The Greatest, Most Dynamic, Complex, and Diverse, But Least Popular Musical Genre Yet Invented, May Have Finally Erased an Enduring Blemish

If you are reading this then you are probably a junglist like myself. A lover of drum & bass/jungle music. Because of that fact there are at least three things that I know about you. Number one you are a very cool person with excellent tastes who I'd love to hang out with and happily call a friend. Number two you have had a variation of the following conversation way too many times in your life to count.

Person: So, what kind of music do you like?

You: I'm a huge drum & bass/jungle fan.

Person: Never heard of it. What's that? What bands play it that I might have heard of?

You: It doesn't have bands.

Person: OK, what songs might I have heard?

You: Well, there aren't songs, exactly.

Person: What about singers or albums, any I would know?

You: There aren't really singers. It has DJs and producers though.

Person: Oh, so it's techno, EDM.

At that point you reach out with your hands, wrap them tightly around the neck of the person and begin to squeeze as hard as you can screaming "It's not techno, it's not EDM" over and over again as you watch the life slowly drain from their eyes. OK. so that last part might just be me, but I am sure you can relate to the back and forth prior to the cold blooded murder. The questions of generic person above are actually easy compared to another common yet impossible to answer question "What does D&B sound like?" In a slight variation of what the supreme court once said of pornography I tend to answer this one with the, you know it when you hear it, non-answer answer. The third thing I know about you is that you will almost certainly find massive flaws in my analysis of both the history and current state of D&B/jungle. I will for sure have left out hugely influential artists and completely ignored the many subgenres that have and continue to exist and thrive within the scene. Your criticisms will be spot on and I apologize in advance, but it simply can't be helped. A complete history of jungle/D&B would require a multi volume epic which I am not prepared to write and you almost certainly would not want to read. All I can say is I did the best I could from the limited perspective I have available. Hopefully it rings at least partially true for you.

At the risk of dating myself I have been a huge fan of jungle music for a very long time now, since the late 90s. Jungle/D&B is one of those rare musical genres that when you are into it, you are really into it, often to the exclusion of all other music. I like to say that since D&B contains elements of all other forms of music, why would I need to listen to anything else. In any case it is not a genre or a scene that attracts many casual fans, in fact it does not attract very many fans at all, and is hardly known at all, at least in the US, outside of a few major urban centers which may have one or two clubs occasionally showcasing D&B artists. The situation is a bit different, though not a ton, across Europe and the rest of the world. The major exceptions are a few cities in the UK; London, Manchester, Bristol which are viewed as the ancestral homes of D&B and where the music and scene first began to coalesce in the early nineties.

Though this was most definitely not the case in the earliest days when it was still only known as jungle, in later years as drum and bass emerged then eclipsed jungle as the primary sound and style, the scene became much more heavily male dominated. The artists (DJs and producers) which had already been mostly male even in the early days became almost exclusively so. This trend really began in the early 2000's but accelerated through the mid 2000s, and 2010s. Not exactly sure why this was the case, but I think there were two trends which mostly drove it. One, the overarching sound of D&B became speedier, heavier, and darker. Because D&B as a genre has so many subgenres making a statement like that is bound to be very, very controversial and highly debatable, but I think it is basically accurate. But the major driver I think was the rise in prominence and popularity of the MC in D&B music. These MC's adopted many of the styles and attitudes of the popular hip-hop/rap artists of the day which often included a big helping of sexist attitudes and lyrics. I would not go so far as to call these D&B MCs anti-woman or misogynistic, unlike some of the hip hop icons they emulated who clearly were, but some of their lyrics were not exactly female friendly. And yes I am talking about you Eksman, Evil B, Trigga, Spyder, and yes even Stormin and Skibadee (RIP) though to a much lesser extent, and many others I am not naming here. As much as it pains me to have to call out some of my favorite artists, particularly two of the recently deceased, there can be no doubt that at least some of their lyrics and attitudes toward women were/are antiquated and offensive and a major turnoff to a huge population of women who without their stupid/shitty bars may have been very positively inclined to love D&B/jungle. If you are thinking I am just some conservative prude, then you obviously do not know me. You definitely do not know me because nothing could be further from the truth.

While it may be debatable why exactly D&B became so heavily male dominated, there can be no doubt that it did become so, and that really it has always been so among the artists (DJs and producers) that have dominated the scene until very recently. Thankfully, finally, that has begun to change. Really the change became noticeable in 2020 or so but has come to a head in 2024 and for the first time ever my own rolling list of the five most interesting/influential D&B artists is majority female. Today it includes female D&B artists Charlie Tee (who goes by about a million other names), Kara and Harriet Jaxxon, and there are a host of other talented female D&B artists who did not make my list that maybe could have. I need to be clear that this list is not necessarily a list of my favorite D&B artists nor is it a list of the most talented or most technically skillful, though oftentimes those things do overlap. The list is intended to be a reflection of exactly what it says, the most interesting and influential artists at the time and nothing more. In particular A Little Sound who is very much a newcomer and yet to prove herself as a real talent in my eyes, could have made the list. Sure, she comes out from behind the decks and sings for part of her sets. It's a neat gimmick but really not needed as her skills behind the decks are impressive.