America, on anywhere else, for that matter, is a
completely different thing.” Cathy Ellis (SF)
As US drum’n’bass production is
continuing to experience a firm growth on the North American continent, the
initially reserved attitudes of some music industry representatives are
beginning to shift in favor of these “domestic imports.” Cathy Ellis of San Francisco’s Green
label shared with me how her and her husband Andrew’s initial idea of starting
a US drum’n’bass label in 1996 was met by her music industry peers: “People
laughed at us… in a friendly way. ‘You must be crazy!’ they said to us. ‘Kids
in the US are only going to want to buy UK producers’ stuff. They don’t care
about the American
stuff.’”99
And although this sounded very discouraging, Tom B., a Los Angeles producer and
partner in another US drum’n’bass label, Broken Beat Productions, explained
that “it was understandable. The distribution companies didn’t want to do much
with it [US productions] because they were in it for the money, and what they
were selling at the time was the English stuff.”100
Another US label pioneer, E-sassin said that at the time he was thinking of
setting up his own label, Soundsphere, “there really wasn’t much going on in
the US, production-wise.”101 This
can be seen from the first drum’n’bass compilation CDs that were released
during that time by Moonshine Records from Los Angeles; they didn’t feature a
single US artist.102
This initial rejection, however, did
not discourage these US drum’n’bass label pioneers who, seemingly against all
odds, set out to prove the distribution companies wrong. Cathy comes from a background in punk
where DIY (do it yourself) ethic was the basis for the starting of a movement
that grew to be one of the most influential in music history. “Once my punk
roots kicked in, I thought to myself, ‘No. I believe that once you get into something, you want to be a part of it. And being a part
of it isn’t just passively consuming it. I think being a part of it involves
going out and hearing a DJ and getting inspired by his set and then going home
and making your own tracks. And I couldn’t see it any other way.”103
Perhaps Cathy couldn’t see it any other way, but, the distribution
companies and the magazines weren’t convinced at first. “It was a struggle,”
Brianna of San Francisco’s Thermal Recordings confirmed. “We had to bend
backwards for them, but, everyone we
know who is into drum’n’bass really
loves this music a lot, and so we ended up getting a huge amount of support
from all our friends, DJs, producers, and just about everyone else.” She
laughed as she added, “It takes a village to raise a child, and that’s exactly
what happened.”
Cathy’s “tried and tested” punk-roots
approach and Brianna’s belief in the “village support” mechanism turned out to
be useful. Today, the US drum’n’bass independent label network is almost thirty
members strong104: In
the beginning, most of the labels were geared strictly towards helping the US
producer––and indeed, without them it is doubtful that careers of such
established names as DJ Abstract, UFO!, Hive, Juju, JL and E-sassin would have
taken off the way they have––but in the past few years, many of them have taken
on international talent. Brianna’s partner at Thermal Recordings, DJ Sifu
explained, “in the beginning, our roster consisted only of stateside talent,
but as we released more records, everyone started offering us their music
because we were doing such a good job.”105
When asked whether this inclusion of international talent was met with
criticism from the struggling US producers whose only outlet were the US
labels, he said that “it wouldn’t make sense for us to separate ourselves from
the rest of the drum’n’bass world, our job is to bring people closer together
and including international talent is necessary in order to build bridges which
are key if this music is to continue to grow.” DB of Higher Education (NYC) shared DJ Sifu’s view and said
that Higher Education’s policy is to include a UK remixer track on each HE
release so that “the records could get back into the UK and it would help the
US artist to gain recognition back in the UK.”106
“The stores
are waking up, the distributors are waking up, the magazines are waking up, the
labels themselves are waking up and going, man!” Andrew Boak (SF)
The US drum’n’bass production has experienced a tremendous
boom in the last two years. US producers are finally getting signed by UK and
other international drum’n’bass labels with producers like: Juju, who has
releases coming out on UK’s Renegade Hardware Label; Abstract, who signed to
Tee Bee’s label Subtitles; and Dieselboy’s collaborative efforts with UK’s
Technical-Itch leading the way.
Los Angeles’ XXXL and Hazen are also producing alongside UK’s Usual
Suspects and Loxy and Inc. Besides the improvement in the production quality,
these collaborations will also improve the chances of these tracks getting
recognition in the UK. Likewise, music distribution channels and electronic
dance music magazines are all warming up to the American drum’n’bass sound.
There are already two record shops that specialize only in drum’n’bass music,
New York City’s Breakbeatscience and San Francisco’s Compound Records. Some
record stores that specialize in all the different kinds of electronic dance
music have set aside “US Drum’n’Bass” sections in their “Drum’n’Bass” section.
San Francisco’s TRC Distribution (which specializes in West Coast) and
Chicago’s Groove Distribution (which specializes in East Coast) have already
included most of the US labels in their channels, and likewise, major
electronic dance music magazines are regularly featuring articles on the state
of the US drum’n’bass scene and are reviewing records produced by stateside
talent.
10. CLUB
"Most club owners want the bar to ring a thousand
dollars in the first few months, and if it doesn't, they kick you out." DJ
Swingsett (NYC)
In drum'n'bass, the weekly club is the
epicenter of its cultural experience. It is the place where drum'n'bass is
heard, felt and understood. The club provides a sense of a community and a
continuation. It provides drum'n'bass with its raison d'être, and to its community it gives them their own
Nietzsche-influenced Gestalt: music as
the highest human pursuit.107
There are an estimated thirty-five
drum'n'bass weekly clubs in America. Yearly this number fluctuates as new ones
form and some are forced to close down. The main reason the clubs do get closed
down is either for the lack of patronage, or the club's inadequacy to fulfill
the required bar quota. "Most club owners want the bar to ring a thousand
dollars in the first few months, and if it doesn't, they kick you out. That's
typical behavior for club owners," laments DJ Swingsett the promoter and
resident DJ of TestPress Sundays, one of the longest running drum'n'bass clubs
in the US.108 By virtue of supplying
the necessary venue for a club night, the club owners, most of them who do not
partake in any other aspect of the culture, thus can, by default, become a
deciding factor in the culture.
