Bass 101

At risk of sounding esoteric, allow me to teach you about ‘Jungle” AKA “drum n’ bass” : They’re two names for the same thing: a deeply influential dance music genre that came out of Caribbean rave diasporas in the UK in the early 1990s, and has spent the last 30+ years constantly evolving, collaborating and maturing into a staple set of rhythms for Pop, dance, hip hop, jazz, dub, punk, metal, Reggae and other genres. At its core, the beat structure is most akin to hip hop. You can rap over it, but there is a second layer which is indebted to its roots as an island music: the bassline. A jungle bassline is always low, thick (or THICC,as the kids/the intemet says) and funky, engineered to make you dance to jazz-soaked skittering high hats, breakbeats and complex snare drum roll patterns. And dance I have. Jungle is my favorite dance genre by a mile, with techno a close second (NYC, Chicago, Detroit, German, Dutch, pick your poison). I’ve torn up dance floors to jungle and techno both in a dozen countries in two continents as a devoted, unapologetic lifetime (30+ years!) raver. I just love how truly infinite the permutations of the core rhythmic structures of electronic dance music genres seem to be. The most singular of these snare patterns is known as the “Amen break”; in the words of Sri Lankan rapper MIA, “Get yourself an education.”