Jungle

Jungle is a genre of black diasporic music associated with Britain’s post-industrial cities. It comprises sped-up funk and reggae break beats, synthesized low-end bass lines, effects and samples. It can be traced back to the beginning of the 1990s, developing in London and other major cities like Birmingham, Bristol, Coventry, Leicester and Manchester. By 1995, jungle was a national phenomenon and an important sound of underground youth culture. By 1997 it was the soundtrack to the feature film Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, had celebrity DJs and an international presence. Although jungle continues in the Twenty-First Century, by the end of the 1990s it had ceded its grassroots impetus to UK garage. 1990s jungle dances were a leisure space in which black, Asian and white youth mixed. For this reason, jungle is sometimes held up as a panacea of conviviality, especially when viewed in contrast to the multi-ethnic relations that preceded it. This did not imply that there were no worries in the dance, but rather that ethnic identity was often secondary to the shared enjoyment of the music and communal affinity with the scene. Conviviality was also fostered by the music itself. Comprised of hip hop, funk, soul, reggae and techno, the music told the stories of many different people, just as it spoke to a shared moment of lived experience. The 1990s jungle scene comprised a network of independent record labels, vinyl recordings, raves and pirate radio stations. Early voice and text mobile phones, pagers and landlines linked pirate radio stations (unlicensed radio) to their audiences. These were autonomous networks and they sustained an alternative public sound culture. Criminalized by the authorities and sidelined by mainstream music broadcasters and presses, the jungle scene provided a structure of feeling and a collective site of black diasporic narration for a generation of multi-ethnic young people struggling under the weight of the Conservative party’s social and economic policy.