The subculture of drum’n’bass is
completely dependent on its social gatherings, i.e. clubs and all-jungle
one-offs, for its very survival. Clubs promote human contact, the essential
exchange of ideas and the integration of the culture's basic values and
beliefs, without which it would cease to function as a unifying force. Sarah
Thornton explains the
significance
of a club in a subculture: “Clubs
offer other-worldly environments in which to escape; they act as interior
havens with such presence that the dancers forget local time and place and
sometimes even participate in an imaginary global village of dance sounds; and
also, clubs facilitate the congregation of people with like tastes––be it musical,
sartorial or sexual.”109
“We wanted to do our own club. It was rough, and no one
came.” Kathe (NYC)
It was not long after jungle came to
the US that the impetus to provide a consistent drum’n’bass club experience
materialized and Konkrete Jungle, New York City’s (and the US’) premier jungle
weekly club was founded in 1996. Its owners, Mack and Kathe, speak of the
beginning months with some relief now that those hardships are behind them. “We
were essentially wanting to do our own club. So we started a night. It was
rough and no one came. And it grew very slowly in New York.”110 Sticking with the club, however,
proved fruitful in the end, and within a year of its opening, Konkrete Jungle
was “packed to the gills,” leaving the club-goers frustrated that there was
hardly ever enough room to dance. As the scene in New York grew, other clubs
began to appear that offered some relief to Konkrete Jungle and its dancing
bodies. The first couple of clubs were welcomed, but soon afterwards, more
clubs started to sprout, that, according to everyone I talked to in New York,
resulted in the diffusion of the original energy. “In the beginning, the New
York drum’n’bass scene started off as a focused flow of energy, but soon, there
were so many clubs––each with its own distinct sound––that the overall energy
became diffused. The result was that you had a bunch of people going to one
party, a bunch of people going to another party, and a bunch of people going to
yet another party.” As the drum’n’bass scene in New York City grew in all its
aspects: music production, DJs, record stores and independent labels. Still,
the diffusion of energy in terms of club attendance––which is
viewed as
the biggest judge of the overall strength of a genre––prompted many in the
music industry in 1999 to believe that the drum’n’bass scene was not as vibrant
as it once was. The press and the media, who did not look deeper into these
circumstances, understood the clubs’ overall lesser attendance as only one
thing: in New York City, the drum’n’bass scene was shrinking. Had they,
however, taken into account that instead of two or three drum’n’bass weekly
clubs, there were now seven or eight, perhaps they would have seen things
differently.111
“No matter how big you think you are, you play on the first
slot one time, the second slot another time, and you play on the third slot
another time…no matter who you are.” dMarie (SF))
In theory, the drum’n’bass
subculture is grounded on the axiom of non-hierarchical equality amongst all
its participants. In practice, however, hierarchies do exist––especially in the
DJ realm. The DJ hierarchy is perpetuated in terminology such as “headliner
DJ,” “opening slot DJ,” and “filler slot DJ” ––all used to denote a particular
DJ’s status in the scene. The time
slot progression is the equivalent of a promotion in a 9-5 context, and in the
US, depending on the club’s hours of operation, the prime spot for a DJ playing
at a 10PM-2AM venue is 12:30AM-2AM and 1AM-2: 30AM in a venue whose hours of
operation are 10PM-4AM. At San Francisco’s Eklektic, however,
there is no hierarchy amongst its resident DJs. The founder of the club,
dMarie, explains that her night is not tailored to “feed the ego” and all of
her resident DJs are required to rotate their slots. “No matter how big you
think you are, you play on the first slot one time, the second slot another
time, and you play on the third slot another time. No matter who you are.”112
“It’s a Babylon for the dancing crowd.” Platinum MC (PHI)
If drum’n’bass can be described
as a sonic experiment and as the ultimate in audio experience, then according
to popular opinion, Philadelphia’s Platinum and San Francisco’s The Bassment
top the list in this realm. In terms of the specific sound, or type of
drum’n’bass each club night is promoting, they are at different ends of the
spectrum. Platinum caters the darker, more “rinse-out” or intense music
selection, while the Bassement usually features the jazzy-er, more
ambient-sounding type of drum’n’bass. Both clubs are equipped with state of the
art soundsystems that if not tops––are on par with any of its UK counterparts.
In Platinum’s case, the main reason the club has placed such a huge (and
necessary) emphasis on the soundsystem is because the man behind Platinum’s
steering wheel is none other than Dieselboy.113
He is notorious for emphasizing the importance of a good soundsystem and at
Platinum, one could easily see the implications of such an obsession. The
Bassment, on the other hand, was quite fortunate to have been granted a room in
one of San Francisco’s most legendary clubs: 1015 Folsom Street, whose
soundsystem was already equipped to carry out all of the sub-bass frequencies
of drum’n’bass.
“It is of the
utmost importance to build a local scene with a local following. I think that’s
what the purpose of the club is.” Daddy Kev (LA)
The club’s main purpose is to
provide a constant meeting point––its permanence stands as proof of a
subculture’s existence. “It is of the utmost importance to build a local scene
with a local following, and a club provides just that.”114 For the fan, the club’s attendance
either reaffirms the strength of a community ––when the attendance is high––or,
when it is low, it can signal underlying problems. In addition to being crucial
in the building of a local scene, a weekly club differs from a “one-off” event
in its ability to shape a DJ’s career path. Weekly clubs are much more likely
to allow new DJs to have a go at the turntables than are the one-offs that
cannot afford poor performance. The early opening DJ slot in a club (10PM-11PM)
often serves as a showcase for up-and-coming talent. Club promoters can afford
to take their chance, as majority of club goers does not get to a club before
11 PM. By allowing new DJs to play, a club also sends a message to others who
have the ambition to play, that this option remains a possibility, which in
turn acts as a motivational tool. Of course, new DJs who wish to play still
have to meet certain criteria that include the essential submission of a mix
tape for the club promoter’s review.
“Besides a place of fun it’s a place of business too” DJ
Machete (LA)
Although in drum’n’bass, the club’s
core function is the proliferation of the music and the growth of a fan base,
another important purpose of the club is the strengthening of business
relations between key players in the scene. According to DJ Machete, a club
promoter of LA’s Respect, “a club is a place of business too. It’s a good place
to network and meet people who can help you in other aspects of the scene that
you may or may not
realize.”115
A club is a perfect place to meet other like-spirited individuals and discuss
future projects. The club’s atmosphere downplays the seriousness of business
negotiations and is the equivalent of “doing lunch” in a corporate American
setting.
“The best way to spread the music is to play it at
mainstream clubs, because that way you get the crowd who’s already willing to
stay up to dance, to hear the kind of music that we want them to hear.” Matt
Cohen (SF)
It is unusual for a drum’n’bass weekly
club to be hosted in a venue that features different types of electronic dance
music. “There has always been a sort of exclusivity in drum’n’bass,” the owner
of NYC’s Satellite records––a store that specializes in all types of electronic
dance music––protested: “Drum’n’bass has separated itself into its own stores,
its own clubs…”116 And
this is quite true. Many in the drum’n’bass scene explain this separation in
terms of the rave promoters inadequate representation of the music that has
forced drum’n’bass DJs and producers to open strictly drum’n’bass clubs in
order to experience the music at its fullest potential. This separation did
cause a big rift between drum’n’bass and other electronic music genres, but
that was not the initial intention. According to Reid Speed, “The reason we
separated ourselves was because the drum’n’bass DJ was never represented on the
main floor, and not for any other reason.”117 Regardless of the reason for this
separation, San Francisco’s drum’n’bass weekly, The Bassment stands as
testimony that a drum’n’bass club can be successfully integrated within the
rest of the electronic dance music scene.
