Jungle's family tree: from breakbeat hardcore to drum and bass

Genres do not appear overnight. They split from older ones, and the splits are rarely clean. The family tree of jungle, and then drum and bass, runs through the rave scene of the early 1990s, and it is worth knowing how it branched.

The starting point

Wikipedia describes jungle as a genre that developed in the 1990s out of the UK rave scene and Jamaican sound system culture, emerging from breakbeat hardcore. It adds that jungle was a direct precursor to the drum and bass genre, which emerged in the mid 1990s.

Breakbeat hardcore was the fast, energetic rave music of the early 1990s. It combined breakbeats, piano lines, uplifting vocals and samples, and it filled fields and warehouses across Britain. It was a broad church, and it did not stay together.

The split

By 1992 and 1993, the account says, the breakbeat hardcore scene was fragmenting, with different influences becoming less common together in tracks. The piano and uplifting vocal style that had been prevalent began to lay the foundations of 4 beat and happy hardcore, while tracks with dark themed samples and industrial style stabs, which had emerged from late 1992, became known as darkcore.

A third branch took the reggae side. Reggae samples and reggae influenced tracks had been a feature of many breakbeat hardcore records since 1990, particularly from producers such as Shut Up and Dance. As the scene split, that strand developed into something with its own character: faster breaks, deeper basslines and the vocal styles of the Jamaican sound system.

The name and the sound

The result was jungle, characterised by rapid breakbeats and heavily syncopated percussive loops, samples and synthesised effects, combined with the deep basslines, melodies and vocal samples found in dub, reggae and dancehall, and in hip hop and funk. Many producers frequently sampled the Amen break.

Pirate stations spread it. Kool FM, which first broadcast in November 1991, said it was the first pirate station to play hardcore jungle. By 1993 its events brand, Jungle Fever, was putting the music into clubs.

From jungle to drum and bass

By the mid 1990s, the sound was changing again. Labels such as Good Looking explored atmospheric, jazz influenced records. Producers such as Goldie made long, cinematic albums. Others pushed towards the darker, more technical sound that became techstep. The umbrella term drum and bass came to cover all of them, though many people still use jungle for the earlier, breakbeat heavy style.

That is why the two names exist side by side. Our own guide to the difference between jungle and drum and bass explains the usage. In the family tree, jungle is the parent and drum and bass the child, and the children have now had children of their own.

The later branches

From drum and bass came liquid, neurofunk, jump up, and many other forms. The revival of jungle in the early 2020s, led by artists such as Nia Archives, has brought the older style back into focus, closing the circle.

Knowing the tree helps when you listen. When you hear a modern record with a ragga vocal over a fast break, you are hearing the oldest branch. When you hear a dark, precise bassline, you are hearing a later one. They are all part of the same family.