What is Jungle?

I thought I would use this post to explain the reason for my url. The musi295 is a no brainer, but it occurred to me that some people in the class may or may not know what the junglist part is about.

A junglist is the term used to describe a listener of the style of music known as 'ragga jungle' or just 'jungle' for short. The history of Jungle music is similar to that of many forms of electronic music in that its roots come from a preexisting genre of music but used emerging technologies to further and reinvent that music genre. However, where as house music had its roots in disco as implied by our lecture last week, jungle came from the music movement of Jamaica, mainly that of dub music.

Jamaica has a rich and vibrant music history of which I am a great fan of. In the fifties there was a movement in Jamaica to reproduce the sound of American jazz music. This movement became known as ska. Ska is characterized by several elements that are identical to American jazz such as being small ensemble consisting of both rhythm instruments (drums, bass and piano) and a horn section for melodies, compositions consisting of generally a main part and a bridge, and an improvised solo section for each of the lead instruments. However, some small differences existed in the music as the complex chords and resulting progressions in jazz were generally simplified. The one key difference that eventually characterized the genre was that of the rhythmic focus on the off beat, that is the chordal rhythmic instruments such as piano or guitar would play the chords on the eighth notes between the main 1-2-3-4 beats we generally count. This gave the music a more light-hearted and upbeat feel to it, a sound that would be revitalized by English bands such as The Specials in the 80s.

From ska, Jamaica moved forward into Reggae music. Reggae contained many of the same elements as ska music, but gave greater focus to rhythmic aspects of the music and lyrical content which was mostly religious and of the Rastafarian movement. The tempo was generally slower that ska music and techniques such as the 'one drop' of the drums (literally dropping the first of a measure beat on the drums, removing the bass drum hit that is generally there) made this genre extremely relaxed and deep sounding. If you haven't heard of Bob Marley than you have led an incomplete life, enough said.

The third development in Jamaican music and arguably the culmination of a musical progression now over fifty years old was Dub music. Dub music introduced audio manipulation techniques into a form of instrument remixing of classic ska and reggae tunes, such as heavy use of echo and reverb on everything from drums to trumpets. Arguably the main focus of this manipulation was to boost the frequencies of the bass and drum tracks of these songs, turning them into the focus and making the style more danceable than its predecessors. Lee "Scratch" Perry was one of the pioneers of this style and his name is practically synonymous with the genre.

It is in the spirit of Dub that Jungle came into being. Jungle was pioneered in the U.K. by house djs. These djs would sample these dub songs in their tracks but would expand on the sound manipulation and rhythmic concentration by adding basslines that were below the normal bassline range or subbass and making use of breakbeat rhythms. I will interject here to give a quick description of break beats. In some songs, especially classic soul tunes, there is a part of the song known as the break, where all the instruments drop out suddenly, leaving the drums solely remaining. Hip hop artist and all forms of electronic musicians frequently sampled these breaks and composed over them. In time sampling techniques became so sophisticated that samples could be as short as individual drum hits, that could be rearranged to form any kind of drum beat at any speed. So jungle artists used this technology to make heavily syncopated and subdivided beats that had a frantic sound to them. This combination of spastic drums and heavy, low, steady bass is a sound that I adore. Drum and bass, a very popular form of electronic music, is the offspring of this genre which focused even more so on the compositional elements of jungle and moved away from the sampling of the Jamaican music the style was originally inspired by. This gave birth to a plethora of genres and sub genres to the point where drum and bass now barely resembles its roots.

Lastly, Jungle is amazingly fun to dance to.

Videos for reference:

A recent performance by some original ska legends: The Skatalites
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHxEijSG7fg

A Bob Marley Reggae classic (notice the one drop):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uteBX4_wxXk

Lee "Scratch" Parry:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9PcNQxM_cQ

"Origianl Nuttah" one of the most famous jungle tunes ever made:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR1osj6JL9E

"Come on My Selector" by Squarepusher shows how far drum and bass has come from where the style stared (for the record, the slap bass that kicks in at the second half, Squarepusher plays that live on a bass guitar):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQq0zVIF6SQ