“The Bassment is a unique situation,”
says Matt Cohen, the club’s main promoter. “It’s something you don’t see in
very many clubs, at least not in the States. The club we do
it at [1015 Folsom] has five different rooms,
a trance room––which is the main room––a house room, a disco and eighty’s pop
music room, and a downtempo room. I think the best way to promote the music is
to do it in mainstream clubs, because that way you get the crowd who is already
willing to go out and dance to get them to hear the kind of music that we want
them to hear.”118
Another unique situation about the Bassment is that it often features
atmospheric and jazzy drum’n’bass; something that most other clubs do not
include in their repertoire.
11.
DANCE
“You can dance
however you want to jungle…You can even 20’s swing to jungle.” S.W.A.T. (SF)
Contrary to widespread opinion
that is common in people who consider drum’n’bass to be too fast for anything
other than head-banging or “moshing,” dance is an integral component of the
drum’n’bass experience. Just by virtue of the fact that its roots draw from
African and Afro-Cuban music traditions (via Jamaica and East London), this
music is ultimately produced for the dancefloor. According to Simon Reynolds,
“Jungle fulfills the prophecy in [John] Cage’s ‘Goal: New Music, New Dance’ of
a future form of electronic ‘percussion music’ made by and for dancers.”119
One of the signature trademarks
of drum’n’bass lays in its Afro-based polyrhythms that inspires multiple
interpretations on the dance-floor. S.W.A.T. crew from San Francisco
enthusiastically told me that “you can see all sorts of people get down to
jungle. You can dance at the speed of jungle,”––or follow its pulsating
“kick-snare” rhythm pattern (this
requires dancing on every beat, a feat
that, at 170-180 bpms can’t be maintained for too long by those who are not in
the best of shape). “Or you can dance to that hip hop beat it’s got to
it,”––when split in half, jungle’s bpms are in perfect match with hip hop bpms
(which is another reason why a lot of DJs mix hip hop and drum’n’bass records
together). “You can break to it”––breaking and pop-locking are widespread in
jungle and go as far as the formation of break-circles and b-boy style
competitions. Another way to dance to jungle is to 1920s swing to it, “people
get that bop going, and you can do that to jungle. You can do whatever you
want.”120
“If you try dancing full-on all night to jungle, you are
going to kill yourself.” Tech Itch (UK)
Unfortunately, at first listen it may
be difficult to figure out jungle’s chaotic rhythms. People try to follow all
of the rhythms at once and end up exhausted on the dancefloor. Mark Caro, aka Tech-Itch warns, “if you
try dancing to jungle full-on all night, you are going to kill yourself.”121 The reason for this inability of some
people to keep up with jungle is because “triggering different muscular
reflexes, jungle’s multi-tiered polyrhythms are body-baffling and
discombobulating unless you fixate on and follow one strain of the groove.
Lagging behind technology, the human body simply can’t do full justice to the
complex of rhythms. The ideal jungle dancer would be a cross between a virtuoso
drummer (someone able to keep separate time with different limbs), a
body-popping break-dancer and a contortionist.”122
The most important thing,
therefore, for the dancer is to be able to distinguish the different rhythmic
patterns. Once that has been accomplished, dancing to jungle can be the
most
exhilarating and rewarding experience. “If you can just close your eyes,
listen, and feel…the music will take you,”123
and “you can really have a deep, beautiful experience that could help you get
in touch with yourself.”124
“I think a lot of DJs lose that. They forget how they
started.” Presha (SF)
Whether it is for the lack of physical
shape, or their own inability to allow their bodies to follow the music in the
same way as their mind, most DJs unfortunately do little more than nod their
heads behind the decks. There are some exceptions, like Tee Bee, Ufo!, Machete,
and Stareyes, whom I have all seen “get crazy behind the decks,”125 but for the most part DJs do not
dance. For some, as Tech-Itch explained, it is because of the sheer exhaustion
from all the traveling that the big-name DJs end up doing. But what are the
others’ excuses? DJ Presha from
San Francisco explained to me that a lot of DJs lose that initial playfulness
with the music. They get so caught up in being “The DJ” that they “often forget
how it all started in the first place… It all started when you were dancing to
another DJ, and most of them just stand there like this (arms crossed at the waist),
man. Are you not feeling it? How
can you ignore that?”126
The DJ’s attitude can have a
profound effect on the dance-floor.
A dancing DJ is more likely to encourage a raging dancefloor just as a
serious “I’m concentrating now, don’t talk to me or look at me or I may fuck
up” attitude DJ is more likely to encourage a dancefloor filled with hard
attitude posers.
“How can you
ban dancing?” Michael (NY)
Possibly the only place in the world
where a DJ should think twice before encouraging its congregation into a
dancing frenzy is New York City. “In New York to have people dance you need a
Cabaret License. And many places don’t have it because it is difficult to get
one.”127 As URB magazine
reported in its March 2001 issue, the NYC Cabaret License law was first
promulgated in the 1920s by the City Police officials:
In
1926, ordinances were drafted to require any establishment allowing music or
dancing on its premises to obtain a license. The price and the difficulty of
acquiring these licenses often drove the predominantly black club owners,
musicians and dancers (who were brought under closer scrutiny than their white
counterparts) to bankruptcy as their dance floors and stages remained silent
and motionless during lengthy and arduous application processes.
The
underground jazz movement persevered and ultimately the cabaret law became
obsolete and dormant. Yet 70 years later, the law has again found force
that––while no longer delineated along racial lines––is still directed at
underground New York nightlife. Unlicensed bar and club owners are required to
post “NO DANCING” signs in their establishments, while bouncers and bartenders
are obligated to remove grooving patrons.
Giuliani
reintroduced the Cabaret law in the mid-‘90s as part of his “Quality of Life”
initiative to protect New Yorkers from what he has repeatedly labeled the
“immoral influences of nightlife.” But the loose definition of what can be
termed “dancing” under the Cabaret law how exactly nightlife engenders
immorality and the very obscurity of the law’s enforcement disturb many in the
dance community.128
“How can you ban dancing?” was the
first response from the dancers I interviewed at NYC’s club Liquid, one of the
establishments that was lucky enough to have been granted the notorious Cabaret
License. “You need a piece of paper in order to dance? That’s bullshit! That’s
the politicians’ scheme to stop the scene. I think that the government and the
politicians are scared of any kind of gathering amongst people. They want us
all to
be like sheep, but that’s not going to work. The more they push
against it, the more it’s going to grow and be stronger.”129
Whether the Cabaret License laws
indeed do have a strengthening effect on the scene remains to be seen. The
current situation, however, has inspired the formation of the DLF (Dance
Liberation Front), an organization of “performance artists coming together to
dance and have a good time while raising consciousness of a ludicrous and
tyrannical law” created in 1998 by comedians Robert Prichard and Jen Miller.
