Black Jungle

The BBC documentary “Black Jungle” describes the musical style and attached culture of Jungle, a genre that developed in the late 1980’s combining traditionally black forms like reggae and soul with fast, rave-like beats. Jungle has clear connections to the sound system culture in 1970’s London (described in Les Back’s article, “’Inglan, nice up!’: black music, autonomy, and the cultural intermezzo”), where groups of black youth, excluded from white institutions of leisure, went to the street and established communal celebrations that revolved around musical participation. Though the line between exclusion and choice is blurry, the Jungle movement seems to be rooted in an affinity for black musical styles that were not being represented by the prevailing rave scene. Jungle’s adherents strove to achieve a syncretism between the two – the beat-driven elements of rave, with the connection to rich cultural styles. It is difficult to say whether the absence of black music in rave clubs unintentionally led to an exclusion of black youth, as seen in sound system culture, or if it simply highlighted a dissatisfaction with the preexisting musical scene.

What struck me about the documentary was their description of Jungle as a departure from the past, in the sense that it was a redefinition of British identity “on black terms.” Instead of deepening a schism between white Britain and black “others,” Jungle appropriated the sounds of London’s musical scene and combined it with soul and reggae to create a distinct genre based on locality and a complex racial identity. Whereas the sound system scene was pushed out of white institutions, Jungle participants created a syncretic sound by their own will. However, I question the extent to which the success of the scene still depended on white support. In the documentary, a song is described as being so successful, it was played on BBC 1, a predominantly white media outlet. The documentary shows white record executives and radio jockeys, as well other white Jungle adherents. Is it white participation in Jungle simply indicative of the style itself, a blend of white and black styles, or does it point to an inability for black styles to disseminate without white aid?