Jungle was England’s answer to House. It sprang out of the warehouse, acid-house and rave scenes of the late 1980s, and the melting pot of ecstasy-fuelled parties in Ibiza. In Jungle, a rhythmic patter or breakbeat is created by stretching two short musical passages, or breaks, by playing the same record on two decks and switching back and forth between them to create an infinitely extendible passage. The same effect can be produced by digitally encoding the break with a sampler and repeating it continually in a loop. A combination of time-stretched breakbeats are played around 160 beats per minute over a reggae baseline, with the / bass drum removed, at 80 beats per minute. The result, since co-opted by mainstream figures such as Everything But The Girl, David Bowie and Rickie Lee Jones, is hypnotic.
The term Jungle was quickly denounced as racist. Although the music had a strong black flavor, it was generally conceded that ‘jungle’ referred to ‘the urban jungle’ where disaffected youth, both black and white, found themselves.
Reference:
Keyboard Magazine Vol. 21, No.7 (issue #231, July 1995.)
Gregory, Hugh. A Century of Pop: A hundred years of music that changed the world. London: Octopus Publishing Group Ltd., 2006.
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