“Telling people they can’t dance is really an unconstitutional limitation on
our freedom of expression,” says Prichard, “not only because we cannot use our
bodies as a form of expression, but also because the interaction between musicians
and their audiences is essential to the creative experience. Limiting dancing
prevents that dialogue from occuring.”130
12.
US
“The human body responds to repetitive beats. If you look
back at ancient tribalism, and everything from Indians to fire-dancing…it
really does come down to that.” Randy J. (LA)
Whether it is jungle, techno,
house, disco, or West African drumming, “the human body responds to repetitive
beats.”131 The integration of
this maxim into one’s life is the most common denominator for the participants
of the dance subculture of drum’n’bass, regardless of gender, race, age,
economic, or social status. In his book World History of
Dance, Curt
Sachs talks about the necessity of dance even for a man who lives in machine
age:
You
may shake your head, smile, mock, or turn away, but this dance
madness
proves nonetheless that the man of the machine age with
his
necessary wristwatch and his brain in a constant ferment of work,
worry
and calculation has just as much need of the dance as the primitive.
For
him too the dance is life on another plane.132
Although Sachs may be writing in
1937, and the dance is tango and not jungle, and the category of the
“primitive” has been discredited (except within the jungle, and even the rave
scene where the term is used synonymously with “spiritually evolved”) the
parallels are indisputable. Whether he or she is aware of it or not, the 21st century human being needs this expression in the same way
as the person in Sach’s book needs their tango or the spiritually evolved human
being needs his shamanistic pulse.
“People like us like to surround
themselves with other people who have tapped into that, respect it and go out
of their way to get it. Their entire existence may be shaped by it, because
they require it even on a daily basis.”133
The argument that a DJ dance culture
is loosely modeled on some type of a pan-tribal, possibly idealized notion of
an ancient spiritual community is theorized by the authors of Last Night a
DJ Saved My Life:
Back
when man was stumbling around the dusty savannahs figuring out the best way to
surprise a woolly mammoth, he found his experience divided sharply between
night and day. In the light he was a naked animal, prey to those greater than
him; but once darkness fell he joined the gods. Under the star-pierced sky,
with flaming torches smearing his vision and armies of drummers hammering out a
relentless beat, he ate some sacred roots and berries, abandoned the taboos of
waking life, welcomed the spirits to his table, and joined his sisters and
brothers in the dance.
More
often than not, there was somebody at the center of all this. Somebody who
handed out the party plants, somebody who started the action, somebody who
controlled the music. This figure––the witchdoctor, the shaman, the priest––was
a little bit special, he had a certain power. The next day, as you nursed your
hangover, he probably went back to being just your next door neighbor––that guy
two huts down who wears a few too many feathers––but when the lights were off
and you were heading out into a drum-and-peyote-fuelled trance, he was the don.
Today
(no offense to rabbis and priests, who try their best) it is the DJ who fills
this role. It is the DJ who presides at our festivals of transcendence. Like
the witchdoctor, we know he’s just a normal guy really––I mean look at him––but
when he wipes away our everyday lives with holy drums and sanctified basslines,
we are quite prepared to think of him as a god, or at the very least a sacred
intermediary, the man who can get the great one to return our calls.134
In drum’n’bass culture, the word
“tribal” is frequently used to denominate a spiritually evolved community that
is in harmony with its natural surrounding––a type of a society that the
drum’n’bass community is loosely modeled after. “The music makes you move, down
to your most tribal instincts,” DJ Machete told me, “and that’s why I’m out at
the clubs, whether I’m DJ-ing or not.”135
In another interview, Randy J. said, “If you look at ancient tribalism, it does
really come down to that. Optic-kinetic lighting, fire-dancing, repetitive
beats, getting into a trance––for lack of a better word––those things were
important in all those past cultures. The singing and dancing was just as a big
a part in the day as eating or anything.”136
“We will want to go back. We will want to slow down and be
primitive again. Music, as digitally and scientifically as it is produced is
one of the highways to that.” Raymond Roker (LA)
In Western society, the dance
component of a society has been traditionally reserved for concert halls and
meat-market clubs. In DJ culture, however, it is an integral part of being. In
its Issue No. 54 URB magazine asks the following questions: “Can youth culture
help to reintroduce a common practice of sacred dance into the West, after it’s
been actively suppressed for centuries? Can this kind of dance help to seed a
different way of life on planet Earth?”137
We may not know the answer to that yet, but we do know that the technological
advances of the past few centuries, and especially in the last half of the 20th century, have radically influenced the human evolutionary
path. “There is no question that physical technology is growing at a faster
pace than our mental technology, and will continue to outstrip the pace of
human evolution. And as long as that occurs, and shall continue to occur, man
will be in that quandary of having to catch up to where he is technologically.
And we will want to go back and slow down. Music is one of those highways to that.
As digitally and scientifically as it is produced, it is a way for us to be
primitive again.”138
“Jungle is not only a new kid on the block…it’s a whole
movement” DJ Carlos Soulslinger (NYC)
In the heart of the
post-industrialized Western world, African-based rhythms of jungle music have
inspired a subcultual movement that has long transcended its original London’s
Southeast rude-boy parameters.
Beginning with jazz and blues, then
funk, soul, reggae, dancehall, hip hop and breakbeat techno, African musical
traditions have found their most potent presenter in Jungle. Although from a
rave culture’s perspective jungle is a relatively new vibration, a true music
connoisseur––one who is able to connect all of jungle’s roots––would beg to
differ. When I candidly asked DJ Soulslinger how he felt about being on the
forefront of musical
innovation he dismissed my “musical innovation”
theory and said that “jungle is not a new kid on the block––it’s a whole
movement.”139
ENDTRO
The “endtro” or the “outro,” as it is also referred to as, are those last thirty-six bars of a track that strip down the record and allow the DJ to smoothly transition from one record to another. Usually it is just the beats and the bass that remain, with, perhaps a sporadic ambient wash, or a sound that is quite unique to that track. The endtro, therefore is very simple, compared to the “drop,” or the main body of the track. Likewise, I would like this section to be simple. I want it to be the endtro to an ensuing string of thoughts that this paper inspires. That rather than concluding something, it is the beginning of something new. Much in the same way that jungle/drum’n’bass has inspired other genres of music, so I would like this to inspire other works that may or may not be music related.
I remember at first doubting that I could write about jungle/drum’n’bass. Sure, I could make a film about it, as “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but to actually verbalize the experience of the culture was an enormous challenge for me. There are so many sides and angles to it, and so many hidden areas to explore that I felt overwhelmed by the actual magnitude of it all. In addition, because I am a part of the culture, I had the difficult task of asserting opinions that I did not necessarily agree with at all times. Nevertheless, having assumed the position of an ethnographer, I felt compelled to share these opinions as a matter of truth, accuracy and above all, respect for my peers. I can say with certainty that, had I written this piece with my voice only, it would have read quite different. This is not to say that this paper is devoid of critique, on the contrary, these pages have their fair share of it, but in general, throughout the writing process, I kept reminding myself that this was not just my voice––these were the voices of my friends, my community, and my tribe. This was their say.
