A lot of people who listen to drum 'n bass are unaware of it's history. What makes dnb? Where did it come from and what drives it on? Here at RSA we respect the origins of this powerful form of music by sharing a little knowledge with our visitors. If you're new to dnb we can guide you on where to start. If you're a dnb fanatic you still might find something you didn't know hidden in these pages. We suggest you read up boys and girls.

Prehistory
Drum and bass evolved out of a number of different musical cultures, and is still doing so today. Since it is impossible to fully understand the history of drum and bass without understanding the history of those different musical cultures, I'll start off this article by laying these out briefly.

Reggae

In Jamaica, in the early 60s, rastafaris started to make music with elements taken from Caribbean music and soul, which first became ska. Later the tempo was lowered and the reggae style was born. Into this music the artists implanted their religion, world problems, love, and much more. Later another style grew out of reggae called ragga, which was more electronic and contained more scat vocals. Especially during the early days of drum 'n bass, ragga and reggae were very important influences, and drum'n'bass's deep-founded roots in the black culture still show through today.

Hiphop

Fifteen years later, in the middle 70s, a guy in New York City called Kool Herk took some disco, funk and soul songs and mixed them together with two turntables and a mixer. Another guy climbed onto the stage with a mic and invited the people to dance instead of fighting at the urban parties where violence was commonplace. They called him MC, which stands for Master of Ceremonies. This music with slow drum beats, MC poetry, and lots of disco, soul and funk elements became known as hip hop.

Hip hop, or rap music, became a lifestyle and changed the way of life in the dangerous ghettos of big US cities. People used words instead of guns to 'fight' their battles, and even now hip hop is still one of the most important styles of music in the world today. But while in modern hip hop the MC forms the most important element, in drum'n'bass the MC's role is still similar to the early hip hop of '75: a motivator to make people dance.

Breakbeat

Five years later, in the early 80s, hip hop was still mostly recognized in the big cities of the USA, in the projects. Instead of fighting people fought things out in rhymes, and dancing to hip hop became a culture in itself. Some guys found out that they could do a sort of battle in their dance, based on the breakdowns and short cuts in the music. This became known as breakdancing or breaking, and pushed the beats that made up these breakdowns into the forefront. Thus the breakbeat was born, the third and most important element for the progress of drum'n'bass.

During this period house was also invented, a style of music that evolved from disco and centered around The Warehouse club in Chicago. House in itself wasn't very important to the evolution of drum'n'bass, but it led to another style that was: rave music.

Rave

In the late 80's, producers of house music in Chicago were experimenting with a bass synth, the famous Roland TB 303. This was supposed to sound like a bass guitar, but was really crap at it, so your average producer wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. However, this machine, along with the TR-808 and 909 drum machines, also by Roland, formed the backbone of acid house, named because of the acidic sound, and the fact that it was also very appealing to clubbers who took acid.

Acid house parties spread over to the UK, to clubs like 'Shoom' where some of today's famous house music DJ's were spinning. The parties started off small, and the details and locations were only spread by word of mouth. The fact that only select people found out about these parties made it very appealing, and everyone wanted a piece of the action. Large illegal raves starting popping up, and while the American producers were moving in a more techno style direction (tracks like "Energy Flash" by Joey Beltram), the UK crew were turning the trippy acid sound into hardcore rave. The music in the UK featured a lot of breakbeats that had been ripped from US hip hop records, as well as raging hoovers, low basses, uplifting pianos, and a generally hard, yet happy vibe that stimulated the huge amounts of Ecstasy being munched at these events.

The rave massacre

Around 1992, artists like The Prodigy, Mickey Finn & Aphrodite (Urban Shakedown), and SL2 (Slipmatt & Lime) were on Top of the Pops. The authorities in England became aware of all the illegal rave parties, saw people take drugs and go mad over the climax of rough simple beats. Was that the future? It was, but the authorities weren't interested in that. At the time The Prodigy went commercial all over the world, the English authorities clamped down on all the big illegal parties, and rave was doomed to become a commercial shit item for the rest of all time, pushing the real rave scene right back into the underground again.

Some time before this, however, in the black projects of London, people started to sample ragga and mix it with elements of rave, breakbeats, and hip hop. The breakbeats were really fast, the basses were deep but slow, and the other element was various ragga samples. Jungle was founded, the last step to drum'n'bass.

The emergence of drum 'n bass

Jungle

The new underground sound was harder, darker and faster and more reliant on the breakbeat, and by 1993 jungle was emerging strong. Artists like Q-Project, Deep Blue, and Foul Play were writing phat jungle tunes, while DJs and artists like Slipmatt, Vibes and Dougal went the other way by evolving breakbeat into happy hardcore, which soon transformed into a 4-to-the-floor style. Meanwhile the jungle sound just got harder, with more complex breaks, and a very minimal style. This style of music is the direct descendent of drum and bass, and forms the final stage of its evolution from the 1960s.

The difference between jungle and drum'n'bass

The definition of 'jungle' comes from an English MC called Rebel MC, who made reggae dub with breakbeat and rave influences. One of his tracks contained the sample "Big up all of d'junglists", which was taken from an old Jamaican dancehall tune. In Jamaica, reggae dancehall MC's used to do shouts to all the different areas of Kingston, just as they do now to all the different areas across the world in different cities. One of these areas in Kingston is covered in trees and vegetation, called 'The Gardens', but the locals called it 'The Jungle'. So at the dancehalls, the MC's used to shout out to the people who came from there.... hence "big up all d'junglists". So the term does stem from the reggae background, and 'jungle' doesn't refer to the "urban jungles" of big cities in the UK, as many people think.