And as for the tribe itself, I have yet to experience their critique. The goal, in any case, is to make this paper available to them and so I will find out, soon enough.
And last, but not least, I must say a few words on the irony of our common use of the word “tribal.” And when I say “our” I refer to both the global rave culture, as well as the jungle/drum’n’bass culture. How ironic is it that both these cultures––born in the heart of the Western, technologically co-dependent world––have come to adopt these extremely controversial words as their choice descriptive? Likewise, in the world of academia, words like “tribal” and “primitive” have long been discredited. And one might say for the right reason when one thinks that such descriptive were originally instituted (not by all, but by many in the field of anthropology) as a way to separate the civilized from the uncivilized; the white from the black; and the right from the wrong. In the rave subculture, “tribal” and “primitive” do not carry with them these types of connotations at all. DJ collectives such as Dub Tribe, Spiral Tribe, Funkytechno Tribe, and others have even gone as far as to include tribal in their name. In rave culture, therefore, these words are used to describe the highest possible social system. A tribal system, as it is understood in the rave culture, is above all rooted in respect for nature and the environment, and in the acknowledgement of the importance of music and dance for spiritual growth and the overall well-being of its members. It is also a system that promotes and nurtures a sense of a community––the understanding of which, unfortunately, in our ever increasing pursuit of individualism,
the global Western society may have lost forever.
My Tribe
Audio Angel; d’n’b vocalist; resident at San Francisco’s Eklektic; San Francisco
Andrew Boak; partner in San Francisco’s Green Label, one of the pioneer US d’n’b labels; San Francisco
Blueline: DJ; Co-promoter of now closed-down NYC d’n’b weekly, Physics; Roy Dank’s partner; New York City
Calibre; originally Irish, he was one of the first non-US DJ/Producers to become a part of a U.S. DJ collective, San Francisco’s Phunckateck; Ireland
Carol C.; DJ, vocalist, New York City
Cathy Ellis; partner in San Francisco’s Green Label; Andrew’s wife; San Francisco
CRS? And APX-1; one of Los Angeles’ pioneer DJ/producer partners; Los Angeles
Databass; internet site that broadcasts DJ sets; recently involved in putting and sponsoring of drum’n’bass events “Databass Sessions”; Los Angeles
DB; a veteran DJ and founder of Higher Education, a Warner Brother’s d’n’b label; New York City
Deacon; DJ/Producer, Los Angeles’s Wreckignition collective leader; Los Angeles
Delmar; DJ/Producer; Swingsett’s partner at TestPress Sundays in NYC; New York City
Dieselboy; DJ/Producer; US d’n’b don; Philadelphia
DJ Craze; third time DMC world champion DJ; originally a turntablist, he went on to embrace jungle and now plays it all the time; Miami
DJ Dara; arguably the DJ/Producer who is responsible for pushing for a drum’n’bass scene. Originally from Ireland but now lives in New York City. Partner at Breakbeatscience, the first US all-drum’n’bass record store (now a label also); New York City
DJ Machete; DJ/Producer; Junglist Platoon collective; Cal-Tech recordings; Respect promoter; Los Angeles
DJ Soulslinger; a veteran d’n’b DJ; originally from Brazil; founder of Jungle Sky, a NYC d’n’b label; New York City
DJ Wally; aka Pish-Posh; producer; best known for his ambient pieces; one third of Burner Bros; New York City
dMarie; music journalist, videographer; founder of Eklektic, one of US longest-running d’n’b weeklies; operated only by females; San Francisco
Don; DJ/Producer/Club promoter; jungle-one-offs Drum’n’Bassics; Los Angeles
Echo; DJ/Producer; a member of Phunckateck collective; San Francisco
Empress; DJ; one of the youngest in the scene and one of the few US DJ to have played the prestigious UK club Movement; New York City
E-sassin; DJ/Producer; founder of Soundsphere; Phunckateck; Los Angeles
Frosty; DJ; part-founder of dublab.com; Los Angeles
Futurebreaks FM; first US d’n’b radio show; San Francisco
Hazen; XXXL’s partner at Crimescene label; Also part of Databass crew; Los Angeles
Hive and Daddy Kev; DJs/Producers; founders of Vortex Recordings and Konkrete Jungle weekly club in LA; Los Angeles
Honey B. and Sifu; DJs/Producers; partners at Oakland’s Thermal Label; Oakland
Ivry and Presha; DJs/Promoters; also work at Compound records in SF; San Francisco
JL; producer from NYC; remix “Simon Says” did extremely well; New York City
Jumpin’ Jack Frost; one of jungle’s fathers; founder of V-recordings––jungle’s premier d’n’b label; UK
Juju; DJ/Producer; one of the first US artists to get signed to a UK label; Phunckateck; San Francisco
Junglist Platoon; DJ collective from LA; Respect is their weekly club; Los Angeles
Laura B.; clothing designer. manufactures club gear; San Francisco
Lisa Shaw; vocalist of all types of electronic dance music; New York City
Matt Cohen; booking agent, club promoter for Bassment; founder of Elite Recordings; San Francisco
Matt and Kathe; couple who started first US d’n’b weekly; Konkrete Jungle; New York City
MC Posi-D; Partners with DJ Wally and DJ Seen; considered to be one of the best in the scene; New York City
MC Kemst; Wreckignition crew; one of LA’s leading MCs; Los Angeles
MC Duh; resident MC at Eklektic; San Francisco
Method 1 and Kaos; together compose Atlantiq; produce atmospheric d’n’b; San Francisco
Mihai; Contagious Music; DJ Craze’s booking agent/manager; New York City
Ming & FS; the most eklektic d’n’b duo in the US; will play anything from electro to 2-step during their set; apply turntablistic tricks; New York City
Neil Scheild; founder of Reflex Music Group, one of the largest d’n’b booking agencies; San Francisco
Oscar de Grouch; Junglist Platoon Founder; DJ/Producer; recently dubplate manufacturer; Los Angeles
Phantom–45; Chicago’s d’n’b finest export; Chicago
Pieter K.; one of the most influential d’n’b producers in America; also a member of Phunckateck; Los Angeles
Quartz; DJ who works at Breakbeatscience; New York City
Randy J.; DJ; internet site provider junglescene.com, operates a mobile record store which he sets up at clubs; Los Angeles
Raymond Roker and Jun; original Science DJs; Raymond is publisher/editor of URB magazine
R.A.W.; LA’s hip hop/d’n’b DJ/producer legend; Mictlan; B-Boy 3000, Arc, ‘Herbin,’: Los Angeles
Reid Speed; DJ/Producer; Stuck-on Earth Crew; New York City
Roxanne; DJ/producer originally from Florida, moved to LA in 1999; Los Angeles
Roy Dank; DJ, Blueline’s partner at Physics; New York
Rinse and Flux; DJs who started B.A.S.S. crew; owners of Compound records in SF; San Francisco
Sage; DJ/Producer; Phunckateck; San Francisco
Seen; DJ/producer, one third of Burner Brothers; New York City
Seul, Cassien, Lion; DJs; founded Direct Drive––a d’n’b weekly in NYC; New York City
Sierra; ragga jungle DJ; Stuck-On-Earth-Crew; NYC; New York City
Siren; DJ/Producer; resident at Eklektic; San Francisco
Spectr; visual artist; Spectrumegamedia; Los Angeles
Subcode; DJ/producer; Los Angeles
Sub-Flow; DJ/producer; Los Angeles
Stareyes; DJ; B.A.S.S, crew; San Francisco
Stuck-On-Earth; crew New York
Swingsett; DJ/Producer; founder of Ism Recordings and TestPress Sundays; New York City
TC Izlam; MC; son of Africa Bambaata; New York City
Technical Itch; DJ/Producer; one of the most sought after in the world; UK
Tee Bee; DJ/Producer; Phunckateck adopted him but he is originally from Norway
True Intent; atmospheric d’n’b label from San Francisco
Ufo!; DJ/producer; founded Phunckateck; Phylum Records; San Francisco
Usual Suspects; DJ/producer duo who collaborate with XXXL; UK
Webmaster; Junglescene.com’s father; Los Angeles
Wish-FM; one of SF’s veteran DJs; founder of label and club La Belle Epoque; San Francisco
XXXL; DJ/producer; manager and d’n’b buyer at Beatnonstop; Crimescene records; Los Angeles
Zion-I; spiritual hip hop/d’n’b duo from Oakland
Bibliography:
Books:
Booth, W.
C.; G. G. Colomb; and J. M. Williams. The Craft of Research. London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Brewster
B., and Frank Broughton. Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the
Disc Jockey. 2nd ed. New York:
Groove Press, 2000.
Collin,
Mathew. Altered States: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House. London: Serpant’s Tale, 1998.
Emerson,
R. M.; R. I. Fretz; and L. L. Shaw. Writing Ethnographic Notes. London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Fraleigh,
S. H. and Panelope Hanstein, ed., Researching Dance: Evolving Modes of
Inquiry. Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1999.
Georges,
R. A., and Michael O. Jones. People Studying People: The Human Element in
Fieldwork. London: University of
California Press, 1980.
Hebdidge,
Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style.
London: Routledge, 1999.
Reynolds,
Simon. Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Shapiro,
Peter. Drum’n’bass: The Rough Guide.
London: Shorts Gardens, 1999.
Silcott,
Mireille. Rave America: New
School Dancescapes. Toronto: ECW Press,
1999.
Thornton,
Sarah. Club Cultures: Music, Media and the Subcultural Capital. 2nd ed. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press,
1996.
Magazines and Periodicals:
Tha Pride
Magazine: Stateside Drum&Bass. Presented by Formation Records and
Groundscore. Special edition No. 6
Cinnamon
Twist , “ Rave 101: Part 1,” URB Magazine, 54. Spring 1997.
Annie
Sloan, “Hey DJ: R.A.W.,” URB Magazine, 54. Spring 1997.
Cinnamon
Twist, “ Rave 101: Part 2” URB
Magazine, 55. Summer 1997.
Zeke
Margolis, “B:Sides E-sassin” URB
Magazine, 65 May/June 1999.
Cheryl
Chang, “Cabaret” URB, 82 March 2001.
Louis
Moret, “Junglistic Histronics” URB
Magazine, 81 Jan/Feb 2001.
Various,
“The Next 100,” URB Magazine, 83 April
2001.
Through
the Catalog, “Full Cycle,” ATM Issue
49.
Junior
High Comics, “Rave Tips 101,” Fix, No.
28.
Ben
Willmott, “Kosheen,” Knowledge Magazine: Vol.
2. No. 18, September 2000.
Lily
Moayeri, “Olive’s Shopping Music,” Lotus,
Issue 28.
Films and
Websites:
Modulations:
Cinema for the Ear. Directed by Iara Lee. 92 min., Capirrinha Music, 1998.
Metalheadz. Directed by Goldie. 61 min., Metalheadz Music, 1999.
Better
Living Through Circuitry. 85 min.,1999.
7.
www.pitt.edu
10.
www.topmag.com
[1] Throughout the text I use the words jungle and drum’n’bass interchangeably. Although there are subtle differences between the two, most people in the jungle scene use the terms interchangeably.
[2] Simon Reynolds, Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture (New York: Routledge, 1999), 113.
[3] Reynolds, 252.
[4] “Four-on-the-floor simply means playing straight
quarter-notes on the bass drum.
This was one of the primary time keeping devices in the swing era of the
1930's. With the advent of be-bop
the
bass drum took on a more 'soloistic' role and began to participate in the rhythmic 'comping' previously reserved for the snare drum.” (Kevin Barrett, www.FunkDrums.com); Wednesday, June 6, 2001. INTERNET.
[5] Reynolds, 254.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ragga is a type of Reggae music also known as "Dance
hall". It is often considered the sister of Rap Music. This music uses
traditional reggae rhythms and has artists rap (for lack of a better
definition) in Jamaican Patois over the dub––versions of tracks stripped off
the vocals. This rapping is also known by other names such as
"Chatting", "Chanting" or "Toasting." (www.christafari.com); Wednesday, June
6, 2001. INTERNET.
[8] Ecstasy was the name given to methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) by a Los Angeles manufacturer of the drug. MDMA's chemical structure is related to stimulants and some hallucinogens. It was originally developed as an appetite suppressant in 1914 by a German chemical company, although it was never widely used for that purpose. It was used occasionally in the United States in the mid-1970s in therapy classes to enhance communication. (www.thedailycamera.com); Tuesday, June 5, 2001. INTERNET.
[9] “Peace, Love, Unity and Respect (PLUR) is a code invoked frequently by those inside the rave subculture, one that has mutated significantly since its 1980s roots in Detroit basements, where electronic music pioneers drew unorthodox crowds. The music's main mode of presentation -- by DJs in front or in the middle of a dancing throng -- precipitated the contemporary rave, and the scene has evolved into a social movement. Driven by the repetitive beat and often by the drug-induced euphoria, communities of ravers seek transcendence and escape from mainstream, commercial culture. They strive for social inclusion and for happiness in a peaceful environment.” (Heather Morgan, www.thedailycamera.com); Wednesday, June 6, 2001. INTERNET.
[10] Mihai; Interview, Los Angeles, September 2000.