The first jungle records were from the likes of Rebel MC, and it contained ragga samples, very broken beats like the amen break, helicopter beats, and more. The basses were simple, with a gripping melody, and that was all: ragga samples, breaks and basses. In the UK it became a hit, and a new light for the ravers, who became converted to junglists (or junglettes if they were girls). Pointing to gangsters, crime, and tough life, jungle hit the projects of the big UK cities like a nuclear bomb. The records were always completely built out of pre-recorded samples, everything from the past, but that changed shortly.

By 1994 the scene was completely split in two, when jump up jungle arrived with its ragga vocals, subsonic basslines, and instantly recognizable breaks. The style was very formulaic, and you had to have the right types of bass sounds, and the right breaks, and sounds were getting overused. Because of the very rugged sound, and hip-hop/ gangsta rap/ ragga influence, jungle raves were violent places, which put a lot of people off. Thankfully the sound soon changed, and the beats became simpler, yet harder and the emphasis was on creating new sounds, rather than borrowing old ones.

Around this time a guy called Rob Playford started a record label called Moving Shadow. It made jungle without the ragga, but with ambient elements. This made it very spacey, and pushed the idea that jungle needed more modern influences. It worked, and intelligent jungle was born. In the meantime, the jungle label bosses tried to sell their ragga jungle over the borders of the UK. It failed, and although the whole world wanted a new stream, jungle wasn't the thing. It came close, but it needed to change.

Ragga jungle died a painful death around 1994, and the UK scene started finding new ingredients for their jungle process. Without the ragga, but with elements made by the producer himself, the term drum'n'bass was born. This style still used fast heavy breaks rooted in hip hop and heavy basses rooted in reggae, but this time with more synth work like in rave. All mixed together, the drum'n'bass scene was on the verge of world domination.

Development

Around 1995, artists like Roni Size and Adam F were pushing towards a jazzy sound, and trying to get people to recognize that jungle - or drum'n'bass as it came to be known - was a legitimate artform, and took a lot of skill to make, unlike the very simple ragga jungle of 1994-5. A very chilled style of jungle, dubbed intelligent - led by LTJ Bukem - confirmed that producers wanted to earn respect from new crowds, and kill off the gang mentality the scene seemed to be encouraging. Rob Playford and Moving Shadow weren't the only ones that took jungle to a higher level. In the early nineties men like Danny Bukem (LTJ Bukem) with his label Good Looking Records, and guys like Dego and Marc Mac (4Hero) at Reinforced Records, already brought drum 'n bass to a higher state between ragga jungle. Men like DJ Hype, Grooverider, and Aphrodite took it even further. Their time came in the mid-90s, and it started with a man called Goldie, graffiti artist and DJ. He hooked up with Rob Playford and they made the album 'Timeless'. It was a huge hit, and for the first time drum'n'bass was heard all over the world thanks to the success of the huge single Inner City Life. 'Timeless' was the first dnb album that really made an impact around the world. Labels like Reinforced, Moving Shadow, Good looking, Suburban base, and of course Goldie's own label Metalheadz started to grow very rapidly. Once small underground labels, they are now the source of all drum'n'bass today.

A year later LTJ Bukem released 'Logical Progression', still the best intelligent dnb album to date. Dnb producers in the ghettos soon drove around in big cars, and labels like RAM records and Formation showed the harder side of drum'n'bass - thumping basses and rough steelhard breaks, which they called hardstep. People discovered how many ways dnb could be combined. A style like house always has elements that point to the original oldskool house formula, but dnb could possibly mix with any style, as long as you knew how to. Jazz, salsa, hiphop, ambient, rave, they could all cope with the style.

In 1997, Roni Size (already dnb producer for a long time), a guy from Bristol, found a way to perform dnb live with top musicians, in a mixture of dnb and jazz (referred to as jazzjungle, jazzstep, jazz 'n bass, drum 'n jazz or whatever). The band was called Reprazent, and with Size's album 'New forms' a new revolution was announced. More and more was pulled out of drum'n'bass, and the popularity around the globe seemed to grow more and more. Also in 1997 techstep was beginning to emerge, and it would change the identity of jungle forever. Techstep brought true science, and a new crowd. It erased the rudeboy mentality of the music, and it became much more intelligent, yet still very hard, very dark, and very danceable. At this point, there was no such thing as a typical junglist, and there still isn't. At raves today, every social group is represented, and there is much less violence. Producers are struggling to push the boundaries of their equipment to create new sounds that have never been heard before.

Where it's at now?

Recently some people said to me that dnb laid flat on their mouths. Nothing is more untrue. Dnb has become an art. To listen to, to dance to, it's all about how you listen to it. It's had more than ten years of existence, a huge amount of success, and never became a commercial item like house, hip hop, or r&b. Dnb is one of the most innovative styles ever created.

The d'n'b scene is still underground, but this means that there are no major corporations holding it back, it just goes in its own direction, and as long as the listeners are there at the raves and in the clubs it will be unstoppable. The world's finest music and people always live forth in the underground.

REACTOR GRITS - Head of RSA

Thanks to Scam, Sense, and Antonio for their input, big up! If you think some things in this story are utter bollocks, please let us know.