[11] Here are some of the more popular genres of “rave” music:
“Garage - 1982 New York's version of deep house, named
after legendary club the Paradise Garage.
Acid House - 1985 A Chicago derivative built around the Roland TBR303 bassline machine. Hard, uncompromising, tweaking samples produce a hypnotic effect.
Techno - 1985 Pure rhythm
mixed with industrial-strength sounds originating in Detroit's urban core.
New Beat - 1990 A midtempo
industrial sound that has it roots equally in the British alternative and
American techno-house camps.
Trance - 1992 The latest
techno variant; danceable cousin to ambient. What ambient is to your ears,
trance is to your feet.
Hard trance - 1992 A sound of
hardcore speed percussion blended with multi-dimensional dynamics and tribal
jammies.
Jungle - 1995 A new style of
hardcore emphasizing the breakbeat and using the raw sound of reggae drum &
bass as its foundation” (www.theedj.com); Tuesday, June 5 2001.
INTERNET.
[12] These comments were taken from junglescene.com website; Wednesday, June 6 2001. INTERNET
[13] Reid Speed; Interview, New York, August 2000.
[14] “Drum’n’ bass can successfully incorporate elements of funk, soul, jazz, classical, hip hop, dancehall, rock…you name it” (Pieter K.; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000).
[15] Amen-breaks jungle, ragga jungle, tech-step, atmospheric d’n’b, funky, jazzy, roller, jump-up, vocal, minimalist, experimental.
[16] All-jungle one-offs are all-jungle DJ line-up parties that happen once or twice a month. They are almost always 18 and over and are promoted by people who love the music, i.e., DJs, crews, or collectives. Usually they attract anywhere upwards of 5,000 people.
[17] DB; Interview, New York City, Aug. 2000.
[18] Mireille Silcott, Rave America: New School Dancescapes (Ontario, ECW Press, 1999), 97.
[19] Neil Scheild; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
[20] DJ Roxanne; Interview, Los Angeles, September 2000.
[21] For me, the Sunday sessions at Science conjures up images of packs of barely discernable glistening bodies on the dance-floor (the club was almost pitch black), free pitchers of drinkable water at the disposal of the dancer, and the weekly gatherings outside of the club of familiar faces all there to hear the latest tracks and feel “one” with the bass.
21 DJ CRS?; Interview, November 2000.
22 TC Izlam; Interview, New York City, August 2000.
23 In my interview with R.A.W., I was told that the Amen break was sampled from an old funk record, Amen Brother by the Winstons. (R.A.W.; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000).
24 DJ Odi; Interview, New
York City, August 2000.
25 Jumpin’ Jack Frost; Interview, Los Angeles, October 2000.
26 DJ Empress; Interview; New York City, August 2000.
27 Roy Dank Interview; New York City, August 2000.
28 When hip
hop was first starting to morph in the slums of the Bronx, the DJs at the time
were playing funk and disco music together. “Many dancers would completely
forgo the rest of the music, standing against the
wall until a song’s break came in. They were eventually known as b-boys, the
“b” almost certainly for “break”…The stern “b-boy stance,” beloved of rappers
even today––with shoulders curved inwards and arms folded tightly under the
chin––was not so much a signal of aggression as a b-boy’s way of looking cool
while he waited for a break. (Brewster and Broughton, 208).
29 “Platter parties and sock hops were the first dances in the US where the personality DJ “stepped out from the studio and took the role of human jukebox. These were held in high school gymnasiums (where you removed your shoes to protect the floor, hence the “sock hop” name) and were mainly promotional events for the DJ’s radio show. Such events were the basis for American Bandstand, the TV program that made DJ Dick Clark an American Institution.” Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey (New York, Grove Press, 1999), 49.
30
When I refer to the DJ, I most often use the
word “he”. This is due to the fact that most DJs, 95 percent of them, are still
men. Things are changing, however, and I have alluded to these changes by
making a conscious attempt to sometimes refer to the DJ as he/she or they.
31 Brewster and Broughton, 164.
32 XXXL; Interview, Los Angeles, January 2001.
33 In 1997 XLR8R published a disapproving review of the Coca-Cola ad which was shot in a makeshift rave location with one of the most popular rave DJs, Sandra Collins.
34 In 1999 URB magazine featured a Nike ad which was received with sharp criticism from its readers who accused it of “selling out.”
35 Levi’s, Absolut Vodka, Camel and Red Bull have all been sponsors of electronic dance music events and have all in the past helped promote the biggest annual Electronic Dance Music event: the Miami Winter Music Conference.
36 DJ Odi; Interview, New York City, August 2000.
37 Tech Itch: Interview, Los Angeles, December 2000.
38 DJ Odi; Interview, New York, August, 2000.
39 Stareyes; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
40 Neil Scheild; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
41 Since drum’n’bass holds close links with Jamaican soundsystem culture, the term “selecta” is also derived from Jamaica where it literally means “dj.”
42 Brewster and Broughton, 135.
43 DJ Tee Bee; Interview, Los Angeles, January 2001.
44 Brewster and Broughton, 5.
45 Reid Speed; Interview, New York, August 2000.
46 DJ Tee Bee; Interview, Los Angeles, January 2001.
47 Reid Speed; Interview, New York, August 2000.
48 Raymond Roker; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
49 The immediate rapport with the DJ is extremely important to the dancer. Ideally it is this exchange of energies between the two that ultimately gives direction to the DJ as far as what the crowd wants at the moment and vice-versa. By having access to the direct view of the DJ, it can help the crowd to be more intuitive of the direction the DJ wants to go.
50 G13; Interview, New Jersey, August 2000.
51 2-step is a hybrid of drum’n’bass and vocal house music; whereas nu skool breaks is a harder version of 2-step which incorporates more hip hoppy style of MC-ing over a straighter, less ‘choppy’ beat.
52 Many in the drum’n’bass scene resent the fact that a lot of its fan base has, during drum’n’bass’ dark/hard period 1998-2000, switched to the more commercially accessible forms of breakbeat music. They perceive the 2-step genre (originally called speed garage) as a poor offshoot of drum’n’bass.
53 Raymond Roker; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
54 DB; Interview, New York City, August 2000.
55 Dmarie; Interview, San Francisco, Octover 2000.
56 “In her seminal
article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey links
the ‘pleasurable structures
of looking in the conventional cinematic situation’ to Freud’s
scopophilia—linked with
desire and the ‘pleasure in using another person as an object of sexual
stimulation through sight,’ and narcissism—constituting the ego and coming from
‘identification with the image seen. In a world ordered by sexual imbalance,
pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its
fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. Males see and
women are ‘to-be-seen’ in this system.” Laura Mulvey's Appropriation of the Gaze into Feminist
Film Theory (www.vanderbilt.edu);
Wednesday, June 6, 2001. INTERNET.
57 Brewster and Broughton, 116.
58 Technical Itch; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
59 Cassien; Interview, New York City, August 2000.
60 Mix tapes are DJ sets recorded for home listening. To a fan, they represent an essential means of keeping up with the music. For a DJ, they are the equivalent of a business card––a way to present his mixing skills and programming choice.
61 Pieter K.; Interview, Los Angeles, October 2000.
62 DJ Abstract; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
63 A yearly international turntablism competition.
64 DJ Craze; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
65 Zion-I; Interview, Oakland, October 2000.
66 MC Duh; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
67 MC Kemst; Interview, Los Angeles, December 2000.
68 TC Izlam; Interview, New York City, August, 2000.
69 DB; Interview, New York City, August 2000.
70 Cassien; Interview, New York City, August 2000.
71 R.A.W.; Interview. Los Angeles, November 2000.
72 DJ Craze; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
73 A West Coast collective of producer DJs.
74 UFO!; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
75 Daddy Kev; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
76 Stareyes; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
77 Ibid.
78 All the junglists whom I have interviewed agreed.
79 Fred FS; Interview, Los Angeles, December 2000.
80 Keaton Suspect; Interview; Los Angeles, September 2000.
81 Fred FS; Interview, Los Angeles, December 2000.
82 DJ Dara; Interview, New York City, August 2000.
83 DJ Hive; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
84 The full quotation and citation is:
“What does not kill me makes me stronger.” Friedrich Wilhelm Neitzsche (1844-1900)
"Maxims and Arrows" (8), Twilight of the Idols, 1889. tr. R. J. Hollingdale, 1968.
85 Phone conversation with DJ Abstract, May 2001.
86 Frosty; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
87 Randy J.; Interview; Los Angeles, December 2000.
88 DJ Empress; Interview, New York City, August 2000.
89 Dick Hebdige, Subculture: the Meaning of Style (London: Clays Ltd., 1979), 15-19.
90 Posi-D; Interview, New York, August 2000.
91 Sarah Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1996), 128.
92 Echo; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
93 Audio Angel; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
81 Matt Cohen; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
94 Zion-I; Interview, Oakland, October 2000.
95 Louis Moret, “Junglistic Histronics,” URB (Jan/Feb 2001): 60-64.
96 TC Izlam; Interview. New York, August 2000.
97 One of his recent collaboration with Missy Elliot “Get Your Freak On” is heavily influenced by a jungle beat.
98 Jumpin’ Jack Frost; Interview; Los Angeles, August 2000.
99 Cathy Ellis; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
100 Tom B.; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
101 E-sassin; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
102 DJ
Darren Jay, “Speed Limit 140 bpm Plus Five” Mixed Compilation (1994)
Various Artists/Compilation,
“Law of the Jungle” (this was the first US. compilation to cover jungle and
drum & bass) (1994)
Various Artists/Compilation, “Speed Limit 140 bpm Plus Six” (1994). (www.moonshine.com);
Wednesday, June 6, 2001. INTERNET.
103 Cathy Ellis; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
104 The most prominent ones are: Soundsphere (LA), Green (SF), Jungle Sky (NYC), Thermal Recordings (SF), Vortex (LA), Pneuma (SF), Phylum (SF), Arc (LA), Mictlan (LA), Palm (NYC), Breakbeatscience (NYC), True Intent (SF), Elite (SF), ISM Recordings (NYC), Higher Education (NYC), Rawcuts (NYC), Crimescene (LA) Cal-Tech (LA), Compound (SF).
105 DJ Sifu; Interview, San Francisco, Oakland 2000.
106 DB; Interview, New York City, August 2000.
107 “Without music, life would be a mistake.” F. Nietzsche, 19th Century. (www.pitt.edu/~wbcurry/nietzsche.html.); Wednesday, June 6, 2001. INTERNET.
108 TestPress Sundays was founded in November 1997.
109 Thornton, 22.
110 Kathe: Interview, New York, August 2000.
111 In
1998-2000 articles began to appear that the drum’n’bass scene was dying out.
Article in Paper Magazine, 2000:
“Things have changed since the Bristol-born producer was stateside nearly three years ago, promoting his groundbreaking album New Forms. He had just nabbed a Mercury Music Prize, and drum 'n' bass was still a golden child. Today, while Size still gets attention, his appointed genre has been abandoned in favor of newer forms. If its decline has been overstated -- with many declaring it dead but forgetting to inform its thousands of supporters -- fans and critics agree on one thing: Drum 'n' bass, in its current form, will never go mainstream.” http://www.papermag.com/magazine/mag_00/mag_nov00/roni_size/
Also, article in Top
Magazine, 1998:
“Monitoring the harsh
minimalism currently practiced by twin steppers[techno-influenced rhythm
pattern] in the jungle, music theorist/ journalist Simon Reynolds recently
stated that the dark science of neuro-funk had ignited last year’s drum ‘n’
bass implosion. His theory was that the mainstream success of Roni Size and the
new-found respectability of drum ‘n’ bass was causing mass defections to speed
garage where the renegades were now obsessively constructing anti-social
compositions to keep daytrippers out. His conclusion was that the insular sound
being perfected by the bedroom boffins was sequencing a dead end.” http://www.topmag.co.uk/archive/may98/mix.htm.
INTERNET.
112 dMarie; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
113 Dieselboy is arguably the most successful US drum’n’bass DJ. According to Mehdi at TRC distribution Dieselboy’s mix CDs sell over thirty thousand copies each.
114 Daddy Kev; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
115 DJ Machete; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
116 Satellite Records; Interview; New York City, August 2000.
117 Reid Speed; Interview, New York City, August 2000.
118 Matt Cohen; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
119 Reynolds, 254.
120 S.W.A.T.; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
121 Tech Itch; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
122 Reynolds, 245.
123 Audio Angel; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
124 Spectr; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
125 During our November 2000 interview, DJ Tee Bee told me he likes to see a DJ “get crazy behind the decks.”
126 Presha; Interview, San Francisco, October 2000.
127 Blueline: Interview, New York City, August 2000.
128 Cheryl Chang, “Dance Music Community Combats Cabaret Law,” URB (March 2001): 50.
129 Michael; Interview, New York City, August 2000.
130 Cheryl Chang, “Dance Music Community Combats Cabaret Law,” URB (March 2001): 50.
131 Randy J.; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
132 The quote was taken from the book Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, by Brewster and Broughton, p.4.
Sach’s book “The World History of Dance” was published in 1937 by the Norton Co.
133 Randy J.; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
134 Brewster and Broughton, 4-5.
135 DJ Machete; Interview, Los Angeles, October 2000.
136 Randy J.; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
137 Dancing as a form of worship common to many non-Western cultures has been successfully eradicated in the West with the growing support for the Catholic Church. “Rave 101” (URB issue 54).
138 Raymond Roker; Interview, Los Angeles, November 2000.
139 DJ Soulslinger; Interview, New York City, August 2000.
